As we hit the home stretch with this all-time team, positions start to get rounded out. Today, we close off the defense with a couple of defencemen who managed to be some of the best to ever play the position for the Canucks, without doing so in an overly dramatic fashion. Matt covered Mattias Ohlund this morning, but if we’re going to talk about him, I think it’s only right to go a mini-generation back and look at Jyrki Lumme.

Finding Lumme highlights online is difficult for a few reasons; the era didn’t exactly lean to Youtube (we basically had dial-up and the Space Jam website), and his relatively reserved style of play. Like Mattias Ohlund, who we covered earlier this morning, Lumme’s “moment” might be the consistency he brought through his time in Vancouver. Or, you know, robbing Mario Lemieux of his 600th goal with this blatant penalty. That was cool too.

At the end of the day, Lumme was never seen as a superstar, but throughout the early-to-mid 1990s, he was easily the backbone of the defensive core. In his eight full seasons, he was the points leader on the point six times, and came in second place in the years where he didn’t quite make it. He did this while remaining a steady defensive presence that you could put on either special team. While he wasn’t one of those guys who spent 90% of his career here, Lumme still spent over half his career here, and had his best years wearing the flying skate. Nobody worth their salt would associate him with any other team.