Fan In Van

Naslund is THE “Team Player”

Markus Naslund won’t ever go back to the Naslund we used to know. As much as I and the rest of Vancouver would like to believe Markus Naslund is capable of doing the end-to-end rushes and firing a deadly accurate wrister from the top faceoff circle, it won’t happen again. Too much time has passed by and Naslund is now forced to live in the Alain Vigneault era that emphasizes defence and dumping the puck in to generate offence.

However, I think we’re all aware that Naslund would rather be winning than scoring goals. To Naslund, a player who has played 1001 games in his long NHL career, winning is all that matters. Perhaps a younger, more foolish Markus Naslund would’ve thought of himself first above his team, but Markus is in his seventh season as a Canuck captain and he’s not getting any younger. With a guy like Roberto Luongo in net you’ve got to believe that Naslund wants to bring victory to this city more than any of us realize.

Let’s analyze what Naslund has had to go through. Not only has the burden of wearing the ‘C’ on his jersey been tough, but Naslund has been through many trying times over the last few years. Following the Steve Moore incident everything seemed to go downhill for the Canuck captain: We saw the crumbling of the West Coast Express, the fall of the Crawford empire and the introduction of a defence-first system with the installation of Roberto Luongo. I think it took a lot of guts for Naslund to put a smile on his face and try to embrace these changes and even more guts for him to bear the excruciating criticism from the fans and media for his lack of scoring. Any other player would’ve been crushed by that burden.

But here he is, still the Canucks captain, and after 1000 games it’s becoming more and more evident that Markus Naslund is the best “team player” in Canuck history.

And now, a look back on Naslund’s time as a Canuck:

And for those of you who missed the 1000th game ceremony last night: