Linden: Vancouver Canucks excited at the prospect of a rival in Seattle

MANALAPAN, Fla. Trevor Linden is looking forward to potentially driving to one of his team’s road games in the near future.

The president of the Vancouver Canucks says the club welcomes the development from this week’s NHL board of governors meetings that the league has agreed to consider an expansion application for Seattle.

Hollywood filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer and billionaire David Bonderman have also been given the green light to start a season-ticket campaign to gauge fan interest.

“For us, it’s a natural,” Linden said Friday after the board of governors meeting wrapped up in Florida. “To have a freeway rivalry would be great.”

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman cautioned that the potential for a team in Seattle which comes with a price tag of US$650 million - is still in its early stages, but Linden made it clear the Canucks are fully on board with the league’s 32nd franchise playing a couple of hours down the road.

“Tons of people from Vancouver go to Seattle to watch other sporting events or just hang out,” he said. “People from Seattle come up to Vancouver just to see what Vancouver has to offer, so I can see that being an interesting play.”

Vancouver is about 230 kilometres north of Seattle. The Canucks’ closest current geographical rival are the Calgary Flames, who are roughly a 90minute flight away.

“From ownership on down it’s always been viewed as a very positive development, and that hasn’t changed,” said Linden. “We’re not market protecting. We’ve never had any conversations, whether it’s internal or with the league. “It’s just a great opportunity.” Turning his focus to this season, Linden said the injury to No. 1 centre Bo Horvat, who suffered a fractured ankle in Tuesday’s 3-0 victory over the Carolina.