Tickets have gone on sale to watch the Quinn Hughes era as captain begin on Blanshard.
Freshly-minted captain Hughes will lead the National Hockey League team into their 2023 training camp from Sept. 21-25 at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
The entrance fee will be $5 for each day with all proceeds going to the Moose Hide Campaign, a B.C.-founded and Indigenous-led movement with the goal of ending violence against women and children. Tickets are available through Select Your Tickets.
The moblie blue-liner Hughes returns to the arena where he played for the U.S., which was based in Victoria for group play, in the 2019 world junior hockey championship tournament.
The Canucks main camp will follow the rookie camp opening today at Rogers Arena in Vancouver. That will be followed by the Young Stars tournament at the South Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton from Friday to Sunday, in which 27 Canucks prospects will skate against the prospects of the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames and Winnipeg Jets.
The Canucks last held their training camp at the City of Victoria-owned Memorial Centre in 2019 in a tradition that began when the Canucks held their first camp on Blanshard Street in 1974 at the old Memorial Arena.
“The Vancouver Canucks have had a long history of holding training camp on Vancouver Island and throughout other parts of British Columbia,” Jim Rutherford, the Canucks’ president of hockey operations, said in a statement when announcing the camp in May.
Rutherford said taking the team outside Vancouver to start the year “allows us to connect with our loyal fans from across the province.”
“We look forward to utilizing Victoria’s great facilities and beautiful surroundings to kick off the new season.”
The Canucks have previously held training camps on the Island at The Q Centre in Colwood and in Duncan, Parksville and Courtenay. The have also been to Whistler, Abbotsford, Prince George, Vernon, Penticton, Kamloops and Powell River.
The Canucks went international once for training camp, in Stockholm in 2000, fitting due to the club’s strong connection to star players from Sweden on the roster.
The NHL team that has held the most training camps in Victoria is the Los Angeles Kings, which held 13 camps in the old Memorial Arena in the 1970s and 1980s through the Marcel Dionne era, but most famously, in 1988 following the Wayne Gretzky trade which brought a media frenzy to the Kings camp.
The Montreal Canadiens also held two training camps at the old Memorial Arena in the early 1960s with the likes of Rocket Richard and Jean Beliveau skating on Blanshard.
