Tanti is sixth in career goals with the team and second in goals per game behind Pavel Bure but he also played on Canucks squads that struggled in the Oilers dynasty era
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It’s easy to wonder where Tony Tanti might rank with the Vancouver Canucks’ fan base if you could tuck his career into a time machine and have it pop out in a different generation with the franchise.
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Tanti, 61, who lives on the North Shore and runs Vancouver-based flooring business Tanti Interiors, is sixth all-time in goals with the Canucks with his 250 tallies. Directly ahead of him on the list is Pavel Bure, with four more.
Tanti is eighth in points, with the 470 he amassed in 531 regular season games in Canucks colours.
Tanti’s 45 goals in 1983-84 held the single-season franchise record until Bure came on the scene. Tanti now sits seventh in that team category.
His 10 hat tricks as a Canuck ties him with Markus Naslund for the team mark — Brock Boeser is best amongst active players with six — and Tanti trails only Bure in goals per game with the club.
Yet, when you speak to Canuck fans about the franchise’s best-ever players, Tanti’s name rarely merits an early mention. That’s undoubtedly a product of him playing for a completely forgettable era with the club.
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Tanti just missed the 1982 Stanley Cup Finals run, coming to the Canucks in a Jan. 6, 1983 trade with the Chicago Blackhawks that sent veteran winger Curt Fraser east. Tanti was traded away to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Jan. 8, 1990, finishing up as a Canuck alongside a handful of players who would be part of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals team.
The Canucks never had a winning record in any of Tanti’s eight seasons with the club, and went through six coaches in that time if you include pair of stints by Harry Neale. They made the playoffs four times during Tanti’s stay and never got out of the first round, although they did take the Calgary Flames to seven games in 1989, losing on the Joel Otto off-the-skate goal that still makes Canucks fans cringe all these years later.
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Tanti’s Canucks were also victims of rotten timing, lined up alongside the glory years of both the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames in the old Smythe Division. Edmonton went to six Stanley Cup Finals during that stretch, winning five. Calgary made it to two, winning once.
Five of Wayne Gretzky’s top six seasons in points came during Tanti’s first five years with the Canucks.
Tanti has to be the most underrated Canuck of all time. And there are completely logical reasons.
“We went through a lot of coaches. We went through a lot of tough times,” Tanti said recently. “And it was a different era. It was really tough when Edmonton and Calgary were so strong. It was tough to compete. We competed as well as we could and that’s all you can do.
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“It’s different times now. Back then, you didn’t have a salary cap. You couldn’t have those type of (Edmonton and Calgary) teams today. You can’t pay six guys $14 million. You might be able to do one or two.”
Tanti was a 5-foot-9, 180-pound left-handed shot who was fearless around the net. He was particularly adept on the man advantage. He has three of the top nine power-play goal seasons in Canuck history. Naslund is next best with two.
Bure (1993-94) and Todd Bertuzzi (2002-03) both had campaigns with 25 power-play goals. That leads the category. Tanti’s best was 20 in 1987-88, which is Vancouver’s fourth-highest total.
Tanti, as you’d expect, would love to be in playing prime right now.
“The game today is way more wide open,” Tanti said. “The game is so much faster because of the rules and the way they call things.
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“We couldn’t stand in front of the net very long. We’d get a ‘Ron Hextall’ (the combustible Philadelphia Flyers goalie). We’d get a defenceman slashing the back of your legs, like a Jay Wells, or giving you the cross check. Today, they can’t do that.”
Salaries have skyrocketed since those days, and Tanti admits that his goal production today would have him cashing some large paycheques.
“I never regret anything,” he interjected. “I lived my childhood dream. It’s something most Canadians would love to do. I met my wife (Christina) here, had a lot of great opportunities, and I still have a lot of good friends that I’ve met through hockey and carried over to my life today.”
One of those is Nat Bosa, of Bosa Brothers Construction and Bosa Development real estate. Bosa and Tanti met golfing in 1983 at Mayfair Lakes in Richmond and struck up a friendship that has lasted until this day. Tanti credits Bosa for steering him toward starting up Tanti Interiors. Tanti guesses that 90 per cent of the business is doing flooring for condominiums.
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Tanti doesn’t play at all anymore. He guesses that he has not skated in 15 to 20 years.
“It was funny. I’d go out there for a couple of years after I retired. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “I just said, okay, let’s move on and get something out of your life. I just stopped completely.
“I still love hockey. I watch all sports. I moved on. When I did retire, I moved on. I own my own business and I like being my own boss and everything has worked out very well for me.
“Hockey does get you ready for business in that it’s a team. We have salespeople and installers and so forth. I’m the coach. You listen to everybody’s problems like a coach does. You make the best decisions you can and then you move on.
“There’s a project you’re bidding on and you get it and it’s just like scoring a goal. But you have to produce. If you don’t produce, people aren’t likely to use you again.”
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He does still pay close attention this current vintage of the Canucks. He believes they have the necessary front-line talent, with goaltender Thatcher Demko, defenceman Quinn Hughes and centres J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson. He also thinks that general manager Patrik Allvin and coach Rick Tocchet have shown an ability to round out the roster, to “bring in those third and fourth liners, the guys who really make the difference.”
“They’ve got it all if they can stay healthy,” Tanti said. “They’re right there with the top five or six teams in the league.”
Growing up, Tanti went to St. Michael’s, a well-known hockey academy in the Toronto area. Tocchet, who is a year younger than Tanti, went to St. Mike’s as well. They didn’t play together because of the age difference, but they did reminisce about their time at the school at the season-opening Jake Milford Charity Invitational golf tournament at Northview a few weeks back.
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Tocchet’s and Tanti’s NHL careers rans parallel, too.
“He’s an honest guy,” Tanti said. “If you work hard and you do what he wants you do to do, you’ll play. If you’re working hard and make a mistake, that’s fine. He wants you to work hard.”
Tanti, too, is keen on how engaged the Canuck fan base is becoming.
“You go get coffee, or you go to lunch, and you can hear the next table talking about hockey. Did you see the game? Did you see this guy or that guy? It’s great. It’s what sports is about. It’s not about the money people make or whatever. It’s about having getting out in the community and having that connection,” Tanti said.
Tony Tanti’s favourites
• Favourite game as a Vancouver Canuck: Game 7, Smythe Division semfinals, versus the Calgary Flames. Vancouver lost 4-3 in overtime on the goal off Joel Otto’s skate, putting a massive scare into a Calgary team that finished 43 points ahead of them in the regular season. Calgary went on to win the Stanley Cup that year, losing three games in the next three series combined. “Even though we lost the series, it was a great game to be involved in,” Tanti says.
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• Favourite goal as a Canuck: Hat trick goal in OT on Steve Penney in a 5-4 win over the Montreal Canadiens on Jan. 30, 1985. Montreal was 25-15-10 coming into the game. Vancouver was 12-32-7.
Favourite Canuck teammate: Patrik Sundstrom. He and Tanti were routinely linemates.
• Favourite Canuck coach: Roger Neilson.
• Favourite road city: New York.
• Favourite current Canuck: Quinn Hughes.
sewen@postmedia.com
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