The B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame rearguard wanted to re-sign in 2016-17 after this six-year run but Canuck brass decided it was going in different direction
Dan Hamhuis wanted to retire as a Vancouver Canuck.
The 42-year-old from Smithers is being inducted into the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame later this year, landing a spot there thanks to a resume that includes an Olympic gold medal with Team Canada from the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, six world championship appearances, and 16 seasons in the NHL.
Hamhuis, who was 33, signed with the Dallas Stars and wound up playing four more seasons in the league. By various metrics, he was still effective. For example, he lined up for 20 minutes, 11 seconds a night with Dallas for 80 games in 2017-18.
Vancouver had a losing record and missed the playoffs in Hamhuis’ final season here. The team continued to slip, with no post-season appearances in the next three years before qualifying for playoffs in the COVID pandemic campaign. In that four-year span, they finished as low as No. 26 in the league in goals against average.
“I wanted to stay. I made that well known to our management at the time, and unfortunately they didn’t want to make that happen and wanted to go in different directions,” Hamhuis says. “It’s kind of too bad. I felt like I was bleeding blue, and that wearing that jersey and everything it represented meant a lot to me. It was kind of sad that it didn’t work out any longer.
“In a way, I guess I was a bit surprised. I felt like I had proven myself as a ‘you-know-what-you’re-going-to-get’ steady player and a good guy in the room and community. Sometimes there are biases for the ‘Grass is greener.’ But I think when you have something that’s good and what you know, it’s kind of hard to understand.”
How things exactly played out vary depending on who you talk to, but the consensus seems to start with Hamhuis being reticent to waive his no-trade clause initially.
Benning said on free agency day the summer that followed: “We tried our best and it didn’t work out. It would have been nice to get a draft pick, but at the end of the day the offers weren’t there to complete any sort of deal.”
Whether Benning and Co. already knew that they weren’t bringing Hamhuis back at the trade deadline and failed to get anything at all for him in trade remains one of those great Canuck questions.
His 1,148 regular season games ranks second best among his 2001 NHL Draft class, trailing only No. 2 overall pick Jason Spezza’s 1,248. Nashville had selected Hamhuis at No. 12, following his third of four seasons with the WHL’s Prince George Cougars.
Hamhuis is eighth in games played in the NHL by B.C.-born players, just before former Canuck Cliff Ronning and his 1,137. Mark Recchi leads the list at 1,652.
The majority of games for Hamhuis came with the Predators, but the best hockey for him came with the Canucks. He received Norris Trophy votes in three of his six seasons in Vancouver. Hamhuis was a plus-78 in his time as a Canuck, and that’s tied for the fourth-best total in team history.
He had been a fervent Canuck fan growing up in Smithers. Trevor Linden and Kirk McLean were his favourite players, explaining that “the 1994 Stanley Cup run was right in the prime of my childhood fandom at 12 years old, and those two guys were obviously huge parts of that team.”
In 2011, he was a huge part of the Vancouver team that went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final.
“It’s kind of hard to connect the dots from how I saw the team as a 12-year-old to actually being in that position myself,” Hamhuis says. “It was quite a ride. You don’t really realize when it’s happening, or maybe it doesn’t sink in until later and you look back.”
Looking back now on how it ended can still sting in this market. The story has been rehashed again and again. Vancouver got up 3-2 on the Boston Bruins in the best-of-seven finale, but lost Game 6 by a 5-2 count in Boston and then fell 4-0 on home ice in Game 7.
They were the third Canuck team to make the Stanley Cup Finals, and the third to bow out. Like the 1982 and 1994 squads, that 2011 team is treasured by the fan base to this day. What happens when a Canuck team finally wins it all? Can they fit a full team statue somewhere around Rogers Arena?
“I probably thought about how close we were every second of the day right after Game 7 for the first few months,” Hamhuis said. “And, yeah, I still kind of look back on it. Who knows? Maybe that team would have stayed together a little longer. And it sure would have been cool for the city to experience that win.
“It’s like anything in life. When things don’t go the way you want, you look into the mirror and think: How can I be better? What can I adjust? That’s kind of how I took it. And a lot of great things happened after that. Maybe it was some of the motivation from a really tough loss.”
And the What Ifs from that series have to hit Hamhuis more than most directly involved. He played all of eight minutes, nine seconds in the seven games versus Boston, with a hip check he administered on Milan Lucic along the boards in neutral ice early in the second period of Game 1 leaving Hamhuis with a sports hernia and several soft tissue tears up and down his core. He required off-season surgery.
Kevin Bieksa led the Canucks in ice time per game in those playoffs, seeing 25:41 a night. Hamhuis was next best, at 24:50.
“When you’re playing, you’re just playing. When you’re not playing, I found that was I was quite nervous, because there’s nothing I could do but just sit there and watch,” Hamhuis said. “It was kind of a helpless feeling.”
Those were still among the best of times for the Canucks. Hamhuis says that those Vancouver teams were “pretty deep in all our positions, from top to bottom.”
“We had outstanding goaltending. We had eight defencemen who could play up and down the lineup. We had high-end scoring and we had checking lines that were 100 per cent committed to that role and took pride in that role,” he continued. “We had four forward lines that could manage anything. I don’t think (coach) Alain Vigneault ever had to get too stressed about matching lines.”
“I’ve coached the same soccer team for four years and it’s been really neat to be able to share with them some of the lessons and things that I’ve learned and seen and observed from other players,” Hamhuis said. “How to build good culture, what it means to be a good teammate, challenging yourself — all these kinds of principles.
“I try to pass that on to them in their teenage years, and it’s kind of fun to see how maybe they might relate to that and implement that — not just in sports, but things that carry over into life, too.”
He still watches the NHL. He pays attention particularly to the guys he played with and against, and to the latest wave of talent. In the regard, he mentioned specifically Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Quinn Hughes, Vancouver’s captain and top defenceman.
“It’s just phenomenal what the guys are able to do out there,” Hamhuis said. “And I think the thing that people often forget is that other teams put their very best five defenders against them, and they have a whole game plan to shut these guys down, and they’re still doing what they’re doing.
“With Hughes, it’s hard to comprehend the stuff, like the moves he’s pulling on the offensive blue line. I wouldn’t even dare try those things in practice. I don’t even know if I’d dare try them by myself with no one around. It’s quite something. He’s obviously very skilled, very confident.”
The ceremony will be July 12 at the South Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton.
“It’s only been four years since I played. I hadn’t really thought about anything like that. It’s a big honour, especially after looking at some of the names that are in there,” Hamhuis said.
Hamhuis is a part owner in the Cougars, signing on with the team in 2014-15. Hamhuis captained the Cougars for his final season and tallied a career-high of 60 points (10G-50A) in 59 games. He was awarded the Four Broncos Memorial Trophy as the WHL’s player of the year, the Bill Hunter Memorial Trophy as the league’s top defenceman and the CHL defenceman of the year. He played on two world junior teams during his Cougars’ tenure as well.