The Canucks in their history have made 46 first round picks, not including Juolevi, Hughes or Podkolzin.
They break down as such:
- 13 were pretty much immediate NHLers:
Petr Nedved
Trevor Linden
JJ Daigneault
Cam Neely
Rick Lanz
Rick Vaive
Jere Gillis
Rick Blight
Dennis Ververgaert
Bob Dailey
Don Lever
Jocelyn Guevremont
Dale Tallon
- Another 10 players played at least 40 NHL games in their D+2:
Jake Virtanen
Jared McCann
Bo Horvat
Daniel Sedin
Henrik Sedin
Jim Sandlak
Michel Petit
Garth Butcher
Bill Derlago
Elias Pettersson
Finally, 3 guys were NHLers in their D+3:
Brock Boeser
Ryan Kesler
Mike Wilson
(Kesler is probably a full-time player a year earlier if not for the lockout, as he had already played 28 games in his D+1.)
That leaves 20 players, but one of those, Cory Schneider, is a goalie and the other, Luc Bourdon, tragically passed away.
Here are the remaining 18, ranked by total career GP (* - still active) :
Tier 1 - 500+ games
1. Mattias Ohlund (909)
2. R.J. Umberger (779)
3. Bryan Allen (721)
4. Michael Grabner* (594)
This is it, the cream of the crop.
Ohlund and Umberger were both special cases where the team hadn't gotten the player under contract. Ohlund was playing in Europe and signed a lucrative offer sheet from the Leafs that the Canucks matched, and the rest is history. Umberger had a famously public contract dispute with Brian Burke who eventually traded his rights to New York. Both pretty different situations from Olli, who is signed. Bryan Allen actually had a few cups of coffee with the Canucks in his D+3 and D+4 but didn't become a full-time NHLer until his D+5. That leaves Grabner as really your only example of the "one who got away." Four seasons after being drafted, Grabner couldn't crack the Canucks lineup full-time and was included in the trade for Keith Ballard. That was a bad deal and Grabner has gone on to a pretty decent if unspectacular NHL career.
Tier 2 - 100-500 NHL games
5. Cody Hodgson (328)
6. Brad Ference (250)
7. Shawn Antoski (183)
8. Jordan Schroeder* (165)
9. Brendan Gaunce* (117)
10. Alek Stojanov (107)
And here is where you basically get to bust territory. Hodgson's trade for Kassian has to be viewed as a minor victory, and of course Stojanov-for-Naslund was a home-f***ing-run. The other 4 players were essentially lost for nothing.
Tier 3 - <100 NHL games
11. Josh Holden (60)
12. Nicklas Jensen (31)
13. Nathan Smith (26)
14. Hunter Shinkaruk* (15)
15. Dan Woodley (5)
16. Jason Herter (1)
17. Patrick White (0)
18. Libor Polasek (0)
(Olli Juolevi* (0))
The only one of these players to return anything of note was Patrick White, whose rights (and, by extension, a compensation pick for not signing him,) were traded for Christian Ehrhoff, and Shinkaruk who was traded for HFBoards hall-of-famer Markus Granlund. The other 6 players are indisputedly busts but were never traded for anything of note and mostly just let to walk.
So, to summarize:
- 26 players who pretty much made the NHL quickly.
- 10 players who were pretty much busts and were eventually lost for nothing.
- 4 players who were traded in deals where they returned a superior asset (Hodgson, Stojanov, Shinkaruk**, Patrick White)
- 2 players who didn't make the NHL quickly because of contract dispute.
- 1 player, Bryan Allen, who took his time, and the team was patient with, and had an OK career.
- 1 player, Michael Grabner, who was maybe given-up-on too soon and included in a poor trade.
** just go with it.
I find the claim that the Canucks give up on players too soon to be without merit. Basically all of the players who were not NHLers by the part of their careers Juolevi is in now either busted or were traded in a better deal.
The Canucks have only taken 2 players in their entire history for whom patience in them at this stage paid, or would have paid, off: Allen and Grabner. And Allen at this stage had played in the NHL, just not as an every-day player, so even he was ahead of Olli.
Now, that's not to say that Olli can't be an exception! But the point remains that if we had dealt every single first-round-pick who was not an everyday NHLer by their D+3, we would be way, way ahead in the long run, as most of these guys probably would have returned a pick or some asset before they were eventually just let go after clinging to them for years.
In the NHL, patience is not a virtue, it is a trap.