There are a lot of positive words that get thrown around these days about the Vancouver Canucks that weren’t heard just a couple of years ago. And one of those words is ‘stability.’ The team now seems to have found its identity, its heading, and its path toward success, and those things have brought with them a real sense of continuity.

How stable have things become?

Stable enough that, for the first time in over a decade, the Canucks will skate the 2024/25 season with the exact same set of captains as were in place the previous season.

Full disclosure: this article started out as an idle thought more than anything. A wondering of “when was the last time the Canucks didn’t have to switch up the captaincies in the offseason?” It only turned into an article when the answer turned out to be a long, long time ago.

Now it’s a phenomena worth looking into.

Believe it or not, to find the last two seasons between which the Canucks didn’t change around their leadership group, we’ve got to go all the way back to the hey-day of the franchise: the 2010/11 season.

That year, Henrik Sedin formally took over the captaincy from Roberto Luongo. Henrik was joined by one pre-existing alternate captain in Ryan Kesler, and three newbies in Daniel Sedin, Kevin Bieksa, and Manny Malhotra.

That group fell short in their run to the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals. But they all stuck around and kept their letters for the 2011/12 season. The changes started thereafter.

The 2012/13 featured that whole awkward dispute about Malhotra’s injury recovery that resulted in his departure from the team. He was replaced as alternate captain by Alexandre Burrows, making for an entire top line of captains.

But Burrows’ lettering was only a ‘for the time being’ sort of arrangement, and he lost it for the 2013/14 season with the team dropping down to just three alternates behind Henrik, those being Daniel, Bieksa, and Kesler.

That offseason, Kesler decided he’d really like to live up to the title of alternate captain by demanding to play for an alternate team. But he was not replaced in the leadership group, with the team deciding to just keep Daniel and Bieksa on as permanent full-time alternates for 2014/15.

Of course, Bieksa followed Kesler out of town the following year, and changes had to be made. He was replaced as an ‘A’ by Burrows in a returning role, and also by Dan Hamhuis, who would make the 2015/16 season his sixth and final campaign in Vancouver.

At this point, the turnover was fully in gear.

The 2016/17 season saw Chris Tanev take over Hamhuis’ captaincy, joining Henrik, Daniel, and Burrows. Of course, then it was Burrows’ turn to be traded at the 2017 Trade Deadline. No immediate replacement for his ‘A’ was named.

The 2017/18 season, then, was the final year in the illustrious careers of both Henrik and Daniel Sedin. Following their retirement, the Canucks suddenly found themselves down to just one pre-existing alternate captain in Tanev, and he’d only been on duty for a single season.

The Canucks chose not to name a new captain for 2018/19, instead partnering Tanev with three new alternates in Bo Horvat, Alex Edler, and Brandon Sutter.

That crew stuck together for 2019/20, with the one notable difference being Horvat’s upgrade from ‘A’ to ‘C’ at the home opener. Horvat would stay in that role for most of the next four seasons.

Tanev, like many Canucks, left via free agency in 2020. His captaincy was not replaced.

The 2020/21 season proved to be both Edler and Sutter’s final years with the Canucks. Edler would depart to Los Angeles via free agency that summer, and Sutter would continue to suffer from the after-effects of COVID-19 that would ultimately end his career.

With those two gone, two new alternates were needed for the 2021/22 campaign, and they were found in JT Miller and the new-to-the-team Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

Now, technically-speaking, this is the real point at which the Canucks did not have to change up their leadership group at all in an offseason. But it comes with a bit of a caveat. The Canucks may have entered 2022/23 with the same set of captains as they had in 2021/22, but they did not exit the season unchanged.

The 2022/23 season saw captain Horvat dealt to the New York Islanders in a blockbuster trade. In the immediate aftermath of it, Hughes and Pettersson were added to the alternate captaincy rotation, joining Miller and Ekman-Larsson.

Ekman-Larsson was then bought out in the 2023 offseason, and Hughes was elevated to the captaincy for 2023/24, backed up by Miller and Pettersson.

And that’s where we stand heading into 2024/25. Where the situation stands, and where it will almost certainly remain for the foreseeable future. We don’t anticipate any of these players going anywhere, nor do we see a particular need to tinker with the group or add anyone to it.

It’s been more than a decade since the Canucks could claim any true consistency of leadership. Since the hey-days of Sedin, Sedin, Bieksa, and Kesler.

The new group still has a ways to go before they’re celebrated in the same breaths as those prior leaders…but at least they’ve got a firm foundation of stability upon which to continue building that legacy.