Last night was the single greatest, most meaningful moment to me in Canucks history. My favourite player, my hero, my captain, and my role model had his #16 lifted to the skies and retired forever. So many people have had so many amazing things to say about Trevor Linden over the past week, so I’ll try not to be too repetitive here.

You can read this post about how Trevor Linden and the Canucks have been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. I got the chance to meet Trevor a couple years ago, and I can honestly say that he is just as kind and handsome in person as everyone’s made him out to be. Thanks for taking the time to sign my jersey, Trevor. You always had time for the fans.

Despite my best efforts to get tickets on Ticketmaster for this game, there weren’t any available even when they were advertised to go on sale. So I ended up having to buy them from scalpers back in September. It was worth every penny. I could only afford to go to one game this year, and this was THE game. I thought the #16 pins they were handing out at the gates at GM Place were a nice touch. I’m going to treasure mine forever.

GM Place really lit up nicely with the old Canucks colours. I still miss the old jerseys and the old colours. We were sitting 3 rows from the ice to the right of the goalies and it was a great view.

Linden imagery was everywhere, including the sides of the stadium.

Gino Odjick and other teammates showed up to pay tribute to Linden, but I cheered the loudest for Gino.

All the current Canucks players were wearing #16 jerseys for the ceremony and the warm up. What a cool sight to see.

Linden was given a Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing gift from his teammates. All I can say is… JEALOUS!!!!!!!!

Linden’s speech was incredible. What a stand up, classy guy. He somehow managed to make a night all about him, to a night all about his friends, family and fans. Somehow he turned around the spotlight on him, to a thank you to everyone around him. I was misty-eyed the whole night, but the tears started forming near the end of his speech. I have to admit I was really bawling by the time his number was being raised to the rafters.

There ceremony ended, and I’m sure many others like myself found it hard to switch over to the fast-paced rough hockey game that ensued. It was great to see the Canucks beat the Oilers, but my heart and mind was somewhere else.

I decided to go festive and wore Canucks Christmas stockings (with the feet cut out of them) as leggings.

I wore my Linden jersey (that I custom added a ‘C’ for Captain to). I’ve never seen so many Linden jerseys at GM Place EVER! The coolest ones were the old ones from his Junior years.

Face off…

Canuck players stand up and look out over the bench at an exciting fight taking place.

I took this photo of Burrows for Amy

This shot was taken right before the goal. Shame I wasn’t able to get the actual goal, but it’s a neat action shot.

GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a good win for the Canucks over the Oilers. What a great night overall. The folks at GM Place did a great job organizing the night… making the fans feel special and putting together something really memorable for Linden.

After the game, I stood and looked at Trevor’s number in the rafters for a while. Hanging beside Stan Smyl’s and the Canadian flag. I’m so proud to be fan of the greatest player to ever wear a Canucks jersey, and I will always cherish the memory of seeing his number raised.

I miss having Trevor to cheer for. I will always be a Canucks fan, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a little different now. I can’t help but feel a little empty without #16 on the ice.

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In other news, the Canucks just signed Mats Sundin. I’m not stoked. I want a good Canadian player to join the Canucks. But if he helps us get the Cup, that’d be great, but I’m still not a Sundin fan. Darn, why couldn’t you have gone with Naslund to the Rangers?! He’s basically retired. He was a Leafs captain. There’s no real educated reason why I don’t want him on the Canucks. It just doesn’t feel right. Isn’t this a step backwards? Doesn’t it feels like we just got rid of a Naslund-like character? *sigh* Didn’t we already go through this with Messier? I know there will be a lot of opposing opinions… Anyway. From Linden to Sundin. Times are definitely a’changing’.

It felt good to get up bright and early, before the rest of the world really started moving around… driving up the Sea-to-Sky highway towards Whistler Blackcomb with an orange glow in the morning sky.

It felt good to get changed in the parking lot, ride the gondola and chairs up, and strap in my boots, and lay board to snow for the first time in a long time.

It also felt good to find some small powder stashes, get my blood pumping again and get the ol’ muscles moving again!

However, It felt really, really bad to put a huge dent in my rail near the end of the day. Darn!

Let’s go over this in photos.

Whistler is still pretty green as you can tell. The snowbase was at 55 cm today. It was pretty rocky but there was still some soft stuff to be found.

I brought along my backpack and all my camera gear. Trying out the GoPro Camera here again, but this time for snowboarding.

Allan fiddles with the camera.

Lots of icicles forming on the chairlift. They started looking really beautiful.

Here’s a series of shots where I find some powder:

SWOOOOOSH powder turn.

This really caught my eye in the morning. I loved how the morning sun was coming up, just touching the faces of a couple rocks on the side of the mountain… everything was blue and cold, except for the warm yellow on just a few rocks… they looked like they were waking up.

Jersey Cream was as high as we made it, we decided not to hike today. It was pretty busy, but not as busy as it could have been on Opening Day. We rode the singles line and only waited a couple minutes in line each time. Not too shabby!

Yeah, let’s not talk about this too much. So I completely dinged in my rail on a rock… my beloved board is now in the Board Room board shop getting its rail completely replaced by the awesome and ever-caring hands of Anthony, board medic. I suppose it’s a good excuse to get a new board… but I wanted to have a powder board + a groomer board. Now I just might have to go for All Mountain. Ah well, such is life! It’s a bit dumb riding around on rocks but it was so, so worth it just to ride the snow again.

On our way back, we stopped at Granville Island like we do every week and picked up some groceries. Since we were completely ravenous after a full day, I picked out some free-range beef tenderloin medallions. Marinated it in some sauce, garlic, Habaneros peppers, and Jalapeno peppers. Then seared it on all sides, and baked it in the oven. Topped it with a nice peppercorn Brandy sauce and freshly picked wild BC chanterelle mushrooms. Side dishes are fresh organic veggies and butternut squash pesto pasta.

All in all, not too bad a day! Eating steak while watching Canucks is awesome. Watching the Canucks lose to Calgary after a well-played game was pretty tough. We also got some good footage for the in-progress snowboard movie project, so I’m stoked about that. I am looking forward to getting my board back from repairs this weekend, and maybe I’ll get another chance to get up to the mountain this weekend.

Word to the Wise… if you go to Whistler this weekend… watch out for rocks.