Canucks: The Kelowna roots of Tyler Myers's 1000 game NHL journey

The rangy rearguard is set to become just the 400th player in the league's 107-year history to reach that milestone.

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Published Oct 18, 2024  •  Last updated 1 hour ago  •  5 minute read

Kiefer Sherwood of the Predators checks Tyler Myers of the Canucks during Game 1 of the first-round NHL playoff series on April 21 at Rogers Arena. Photo by Derek Cain /Getty Images

All these years later, James Patrick is still very much a Tyler Myers fan.

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Myers, 34, is in his 16th season in the NHL and his sixth with the Vancouver Canucks. The defenceman is slated to play his 1,000th regular season game on Saturday when the Canucks visit the Philadelphia Flyers.

According to the NHL stats department, Myers will become the 400th player (including four goalies) to see 1,000 games in the 107 years the NHL has been in existence.

Myers’ first game came on Oct. 3, 2009, a 19-year-old lining up with the Buffalo Sabres against the Montreal Canadiens. Patrick, 61, who was an NHL rearguard for 21 seasons himself and got into 1,280 games in that time, was the Sabres’ assistant coach in charge of defenceman back then.

“I still remember the first time I saw him skate and I was really impressed with a 6-foot-8 kid who had feet like that,” said Patrick, who’s now head coach of the WHL’s Victoria Royals. “For 19 years old, it was really impressive.

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“You never know how careers are going to turn out. You never know what’s going to happen. But the time we had him in Buffalo, I really felt that he could have a great career and this is what we hoped for with him. He was someone who could play a two-way game and his feet and his reach were really impressive.

“To get to 1,000 games you have be doing something. And there’s more demand on that position than ever before because of the speed of the game now and the way the rules have evolved. You are very vulnerable with the speed forwards can generate. It’s only gotten harder. And for him to keep being a really important player on every team he’s been on says it all right there.”

Myers could have tested free agency over the summer, but instead signed a three-year deal with a cap hit of $3 million per season to return to Vancouver. He said he likes how the Canucks are trending, said he likes the culture of hard work and communication spearheaded by head coach Rick Tocchet and assistant Adam Foote, who’s in charge of the defencemen. Tocchet and Foote both passed the 1,000-game threshold as NHL players as well.

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Myers played his best hockey as a Canuck last season, including finishing with five goals, 29 points and a plus-16 rating in 77 regular season games. The plus-minus was a career high, the point total his best since coming to Vancouver.

Myers has taken heat from the press and fan base during his time in Vancouver. He was a marquee free agent addition ahead of the 2019-20 season, signing a five-year deal with a $6 million cap hit after playing the previous four and a half seasons with the Winnipeg Jets. The Canucks struggled for much of his early years here.

Through it all, he’s been one of the better Canucks with the media. He’s always been accountable, even in the tougher times.

Patrick wasn’t surprised to hear that. He says his earliest impressions of Myers included “what a good person he is,” and about how “you knew his parents were really solid with his how he was raised, because he was so respectful and so polite and had no ego.”

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Kelowna Rockets general manager Bruce Hamilton echoes those thoughts. Myers played parts of four seasons with the WHL club, and Hamilton says “I think his upbringing was phenomenal.”

Myers was the No. 12 pick in the 2008 draft by the Sabres. Myers won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year in 2009-10, after putting up 11 goals and 48 points in 82 regular season games with the Sabres.

Hamilton says that it still resonates with him that Myers made a point of “thanking the Kelowna Rockets and the Western Hockey League for helping him,” at the NHL awards banquet that year.

“He was a pleasure to have him on our team,” Hamilton said. “I think if you talk to his teammates they will tell you what a special person he is.”

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Myers’ Kelowna teammate Luke Schenn went No. 5 in that 2008 draft to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Also a right-shot rearguard, Schenn played his 1,000th game Thursday night with the Nashville Predators in a 4-2 loss to the visiting Edmonton Oilers.

Schenn talked during last spring’s playoff set between Nashville and Vancouver about how Myers stayed with the same billet family as Schenn when Myers joined the Rockets midway through the 2005-06 season and about how “very quiet, very shy,” Myers was then.

They were teammates again for a time in Vancouver, thanks to Schenn’s season-and-a-half pit stop with the Canucks that ended when he was dealt to the Maple Leafs in February 2023.

They’re friends and Myers spoke before Vancouver went out on this road trip about how the 1,000 game marks would be a conversation piece between the pair.

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“We talked a little bit about it before, but not lately,” Myers said. “We’ll be sending each other some texts here soon.”

The Canucks lost 3-2 in a shootout to the Flyers last Friday at Rogers Arena in their final game before the trip and it looked then like Myers’ pursuit of 1,000 was going to have to be put on hold. He went down in a heap on his first shift after getting tangled up with Flyers forward Joel Farabee, and put little weight on his right leg as he helped off the ice. He was back in the lineup for the trip opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday.

Myers talked before the team departed about trying to help organize family and friends to get to game 1,000.

“It’s a really cool milestone,” he said then. “It’s something special.

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“I want us to start putting some wins together to make it that much exciting.”

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