2023 NHL Entry Draft Discussion

[Canucks LB]

I am going to take a very active role for the next few days/weeks and look at very specific players. There are a few I Really wanna focus on, See if I am missing something.

Going to track these players for a bit (Look at Full games, Highlights, clips, etc).
I wanna focus on Skating, Compete, and what I feel is underrated, Confidence with the puck.

Colby Barlow
Samuel Honzek
Nate Danielson
Brayden Yager
Riley Heidt

Out of those guys, I really wanna focus hard on Yager, Honzek and Barlow.
Especially Honzek because I have seen him in person 2 times, and he was extremely impressive.

Ill keep you guys updated, Most people know my top 8.

 

[MS]

What's absurd is thinking that the difference in draft position is two spots. I generally get your point of view, and its not without merit, but you need to be a bit more reasonable. If our historically terrible goaltending continued because we didn't change any of the factors or context that was allowing for it (i.e., don't fire Boudreau, don't make goalie personnel changes) then it isn't unreasonable to think that we may have ended up with the 5-7th pick? If so, the reasonable delta is probably more like 3-6 picks.



Ya, you can blame management if you prefer a longer term approach to competing next year. Because its the latter reason that led to the coaching change and I think that's pretty dam clear. If management had a longer term vision then they would have waited to fire Boudreau until after the season just like every other shitty team.


I agree that splitting starts may have strained being reasonable, but Demko was coming back from a significant injury, and he started more times than other starters (other than a few teams battling for the playoffs and Colorado) despite no real reason for doing so other than to prioritize next year.

We were sitting in 6th due to a completely unsustainable goaltending thing that happened and a tough schedule. Once Demko returned and the schedule eased up, we were maybe getting to 8th tops.

The notion that we were ever picking top 5 was absolute nonsense from people who didn't understand why we were where we were in the standings.

And again, the stuff on the coaching staff is pure video games. I don't really know what else to say.

 

[VanJack]

Love what David Quadrelli of Canucks Army had to say about Cheech's last game as a Canucks analyst, and a quote from Connor Bedard:

"Like the rest of us, Bedard even paid tribute to Cheech tonight. This kids bleeds blue and will one day wear a Vancouver Canucks uniform. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day."

KIinda leaves a hole in your heart as a Canuck fan. A generational hockey talent who desperately wants to play for his home-town team. But only a three percent chance it will ever happen.

 

[Diamonddog01]

Love what David Quadrelli of Canucks Army had to say about Cheech's last game as a Canucks analyst, and a quote from Connor Bedard:

"Like the rest of us, Bedard even paid tribute to Cheech tonight. This kids bleeds blue and will one day wear a Vancouver Canucks uniform. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day."

KIinda leaves a hole in your heart as a Canuck fan. A generational hockey talent who desperately wants to play for his home-town team. But only a three percent chance it will ever happen.

Yeah the stars almost aligned for once - generational prospect, local buy and massive Canucks fan.

 

[m9]

The final stretch of games isn't as relevant to me, as I said previously Demko should have played a couple of less games but I don't have a big problem with the rest. Could they have played stars less? Yes, but not really to lose games.. more to see what we've got in the Studnicka/Kravtsov/McDonough/etc group. I have no idea why Kravtsov is sitting out the last game of the year. Get as much info as you can on guys like that.

I do think there was an opportunity for this organization to take a good look in the mirror at some point much earlier in the season and say that this isn't their year, the draft has a generational talent, and they need to full pivot. That means trading guys like Horvat/Schenn sooner, being more aggressive in terms of Boeser/Garland trades, shutting down Mikheyev earlier.. just doing things like that. I'm not sure where they end up landing with moves like that but I am pretty sure they finish at least a few slots higher than 11th.

 

[Hodgy]

We were sitting in 6th due to a completely unsustainable goaltending thing that happened and a tough schedule. Once Demko returned and the schedule eased up, we were maybe getting to 8th tops.

The notion that we were ever picking top 5 was absolute nonsense from people who didn't understand why we were where we were in the standings.

And again, the stuff on the coaching staff is pure video games. I don't really know what else to say.

We were in fifth in or around when Tochett was hired. I agree that quality of competition was likely going to make it difficult to hold onto the fifth pick, but I also think its hard to predict where we would have finished if Boudreau wasn't fired and we continued to receive historically bad goaltending. Even if Demko was starting more than half, we sometimes forget how terrible he was over the first few months of the season. Before he was injured, it didn't really matter what goalie started because they were all providing terrible results. And again, if we didn't change the context (i.e., coaching) this terrible goaltending may have continued for another 40 games or whatever. The sample size isn't so large that we would have necessarily seen a regression to the mean. So the question is, where would we have finished if we continued to receive historically terrible goaltending? And I don't think finishing 5th or 6th in that context is "nonsense", in fact, I think the idea that this couldn't have happened is the real nonsense.

The coaching staff isn't pure video games. I think its reasonable to believe that a half dozen or so management teams knew they were going to fire their coaches in or around February, and probably had a good idea as to who they may replace their coaches with, but decided not to because of this historically deep draft. Frankly, I think either Rutherford or Alvin was actually asked in January why they fired Boudreau when they did and I believe the answer was because they wanted Tochett in to evaluate the players and start implementing his structure with the obvious implication being that this would be advantageous for next year.

