How can you lose a Canucks superfan like CanuckClay?

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To put 24 years as a Vancouver Canucks superfan in timeline terms, you’re reaching back to the West Coast Express era.

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That’s how long Mike McBurney has had season tickets to his favourite NHL team. Think about what 2002 means. That’s the first year when the Markus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi Canucks were properly becoming a thing.

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McBurney joined the Canucks ride just as it was re-ascending. And for a decade-plus, that ride was pretty good. In 2010, his pal Clay Imoo joined up, sharing the cost of a pair of tickets in the upper bowl. Pretty good timing.

But there’s just no denying the last decade has been tough. What seemed like the dawning of a new era in 2024 proved to be a false one. When so many thought the sun was finally coming up, fans like these two figured hanging on as they had through the dark days was worth it.

Two years later, though, after facing back-to-back big increases in their season tickets, coupled with restrictions on how they can re-sell their passes, before even getting into the softness of the market, Imoo and McBurney have come to the decision that they’re out. They just can’t make it work.

“There is a pretty good chance we buy back in after next season,” McBurney admitted. “But we wanted to send a message to the team. Pissed off about the price increases and just generally the way the team treats fans, though that feeling isn’t new.”

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Their tickets for next year were only up a few hundred dollars more, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It just underscored for McBurney how little the team seems to think of him as a fan, of what fans who do recognize the need for a rebuild and what that entails on-ice deserve.

The restrictions the team has put in place against reselling — essentially only being able to use Ticketmaster’s dedicated service, where Ticketmaster and the team take a cut of the re-sale, plus stories of pressure on fans who resell too many tickets — was a big problem too.

“If I’m being completely honest, the difference this time is that reselling the games we aren’t going to was becoming a challenge. The way they’ve made it harder to resell, they want a piece of everything,” McBurney, a Richmond high-school teacher, went on. “Couldn’t afford to be on the hook for a bunch of games we couldn’t go to. … Ultimately, with the price we were paying, if people aren’t willing to buy ticket we can’t afford to maintain them.”

Imoo took to social media on Wednesday to let people know he was dropping his tickets, although he noted his fandom remains. He is well-known for producing very team-friendly content over the years, and in the heydays of Twitter was known as an unrelenting positive voice. He’s dabbled in podcasting over the years and remains the centre of a very upbeat, ever-hopeful circle of fans.

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The Canucks have been in contact with Imoo over the cancellation, a call which was scheduled before Imoo chose to share publicly the duo’s decision, so one supposes you never say never, but the duo seem pretty firm on why they made their decision and seem likely to stick to it.

McBurney said their decision wasn’t easy. But in the end, as a pair, they just had to accept reality.

He wants one thing clear. This isn’t about where the team is at. He has been with the Canucks through thick and thin and he remains a fan. He sees what needs to happen.

“We didn’t want our dropping them to be perceived as not supporting the rebuild, because I want the rebuild,” he said. “Legit rebuild, no shortcuts.”

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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