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Ex-Vancouver Canucks winger David Booth putting up Gretzky-like numbers in Australia

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
|
Aug 8 2025, 6:35 pm
Ex-Vancouver Canucks winger David Booth putting up Gretzky-like numbers in Australia
Anne-Marie Sorvin/Imagn Images

If you find yourself in Melbourne, Australia, in the near future, you just might find a former member of the Vancouver Canucks lighting it up for the local hockey team.

David Booth has 25 goals and 50 points in 11 games for the Melbourne Ice of the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL) after signing with the team in May.

Elite Prospects’ Cam Robinson shared a clip this week of a recent highlight-reel goal from Booth, toying with the defenders on his way to the net.

Booth played 134 games with the Canucks from 2011 to 2014 after coming over from the Florida Panthers in a trade.

The 40-year-old is seventh in AIHL scoring despite playing only about half as many games as most of his competitors.

With league rules limiting teams to just four “import” players in any given game, the AIHL largely exists to showcase the best local talent Australia has to offer.

Australia is ranked 35th in the world on the men’s side of the IIHF ranking, sandwiched between Iceland and the United Arab Emirates.

Of all the former Canucks players it could’ve been, the fact that it’s Booth lighting up the Australian league at age 40 shouldn’t be exactly surprising, given his history of interesting headlines he’s generated over the years.

What has Booth been up to since leaving the Canucks?

Since his last NHL game with the Detroit Red Wings in 2018, Booth has now played for seven teams across five countries, four of which are in Europe.

Belarus’ Dinamo Minsk of the KHL, Manglerud, VĂ„lerenga, and Storhamar in Norway, the Jackson Hole Moose of the U.S.-based Black Diamond Hockey League, EisbĂ€ren Regensburg in the German second division, and FerencvĂĄrosi TC in Hungary.

Ex-teammate Kevin Bieksa once described Booth as a “bizarre guy” when sharing an anecdote about him one night on Hockey Night in Canada.

“One meeting that we had in Buffalo, [Booth] wasn’t there. So we’re calling him, and we were like ‘Boother, we’re having a meeting now, where are you?’” Bieksa recounted on a 2023 Sportsnet broadcast. “He goes, ‘I’m in Ohio, hunting white tail deer.’ He was in Ohio, he was a state over, and he was in a tree, hunting deer. Just a bizarre guy. Punctuality was not his priority.”

In 2018, Booth raised eyebrows for his widely panned take on a Nike ad featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, where he compared a tagline from the ad to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“‘Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.’ Does this mean you can fly a plane into a building? How can so many people @Nike be this ignorant as to the logical fallacy this entails. This is absolute [sic] absurd. I really don’t understand. Why would u support this?” Booth tweeted.

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