Vancouver Canucks' Connections to New England Hockey

Two of them have logged a substantial number of shifts at the Garden.

Two others studied and skated at an Ivy League institution. Six more whet their blades at the AHL level in Lowell, Connecticut, New Hampshire or Maine.

Translation: Although Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals will fall exactly 16 months to the date of their last visit to Boston, the Vancouver Canucks ought to have enough familiar faces to go around the Bruins fanbase.

The 10 Vancouver players with some degree of New England seasoning who are eligible for a ring and engraving in the event of a Canucks victory are as follows:

Andrew Alberts, the only former Bruin on the Canucks active roster, enrolled at Boston College a little more than two months after being drafted by the Spoked-Bs in 2001.

Upon graduation, he joined Providence for its extended 2005 playoff run, and then played six more AHL games the following year before landing a permanent gig in The Show. He would log 184 games in Boston before an October 2008 trade to Philadelphia.

Tanner Glass, a gritty winger for four years at Dartmouth College, went on to sign with the Panthers, where he played 44 games with Nathan Horton before transferring to Vancouver two summers ago.

Chris Higgins utilized two of his allotted four years at Yale, leading the Bulldogs in scoring both times, before he signed with Montreal in 2003. Stints with the Rangers, Flames and Panthers followed before the Canucks nabbed him at this year’s trading deadline.

Roberto Luongo’s failed rookie year with the New York Islanders (under Mike Milbury’s supervision) in 1999-2000 included 26 games in the minors with the Lowell Lock Monsters. He would soon give way to Boston University’s Rick DiPietro, relocate to the small pond in Florida for six years, then find thicker ice with the Canucks.

Manny Malhotra, who donned his fifth NHL uniform upon joining the Canucks at the start of this season, was drafted seventh overall by the New York Rangers in 1998.

After two years in The Show, he would see stints with their AHL affiliate in Hartford during the 1999-00 and 2000-01 season; it included the Wolf Pack’s run to the 2000 Calder Cup championship, which saw them dethrone Providence along the way and their subsequent loss to the P-Bruins in the 2001 playoffs.

Aaron Rome, now an integral part of the Vancouver blue line, mustered only one NHL appearance when his rights belonged to Anaheim from 2004 through 2007. For the rest of that time, he charged up 154 games with the Portland Pirates.

Mikael Samuelsson, Vancouver’s fourth-leading point-getter in the regular season, played eight games for the Hartford Wolf Pack in 2001-02, his second year in North America and first of two in the Rangers organization.

Cory Schneider, native to Marblehead, Mass., posted a career record of 8-3-0 at the Garden in three years with Boston College, backstopping the Eagles to the 2005 and 2007 Hockey East championships.

Jeff Tambellini, another first-year Canuck, previously accumulated 169 regular season and seven playoff games in the AHL with the Manchester Monarchs and Bridgeport Sound Tigers. In 2007-08, he topped Bridgeport’s scoring charts with 38 goals and 76 points.

Raffi Torres, formerly a first-round choice of the Islanders in 2000, broke into the pros with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, who went to the Calder Cup Finals in 2002.

A midseason trade the following year saw him fall just short of an AHL title again, this time with a Hamilton Bulldogs team that included Michael Ryder and was coached by current Boston assistant Geoff Ward.

Not to mention, head coach Alain Vigneault's sidekick, Rick Bowness, was a one-and-done Bruins bench boss in 1991-92. Bowness was the last man to direct Boston to the Eastern Conference Finals before Claude Julien this season.