Messier wishes he had 'not accepted the captaincy' with Canucks

Mark Messier's three-season tenure with the Vancouver Canucks is a rare black mark on his legacy in the NHL, leading to contributions such as this by user dleeming2 during his reddit "Ask Me Anything" segment on Thursday:

After spending 3 seasons destroying the hearts of canucks fans across BC, running the heart and soul of the team out of town in Trevor Linden, this of course right after destroying childhood of many fans by playing a key role in their stanley cup defeat – and rubbing it in by breaking the aforementioned trevor lindens nose with an unnecessary post whistle elbow – How did you have time to nurse your balls to the necessary size to create an award, name it after your self and your own accomplishments, and then make a show of presenting it to a variety of semi deserving players in a charade designed to inflate your own ego and allow you tell everyone again how you guaranteed a win? Ill hang up and listen.

[h/t: The Vancouver Province]

To his credit, Messier steered clear of the more inflammatory remarks and used the public forum as an opportunity to set the record straight about how he views that portion of his career.

In response to a Canuck fan question "What things, if any, do you wish you could have done differently during your time with Vancouver?" Messier responded: 

rebuilding a team is never easy. If I changed one thing i would have not accepted the captaincy from Trevor.

It's the kind of candid response one can only expect from a player years after his retirement, but it should provide a measure of closure for some of the more reasonable Vancouver fans (dleeming2 not included).