Tanbir Rana went viral 11 years ago when he confronted Trevor Linden with an impassioned plea from Vancouver Canucks fans.
On Thursday night, the two will be reunited on the airwaves.
🚨🚨 SPECIAL GUEST ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨🚨
Trevor Linden joins us on Off The Rush on Pulse FM to give his thoughts on the past, present & future of this organization as well as much more!
Stay tuned for Thursday's show.
Listen on https://t.co/Zm3zyVQ0QD or 107.7 FM #Canucks pic.twitter.com/T5FRkVvdyE— 107.7 Pulse FM (@pulse1077) October 19, 2026
Back in 2015, Rana was better known to Canucks fans as “Tanbir from Surrey,” a frequent caller on TSN 1040 who wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions. At the Canucks’ Summer Summit following the 2014-15 season, Rana showed he was perfectly willing to share those opinions face-to-face with the Canucks’ brass.
“At that time, I think I was 21 years old and just a young, dumb Canucks fan,” said Rana when Offside caught up with him this week. “I was just really frustrated with the way the team was operating in the summer. I don’t know why I was so hyped up that day.”
“I want to win a Cup!”
When called upon, Rana said to Linden and general manager Jim Benning that their talk of getting to the playoffs wasn’t landing with Canucks fans.
“I keep hearing ‘playoffs, playoffs, playoffs,’ but I’m not hearing ‘Cup,'” said Rana. “The Sedins have maybe three years left. They were top-10 scorers in the league last year; they proved to us they can still play at a high level, and we’re still going for the playoffs, and one and done.
“I want to win a Cup, and I don’t know if you guys want to win a Cup. I want to win a Cup!”
That passionate proclamation — “I want to win a Cup!” — resonated with a lot of Canucks fans, but what was equally important about the moment is that Linden didn’t dismiss Rana or his fellow fans. Instead, he took the time to talk with them one-on-one after the town hall meeting was over.
“It’s Trevor Linden — he didn’t have to do that,” recalled Rana. “It just shows you the type of person he is, right? He could have just left it alone and went about his day, but he decided to talk to us to see what he could do to help the situation and help with our feelings as well.”
“Whoever gets Tanbir and Linden in studio together for an hour will win radio wars.”
As the Canucks struggled in the subsequent years, the frustration in the marketplace only grew. And with the addition of Sportsnet 650 to TSN 1040, there were even more outlets for that frustration.
Rana still wasn’t shy about expressing his thoughts in what was becoming an increasingly confrontational environment on social media and sports talk radio.
“I’ve been on Twitter for a while, and I’ve said some things,” said an apologetic Rana. “And sometimes I don’t mean those things.”
It still made “Tanbir from Surrey” one of the most notorious fans in the Canucks fanbase. At one point, the late Jason Botchford expressed a surefire way for one of the two sports talk stations to come out on top: “Whoever gets Tanbir and Linden in studio together for an hour will win radio wars.”
Whoever gets tanbir and linden in studio together for an hour will win radio wars
— Jason Botchford (@botchford) August 25, 2017
Regrettably, the radio wars ended in mutual destruction, with first TSN 1040 and then Sportsnet 650 going off the air. But Rana is looking to win a new era of radio wars by finally fulfilling Botchford’s suggestion.
On Thursday night on 107.7 Pulse FM, Rana will air his interview with Linden on his late-night sports talk show, Off the Rush.
“I thought it would just be a good full-circle moment and it doesn’t happen if he doesn’t agree to it,” said Rana. “So, I really appreciate that he did give me the opportunity to talk to him again.”
“I’ve always been a radio guy”
Going from a caller to a host has been a long time coming for Rana.
He and fellow Canucks fan Nam Mann started a podcast called The SCT Show — SCT for Strictly Canucks Talk — that ran for years, but when Sportsnet 650 shut its doors, he felt he could do more.
“Having Sportsnet 650 and 1040 taken off the air, it was frustrating to know the market wasn’t getting that kind of attention on the radio,” said Rana. “I know there’s a bunch of podcasts out there and other platforms where people are doing their shows, but I’ve always been a radio guy.”
Rana prized the live interaction of the sports talk format, whether it was texting or, of course, calling in.
“I thought that maybe I should do something about it myself,” said Rana. “Trying to juggle it with my day-to-day job and going to late-night radio. I used to listen to the late-night shows with Dan Russell or Matt Baker or the Kurtenbloggers.
“So, I had the thought, called some stations, and asked if they were interested in it. Luckily, Pulse was, and they made it happen for us.”
The show airs every weekday night from 10 p.m. to midnight and covers not just the Canucks, but other Vancouver and national sports news.
Rana’s radio-wars-winning interview with Linden will air on Thursday night at 10:40 p.m. after the Canucks’ game against the Detroit Red Wings.