The dog days of Summer are well upon us, and it's Sirius* enough to resort to outright theft. Sure, we could talk about the Best Ever by Number, or Canucks Jersey Roulette (you have to defend the one the bottle stops at), but those have been done to death.
Then Sean McIndoe, AKA Down Goes Brown, over at The Athletic came up with an interesting twist: make a team out of non-repeating letters. He listed a dozen teams, but not Vancouver. Gold! The restriction means we can't use both Sedins, giving us a challenge. We want some positional players, but either side for wing or defence. Let's go live!
Right, then. As mentioned, one of the Sedins is out, so we need to set them aside for now and see who comes up. One of them is in, that's a no-doubt move, so the letter "S" is gone. Stan Smyl was self-defeating - no doubles - as is, say, Ron Sedlbauer or Sergio Momesso. Shouldn't be a problem, really. Either Hank or Dan is gone, and we'll just figure out which letter is more important.
First up, Quinn Hughes. Can't leave him off- Oh. Guess the dilemma is solved, then. Sorry, Henrik Sedin, your "H" is getting used elsewhere. Not as hard as we thought, then. Who's next?
Pavel Bure is right there at the top of the leaderboard, so pencil him in. That takes Elias Pettersson out, which could be rough for our centre choices. Unless we take Thomas Gradin or Trevor Linden. Sure, Linden is listed as a right winger, but he played plenty of centre through his career. So that's not really a tough call, either. Hm.
There are just two choices in net, though some very good goalies have passed our way. If we go with Roberto Luongo, that bumps Linden out. Is he that much better than Kirk McLean? Yes. Yes, he is. So there's another puzzler gone. So we're down to one defenceman and sixteen letters to go.
The 15-year rock that is Alexander Edler is the easy pick here. So, uh... yeah. They were all pretty easy picks.
Daniel Sedin - Thomas Gradin - Pavel Bure
Quinn Hughes - Alexander Edler
Roberto Luongo
That's a really, really good lineup. And a disappointingly effortless one. So let's do it again.
Still no Hank because he's still named Sedin, and that's gone. We're down A B D E G H L P Q R S and T. This will be a LOT tougher as we go. We need twelve out of sixteen distinct letters, so maybe working from them to the names is the better approach.
Kirk McLean is still alive, but selecting him takes out Orland Kurtenbach, but if we take Kurtenbach, we remove Matthias Öhlund from the list. And Öhlund's pretty dang good. Are there better goaltenders without K and centres with one? Hm.
This ain't working. Back to starting from position and going from there. If we start in goal, then McLean is the best choice, but not the only one. The letter "K" isn't all that common, but neither is the letter "J" and Jacob Markström is in the mix. We'll leave them for now and move up to the trouble spot: centre.
No Bo Horvat, no Ryan Kesler, no... J.T. Miller? Wait. Does the "T" actually count as an initial letter in this case? Has anyone called Jonathan Tanner Miller "Jon" after the age of ten? Eh, I'm gonna rule that yes, it counts, so no J.T. Miller. Which hurts, but there it is.
Gotta say, selecting Roberto Luongo has taken out a lot of options, here. So we're digging into our little bag of tricks for this one: Chris Oddleifson will centre our second team. He came over from the Boston Bruins with another potential option, Mike Walton, but the letter "M" is valuable, even if we don't select McLean.
Let's get the defence filled out, quick.
*sound of drums*
I know what you're thinking. "Now," you say, sipping tea and eying the horizon. "Now is the time. Now is when we need him, and he comes. Now is... Nikita Zadorov."
And you know what? You're right. His regular-season term here wasn't anything to write home about, but his playoff run was an absolute blast. So yeah, let's tuck him and his "Z" onto the blue line. And we're up to one defenceman and one forward. Oof. Let's bet back to who's going to be in net, here. And you know what? Sorry, Chris, you're out.
Yeah, okay, that sounds weird. But there's a domino effect going on, and Orland Kurtenbach with Jacob Markström is better than Oddleifson and Kirk McLean, I think. The letters are cruel. Speaking of which, where are we at?
Gone: A B D E G H J K L M N O P Q R S T and Z
Remaining: C F I U V W X Y
One defenceman and two wingers to go. Letters first, then.
Gotta take Yannick Webber and stick him in the back pocket, here. Offensive defenceman played his best hockey in Vancouver, and more importantly, has great initials. If we stumble on someone better, we can swap. Until then, "W" and "Y" are off the board, and we're down to two forwards left to fill out the roster.
"C" and "F" are probably reserved for first names. Not a whole lot out there with the rest, but you never know. The team drafted Xavier Majic back in 1991, but he never made the bigs, alas. Otherwise, he'd be a shoo-in, no matter how many games he played. Tell me you could resist THAT jersey!
...and now I'm embarrassed. Mortified, in fact. How on earth could I possibly forget Curt Fraser? Almost 350 games with the team and over 650 penalty minutes, he easily fits onto the wing beside Kurtenbach. They may not have played in Vancouver at the same time, but the spirit is there!
That just leaves one winger to go, with the letters...Ah. Right, then. Take three, and let's see what we have under the barrel, shall we? I don't want to touch our first team because that defeats the point of this lunatic game.
Team Two has Nikita Zadorov, Yannick Weber, Orland Kurtenback, Jacob Markström, and Curt Fraser. Those are actual NHL players, which is a pleasant surprise, but also one man short. There is just no combination of I U V and X that produces another player. So we're going to have to blow it up.
Remaining letters: C F I J K N O U V W X Y Z
Two of those last four surviving letters are going to have to be used, so starting there. Artūrs Irbe and Brad Isbister are the only two "I" names that have played for Vancouver, so they're out. That's going to be one of the leftovers. Garry Unger never played for the Canucks, and it doesn't look like they had an Ulf despite their Swedish fixation, so that's got that decided.
But there's no "X" either. So... Bugger.
Matthias Öhlund, welcome to Team One! Sorry, Alex, you're out, and so is Kurtenback. Now let's see what happens.
Daniel Sedin - Thomas Gradin - Pavel Bure
Quinn Hughes - Matthias Öhlund
Roberto Luongo
Still a rock-solid team, that. Is there a Team Two, though? The remaining letters are: A C E F I J K N U V W X Y and Z, and we know our leftovers have to be X and U.
Curt Fraser - *MAGIC* - Vladimir Krutov
Nikita Zadorov - Yannick Weber - Ed Jovanovski
Artūrs Irbe
Okay, this is just silly. How am I getting three defencemen and two forwards out of this? Jovonovski was used as a forward on the power play at times, but that's a cheat. We want the five-on-five team. Some combination of NZ, YW, and/or EJ has to turn into a forward. Or some more extreme transformation...
Nope. Ain't happening. Spun this sucker around in circles, and that's all I ended up with.
If you want to try it yourself, go for it! It's quite the way to waste a few hours, and you might have better luck than I managed.
*Get it? Get it? Well, no, not yet, because Sirius doesn't rise for Vancouver until mid-August. But I'm bored and ain't waiting for it.
