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Hockey Time: Canucks vs. Flames Game 7 in 1989

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Kevin Biestra

By Kevin Biestra
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IBatch Canucks Hall-of-Famer

IBatch

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15 hours ago, -AJ- said:

Watching games we lost just depresses me.

Some games are fun to watch again, especially ones that were memorable for a variety of reasons.   Cooke scoring while Jovo was in the box and his reaction  ...  Burrows dragon slaying.   Bieksa's knuckle ball... Game 7 vs CAL 89 and 94.    Some games you knew exactly where you were, exactly when they ended (OT games).   Crosby golden goal ...  Bure, Burrow, Adams, ... OTTO  too.   CAL was a great team, we weren't supposed to last five games.    Same with 94 really, but the revenge with a mostly different team, against a similar squad (and equally deadly) was pretty sweet. 

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IBatch Canucks Hall-of-Famer

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43 points separated the teams .. Presidents trophy winners.    From half way through the third, to the last minute of OT,  the Canucks outplayed one of the best teams ever.    And set ourselves up for one titantic rivalry, best one i've seen since watching the Canucks.    Anyone who doubts Vernon should be in the HHOF, should watch this game.   He's the only reason why they made it past us in game 7.    Money goalie, like Billy Smith and Furh.   At least five sure goal saves ... Smyl and his goal post.    Tanti's snipe probably the best, but made several good/great saves throughout the game as well, leading up to OT.    Linden made some great plays ...  McLean, super young, but man please stay in your net lol.   Give you a heart attack.    Vernon did it for Detroit too.  

 

Canuck lore, this one for sure belongs in it.    McLean with "the Save" followed by Bure's 94 goal made up for 1989.   Same way slaying the dragon did, but two very different era's and vibes.    Probably be considered one of the biggest upsets all-time if we won in 1989, but a big part of me is happy with how it worked out.   6-7 years of just mean nasty, skilled fight filled years. 

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IBatch Canucks Hall-of-Famer

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Gus could have scored a hat trick for us in this game ... and Linden showed why he's the best 18 year old player we've ever had.    Otto was a freaking beast.  A lot has been said about Messier and Otto going hammer and tong against each other for a decade or so ... imagine being Linden, and told by your coach your going to be taking face offs against Otto because we didn't have anyone physically big enough to not get maimed in the dot as a rookie lol.    Funny because that role was abondoned until 1994, again Otto (and by then he was getting longer in the tooth but if anything meaner and more physically dominant as he aged) ... 

 

As an aside, the Otto/Messier hate ran so deep, a long time after and with different teams they locked horns again and Messier laid a total beat down. 

 

Took Otto decades, but he finally admitted that goal wouldn't have counted with video review.   Bill McCreary is probably the best ref ever to lace them up.    This game was actually very clean, not chippy, he was quick to disallow a goal given McLean was smashed into the net ... and let some things go (for us) that in todays game they'd for sure have called.    It's a perfect example, of how games should be called.   I don't blame CAL for winning ... I blame Vernon lol.   

 

Edit:  And on Linden.  Yes he went number two ... for quite some time folks felt he'd have been just as good or even better pick than Modano.   In 1995,  he was predicted to be almost a slam dunk for the HHOF.     He was only 24.  At 25 in the dead puck era already ... had his best season.    Sucks he fell off a cliff, but sometimes I wonder if his role was just kept as a winger ... if things would have been different for him.     Linden, Bure, EP and QHs ... nobody so far has achieved more by 24 ... But Linden did the most, when it mattered the most.   Hope EP and QHs get a chance to show that they can do that too.  

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Kevin Biestra

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1 hour ago, IBatch said:

Edit:  And on Linden.  Yes he went number two ... for quite some time folks felt he'd have been just as good or even better pick than Modano.   In 1995,  he was predicted to be almost a slam dunk for the HHOF.     He was only 24.  At 25 in the dead puck era already ... had his best season.    Sucks he fell off a cliff, but sometimes I wonder if his role was just kept as a winger ... if things would have been different for him.     Linden, Bure, EP and QHs ... nobody so far has achieved more by 24 ... But Linden did the most, when it mattered the most.   Hope EP and QHs get a chance to show that they can do that too.  

 

That cliff as I remember it was the moment he blew out his knee and ended his ironman streak.  After that he went from a 70 point player to a 40 point player almost overnight.  Still did the Bryan Trottier and stayed relevant by playing smart.  Even in his final season where he was healthy scratched all the time he was out there as the only forward killing 5 on 3 power plays.  Before that knee injury he was performing well at the fastest skater competition in the All Star game.

 

He's one of the guys like Wayne Babych, Barry Pederson where it feels like you can mark on the calendar the day (the injury or surgery) that the Hall of Fame jumped out of their grasp.

 

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