page_title: Vancouver Canucks
section_title: 1994–2001: 25th Anniversary, new arena, and a new beginning
hierarchical_section_title: Vancouver Canucks / History / 1994–2001: 25th Anniversary, new arena, and a new beginning
caption_attribution_description: English: The Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers warm up before a match at General Motors Place in Vancouver, October 1997.
context_page_description: The Vancouver Canucks are a professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver. They compete in the National Hockey League as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. The Canucks play their home games at Rogers Arena, formerly known as General Motors Place and nicknamed The Garage, which has an official capacity of 18,910. Travis Green is the head coach and Jim Benning is the general manager.
  The Canucks joined the league in 1970 as an expansion team along with the Buffalo Sabres. In its NHL history, the team has advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals three times, losing to the New York Islanders in 1982, the New York Rangers in 1994 and the Boston Bruins in 2011. They have won the Presidents' Trophy in back-to-back seasons as the team with the league's best regular season record in the 2010–11 and 2011–12 seasons. They won three division titles as a member of the Smythe Division from 1974 to 1993, and seven titles as a member of the Northwest Division from 1998 to 2013. The Canucks, along with fellow expansion team, the Buffalo Sabres, are the two oldest teams to have never won the Stanley Cup.
context_section_description: With a young core that included Linden, Bure and McLean still in their 20s after the 1994 playoffs, the Canucks appeared poised to remain contenders in the league. However, the team failed to record a winning season in the six years following their Stanley Cup Finals appearance. Prior to the lock-out shortened 1994–95 season, Quinn stepped down as head coach to focus on his managerial duties and was replaced by Rick Ley; Vancouver finished with a .500 record that year. Their elimination from the 1995 Stanley Cup playoffs in Game 4 of the second round marked the Canucks' last game played at the Pacific Coliseum, as the team moved into the new General Motors Place (since renamed Rogers Arena), a new $160 million arena situated in Downtown Vancouver, the following season.
  The Canucks made another significant move in the off-season by acquiring high-scoring Russian forward Alexander Mogilny from the Buffalo Sabres, reuniting Bure with his former CSKA Moscow and national team linemate. While Mogilny became the second player in team history to record 50 goals and 100 points in a season, chiefly playing with centre Cliff Ronning, the expected chemistry between Mogilny and Bure never materialized, with the latter suffering a season-ending knee injury early in the campaign. Vancouver finished 1995–96 two games below .500 and were defeated in the first round of the playoffs by the Colorado Avalanche. The season also marked the arrival of another future Canucks superstar, as Markus Naslund was acquired from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for Alek Stojanov. The deal is regarded as one of the most lopsided trades in NHL history, as Stojanov soon became a minor-leaguer, while Naslund became the team's all-time leading goal- and point-scorer years later. Despite a late season swoon, Ley was fired and replaced by Quinn down the stretch. The team limped into the playoffs, losing to the Colorado Avalanche in the first round.
  In the 1996 off-season, Quinn hired Tom Renney whose tenure as the team's head coach lasted less than two seasons. Despite strong performances from Mogilny and team-leading point-scorer Martin Gelinas in Bure and Linden's absence (both of whom were injured for long periods of time during the season), the Canucks missed the playoffs for the first of four consecutive seasons that year. Making another high-profile acquisition on July 27, 1997, the Canucks signed free agent Mark Messier to a three-year deal. They had come close to signing Wayne Gretzky the previous summer, but were reportedly spurned away when they refused to continue negotiations and gave Gretzky an ultimatum to sign.
  Heading into the 1997–98 season, Linden resigned his captaincy for Messier, who had developed a strong reputation as a leader, having captained the New York Rangers over the Canucks in 1994 (he also captained the Oilers to a Stanley Cup in 1990). Linden later recalled regretting the decision, feeling that Messier generated hostility and tension in the dressing room. Messier later said if he could change one thing about his time in Vancouver, he would not have accepted the captaincy.
  The Canucks began the campaign overseas in a two-game series against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in Tokyo, Japan. It marked the first time in NHL history that a regular season game was held outside of North America – an effort from the league to attract attention to the sport in anticipation of the 1998 Winter Olympics, which were held in Nagano, Japan. As the team's performance continued to worsen, starting the 1997–98 season with three wins in the first 16 games, Quinn was fired as general manager after ten years with the team. Soon thereafter, Renney was fired and replaced as coach by Mike Keenan, reuniting him with Messier, another central figure from the Rangers' 1994 team. Keenan's hiring reportedly exacerbated tensions between groups of Canucks players and his negative relationship with Linden was given ample media attention. Two months into his tenure with the team, his role was expanded and he was made de facto general manager. With control of play
caption: The Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers warm up before a match at General Motors Place, October 1997.
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