Top 50 Canucks of all time: #31 – Richard Brodeur

Join us this summer as we count down the top 50 Vancouver Canucks players of all time! Coming in at 31 is Richard Brodeur. 

You simply can’t talk about Canucks teams of the ’80s without mentioning Richard Brodeur. The man known as “King Richard” rightfully comes in at number 31 on our list of the top 50 Canucks of all time.

Before joining the Canucks, Brodeur had already made a name for himself as a member of the WHA’s Quebec Nordiques, where he won a championship in 1977 and earned a reputation as one of the league’s top netminders. When the WHA merged with the NHL in 1979, the Nordiques gave him up in the expansion draft — although it wasn’t the Canucks who became Brodeur’s first NHL team.

Instead, it was the New York Islanders who claimed Brodeur’s NHL rights, but he was behind both Billy Smith and Chico Resch on their depth chart. And so in October of 1980, the Islanders dealt Brodeur to the Canucks for a fifth round pick. Over the next eight seasons, Brodeur would cement his legacy as one of the greatest goaltenders to ever play for the Canucks. Brodeur gained a reputation as a steady workhorse for the Canucks, starting 50+ games in six of the seven full seasons he spent with the organization, including 64 games in the 1985-86 season.

But of course, Brodeur is best known for backstopping the 1982 Canucks — the first Canucks team to reach the Stanley Cup Final. Brodeur finished 6th in Vezina Trophy voting and 14th in Hart Trophy voting that season, undoubtedly the strongest of his career. In the playoffs, Brodeur led all goaltenders with a .918 save percentage — a number that becomes even more impressive when you take into account how low save percentages were in that era: