12th time in franchise history team has won first two games of season

The last time the Vancouver Canucks opened a National Hockey League season with a pair of wins Willie Desjardins was behind the bench and a young Bo Horvat led the hockey club with 20 goals and 52 points -- for the entire season. That team actually started the 2016-17 season with four consecutive victories, but won just 26 games the rest of the way and finished the year with a 30-49-9 record.

Those four wins to start a season remain the high water mark in Vancouver Canucks history matching the four straight to open the 1992-93 season.

Desjardins had a knack for getting the best out of his teams in the first week of the season. In his three mostly forgettable years behind the bench, the Canucks won their season opener on all three occasions. They opened their schedule 3-0 (in 2014-15), were 3-0-1 to start in 2015-16 and then posted those four straight wins and went 4-0-1 launch the 2016-17 season.

Since the club's inception in 1970, the Canucks have won their first two games of the season just 12 times. They have gone 3-0 out of the starting blocks only five times (1991-92, 1992-93, 1999-00, 2014-15 and most recently 2016-17.

Of course, that stands in stark contrast to last season's abysmal start in which the team dropped its first three games in regulation time and went 0-5-2 in its first seven outings.

The three years the Canucks have gone on to the Stanley Cup Final they won their opener on two occasions. They beat Colorado 4-2 in their 1981-82 debut and started 2-0-2 that season. In 1993-94, they beat Los Angeles 5-2 on opening night and won seven of their first eight after dropping their second game of the season against Calgary. The 2010-11 version of the Canucks dropped their season opener 2-1 in a shootout to the Kings and were actually 1-2-1 before winning 26 of their next 37 games.

The Canucks will try to push their early season record to 3-0 in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

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