5 random players you forgot were on the Vancouver Canucks

Vancouver Canucks: Keith Carney

Carney patrolled the blue line for precisely 1,000 games with other NHL teams plus 18 for the Canucks. His run with Vancouver is dwarfed even by a three-year AHL-NHL shuttle ride with Buffalo, for whom he played 51 games.

Everybody else (Chicago, Anaheim, Phoenix, and Minnesota) kept Carney around for at least two full seasons apiece. In addition, the Canucks were the only team out of six that never had him on board for a playoff run.

Vancouver rented Carney for the homestretch in 2005-06, his 15th professional season. If nothing else, he recorded a higher allotment of average nightly ice time there than with any other team, playing 24 minutes and 30 seconds per game.

But he still had greater achievements with a slightly better team yet to come. Carney closed his playing days with two seasons on the Wild, helping them to the postseason twice. In 2006-07, he captained the club for a month and posted a franchise-best plus-22 rating.

With that efficiency, the stay-at-home veteran finally earned at least a little Norris Trophy consideration in his penultimate NHL season.

Ironically, Carney almost added a second stint with the Canucks to his resume in 2009, but withdrew before the season began. Instead, he returned to Chicago — where he had played for nearly five full seasons and led the 1995-96 Blackhawks with a plus-31 rating — to join the scouting staff.

The following spring, Carney watched the Hawks vanquish Vancouver in the second round of the 2010 playoffs en route to a title, good enough for his first Stanley Cup ring.