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Top 50 Canucks players of all time: #16 – Alex Burrows

Originally posted on Canucksarmy | By Lachlan Irvine | Last updated Aug 26, 2025 11:18 AM ET

Join us this summer as we count down the top 50 Vancouver Canucks players of all time! #16: Alex Burrows

In March 2006, my mum took me to a Canucks game against the Los Angeles Kings. Trips to GM Place were rare for my family in the mid-2000s, and this was our first visit since a lockout kept the NHL away for an entire season—the only sociopolitical story that mattered to an eight-year-old Lachlan.

The Kings held a 3-2 lead halfway through the game when a kid wearing #14 for the Canucks jammed a puck underneath a fallen Mathieu Garon to tie the game. A few minutes later, the same player was perfectly positioned to one-time a Todd Bertuzzi pass past Garon for his second of the game. The name I heard John Ashbridge say over the loudspeakers twice in three minutes—and a third time late in the game as hats rained down on the ice—still rings crystal clear in my head today: “Number 14, Alexandre Burrows!”.

Alexandre, known as Alex or Burr depending on who you ask, went on to become one of the greatest success stories in Vancouver Canucks history. Burrows wasn’t supposed to end up this high on the list of the Greatest Canucks when he joined the franchise two decades ago. He wasn’t a blue-chip prospect; heck, he wasn’t even drafted by an NHL team. What he was was a hard-working, talented speedster with an edge, who found his way from Shawinigan to Manitoba to Vancouver with many stops in between.

Burrows’ rise to glory has been well documented, from going undrafted in the early 2000s to being named the world’s best ball hockey player in 2005. Those skills and dedication translated onto the ice, where he worked his way from the ECHL all the way to earning a contract with the Canucks in 2005. But maybe no one, not even Burrows himself, knew the heights he was going to reach.

Outside of the rare hat trick, Burrows started slowly in his first two seasons, earning regular ice time as a grinding depth winger while putting up a point or two. In 2007-08, he posted his first 30-point campaign, but it wasn’t until 2008-09 that his scoring really took off. Midway through the season, Burrows was promoted to the top line alongside Daniel and Henrik Sedin and formed one of the most lethal lines in NHL history.

As the twins rose to superstardom, Burrows went with them. After posting 51 points in 2009, he followed it up with a career-best 67 points in 2009-10, his first year as the Sedins’ full-time linemate. Of Burr’s 35 goals scored, Henrik assisted on 23 of them and Daniel on 17. The chemistry that the twins had for finding each other to create scoring opportunities transferred perfectly with Burrows’ playstyle in a way that no other Sedin linemate could match.

Canucks fans almost immediately took to the scrappy kid from Pincourt, Quebec, endearing themselves with his contagious energy on the ice. Many of his 193 goals as a Canuck were topped off by a fun celebration. Sometimes Burrows pretended to break his stick over his knee like a curse had been broken, but most will remember the times he raised his stick like a bow and shot an arrow to the skies, a tribute to his late teammate and friend Luc Bourdon.

Fans of opposing teams remember Burrows a different way, as a chippy trash talker who sometimes threw borderline hits, drew the ire of referees and Ron MacLean for calling out poor officiating, and that one time he kindly warned Patrice Bergeron about the dangers of grabbing people by the jaw. But no moment in Burrows’ career has been immortalized more than the goal he scored on April 26, 2011; the night he, as John Shorthouse put it, ‘slayed the dragon’ against the Blackhawks.

Ask any hockey fan, they’ve seen the moment Burrows knocked down Chris Campoli’s high clearing attempt in overtime of Game 7, drove to the net and ripped the puck over Corey Crawford’s shoulder. Burrows slides in celebration towards the bench, lost in a sea of teammates dogpiling him, as the roof explodes off of Rogers Arena, celebrating the Canucks vanquishing a Blackhawks team that had tormented them twice in the playoffs before.

Burrows immortalized himself again later that spring when he wrapped the puck around the net of a swimming Tim Thomas to win Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final just 11 seconds into the extra frame. That goal put the Canucks up 2-0 in the series, though the rest of it is a blur.

The core Canucks team that Burrows was a major part of seemed to end as quickly as it rose; teammates were traded, coaches were fired, and GMs were replaced, while Burrows watched it happen around him. In 2017, Burrows himself would open a new chapter of his hockey career after being traded to the Ottawa Senators, where he’d play out the final two seasons of his NHL career. His 384 points in 822 games were enough to put him 14th on the franchise’s all-time scoring list by the time he left (he now sits at 20th some eight years later), and he’d earn a spot in the Canucks’ Ring of Honour in 2019.

Alex Burrows may not have retired with the same worldwide recognition as some of his teammates, but he’ll always have more than enough love and admiration from Canucks fans to last until the sun burns out. A great story like his will be told to aspiring NHLers for years, and of course, no one ever forgets a Dragon Slayer.

Our previously ranked top 50 Canucks of all time:

#50 – Curt Fraser
#49 – Dave Babych
#48 – Martin Gelinas
#47 – Chris Oddleifson
#46 – Jannik Hansen
#45 – Ivan Boldirev
#44 – Gary Smith
#43 – Jacob Markstrom
#42 – Orland Kurtenbach
#41 – Harold Snepsts
#40 – Darcy Rota
#39 – Thatcher Demko
#38 – Geoff Courtnall
#37 – Dennis Ververgaert
#36 – Petri Skriko
#35 – Dan Hamhuis
#34 – Doug Lidster
#33 – Patrik Sundstrom
#32 – Brendan Morrison
#31 – Richard Brodeur
#30 – Sami Salo
#29 – André Boudrais
#28 – Kevin Bieksa
#27 – Don Lever
#26 – Bo Horvat
#25 – Brock Boeser
#24 – Dennis Kearns
#23 – Ed Jovanovski
#22 – Greg Adams
#21 – Cliff Ronning
#20 – JT Miller
#19 – Tony Tanti
#18 – Jyrki Lumme
#17 – Elias Pettersson