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Top 50 Canuck players of all time: #11 – Alex Edler

Originally posted on Canucksarmy | By Michael Liu | Last updated Aug 31, 2025 6:17 PM ET

Join us this summer as we count down the top 50 Vancouver Canucks players of all time! #11: Alex Edler

The greatest Canuck defenceman until a certain Quinn Hughes came along.

Drafted in the third round of the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, Alex Edler didn’t sign his ELC until 2006. This was coming off the back of a 2005-06 season spent with the Kelowna Rockets, where the Swede tallied up 53 points in 62 games. For a mostly unknown prospect at the time of the draft, Edler was viewed as a bit of a project player, but had quite the ceiling that he could reach.

Thanks to the usual rash of Canuck injuries, Edler saw action in the 2006-07 season, playing 22 games and tallying three points. The following season, Edler would play the most games out of any Canuck defenceman with 75, recording 20 points in his first full NHL campaign. From that moment forward, Edler would not spend a single game in the AHL.

His career would continue to progress as Vancouver’s contending window opened. Edler’s best statistical season came in 2011-12, when he posted a career-high 49 points and earned his only All-Star nod. The Swede became a consistent fixture on the Canucks’ top pairing, an offensive defenceman who could hit hard and make opponents feel his presence at both ends of the ice.

Don't mind me, just remembering Alex Edler flattening Drew Doughty in the 2010 playoffs. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/yswPc1K9Ch

— Daniel Wagner (@passittobulis) September 17, 2024

Edler would play 15 of his 17 NHL seasons with the Canucks, featuring in 925 games, the fourth-most in franchise history. He continues to hold Vancouver’s all-time goals mark by a defenceman with 99, and still has a share of the record for most points by a defenceman with 409. His 310 assists rank him second these days, behind Hughes’ 350.

While Edler couldn’t truly call himself among the league’s elite defenders, he was one of the top defencemen for a long while in Vancouver. A stable presence that could bring offence from the back end, the Swede’s long career is a testament to his abilities, and being a fixture for so long as a top-pairing defender only further backs that up. Edler very much deserves to be here at #11, a big part of Vancouver’s late 2000s-early 2010s groups, the last ones with sustained regular season success and postseason hockey.

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
#16 – Alex Burrows
#15 – Alexander Mogilny
#14 – Mattias Ohlund
#13 – Thomas Gradin
#12 – Stan Smyl