Last week, the Vancouver Province reported that Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini had plans to meet with Pavel Bure over the Hall of Fame weekend and start planning the retirement of his No. 10 jersey.
Aquilini has yet to comment publicly on the idea.
“Francesco called (Pavel) with some really good news. He is extremely happy about it. It was touching, to have an owner that’s involved and recognizes he’s the first player with the Canucks to enter the Hall of Fame,” Bure’s former Canucks teammate and longtime friend Gino Odjick told the Province. “For him to fly from Vancouver makes this a really great week. Francesco has been talking about (retiring Bure’s jersey) for quite a while. I don’t see it not happening.”
If the 41-year-old Bure’s number were to be lifted to the Rogers Arena rafters, it would hang alongside Stan Smyl’s No. 12, Trevor Linden’s No. 16 and Markus Naslund’s No. 19.
“Trevor started to play there a couple years earlier, and there was some excitement going. And then when my brother arrived, it was like a storm came into that city. The whole city just went upside-down. You could feel it everywhere you went,” Valeri said of the early-’90s Canucks.
