A professional hockey player from Vancouver Island will soon be lacing up with the Vancouver Canucks.
Longtime NHL player Matt Irwin, from Brentwood Bay, will be joining the Canucks for the next season.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” he told CHEK News on Thursday while training on the Saanich Peninsula. “They were my favourite team growing up, obviously.”
“Pretty excited, pretty honoured, and very humbling to pull this jersey over my head,” he added.
Irwin first joined the NHL in 2010, when he signed with the San Jose Sharks as a free agent.
Since then, he’s played for the Boston Bruins, Nashville Predators, Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals.
The Canucks will be the seventh team the Island-raised hockey pro has played for.
“As you get older, you realize how hard it is to, one, stay in the league, find a role for yourself,” he said.
“The game’s getting so young so fast and obviously you don’t stay young, and you definitely don’t stay fast,” he said with a laughed. “But you just have to find a way to play to your strengths and find a role in the team, and I think I’ve been able to do that over the course of my career and that’s what’s kept me around.”
Now, more than a decade into his NHL career, Irwin says he’s happy to be close to friends in family back in B.C.
His young son has also started to take up the sport.
“It’s awesome, he’s working on his new jersey,” he said.
“He was born in Nashville, so for him to come out here and see where dad played when he was young and where he first started playing [is special].”
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