Like, do you think Anaheim had any intention of keeping Eakins in September? I think the answer is pretty obvious. But I guess the Ducks are playing video games too?

 

[Hodgy]

And another large impact on team performance is team morale. A large reason for why the Canucks were better in the last half of the season is because team morale was much improved, and I would argue that this was a larger factor than strength of schedule. And this wouldn't have improved with Boudreau, and would have actually worsened, and its hard to quantify the effect of this. But its pretty clearly significant, and its why we saw all of the intentionally tanking teams like the Flyers and Capitals absolutely submarine, because their players didn't care. And its why we were beating these shit teams down the stretch.

 

[Ninjadude]

Love what David Quadrelli of Canucks Army had to say about Cheech's last game as a Canucks analyst, and a quote from Connor Bedard:

"Like the rest of us, Bedard even paid tribute to Cheech tonight. This kids bleeds blue and will one day wear a Vancouver Canucks uniform. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day."

KIinda leaves a hole in your heart as a Canuck fan. A generational hockey talent who desperately wants to play for his home-town team. But only a three percent chance it will ever happen.

He could one day wear a Canucks uniform. Just highly unlikely it will be next season! We can only hope...

 

[sandwichbird2023]

And again, this to me is just playing video games and ignoring context and ignoring how things work in the real world.

Management wanted to fire Boudreau last summer. Ownership didn't let them. There was obviously a massive struggle between Rutherford/Allvin on this front for nearly a year as they tried to get permission to get the coach they wanted in here to put in the structure they wanted.

If you're management and you've worked tirelessly to convince ownership this change needs to happen, you follow through with it when you get the chance. You don't piss around and go back to ownership and say 'uh, actually, this thing we've passionately argued needed to happen immediately to change the culture of the the team, let's wait another 6 months so we can bump our draft position a couple spots!' It's absurd. It isn't how things work anywhere but EA Sports.

You can blame the living hell out of ownership for wrecking a season by creating the coaching mess, but there's no way you can blame management for wanting to get their preferred coach in place at the earliest opportunity. It should have happened in December 2021.

Same with Demko. He's your starter, and one of the best in the league. He's a professional. He wants to play. They maybe could have started him 1 or 2 less games but you don't split starts with a healthy Demko any more than you put Pettersson and Hughes in the press box. Again, fantasy stuff.

So management shouldn't use the most recent information and data and adjust their plan accordingly? If they set out at the start of the season to do something, they should ignore all the evidence they see on the ice and continue blindly down a pre-determined path without considering the actual result/process/performance? That once the puck drop on the first game of the season, all long term planning goes out the window? Unless Tocchett was about to sign with another team, and he is the only coach JR/Allvin wants, what is the rush to get him in in February, instead of say after the season? Is the worry that FA will change his mind again and somehow extend Bruce? What is the actual worry/concerns in waiting 2.5 more months?

In the summer of 2022 when every team is at zero games played and zero points, it was logical to try to make a coaching change. In February of 2023 when nearly 60 games in and you are sitting bottom 6, is it still logical to fire the coach, get the obvious bump in performance, knowing full well that the team will not make the playoff and the only difference is that it will rocket your way up the standing meaninglessly?

 

[sandwichbird2023]

You literally just made my argument. Our superstars werent top picks 3 and are probably top 3 picks in any redraft so why does drafting 8th or 11th make a difference? You still need to pick and more importantly develope the player after they are drafted. There is a very good chance that 2/3 players drafted ahead of us bust or dont hit their potential and a even greater chance there are some players who are drafted after our pick that will be top 5/10 players in a redraft after their careers are over.

You still need to develope the player after you draft them. This isnt the NBA or NFL where the top 10 players come right out of college and become regular starters in their first season. Development is just as important if not more important then the talent level that a player is drafted with.

There is a reason why Tampa and now Dallas have very good young players and why Edmonton and Buffalo have taken forever to figure out how to field a good on ice product. Their development sucked for decades

Because drafting 8th and 11th in 2017 and 2018, respectively, means no Petey and no Hughes? I'm not sure if you are being serious with this question?

Again, are you saying that higher pick isn't good? Sure any pick can bust, look at Yakupov and Daigle and the disappointment in Laffreniere so far, does that mean we shouldn't want to draft #1 overall?

Also, Petey jump straight into the lineup from Sweden, Hughes from NCAA. Neither were "developed" in our system. In fact, you might argue that, aside from Demko, none of our player were developed properly within our system. We are not a good developing team, therefore all the more important to pick somebody who is so amazingly talented that they can jump straight into the NHL instead of stagnating in our "system", which is another reason drafting higher is important to us.

 

[EverTheCynic]

I stopped paying attention to draft prospects after I hyped myself up on Nylander and we chose Virtanen.

I don't even care anymore. Just gonna trust the scouts.

 

[VanJack]

I stopped paying attention to draft prospects after I hyped myself up on Nylander and we chose Virtanen.

I don't even care anymore. Just gonna trust the scouts.

Yep, a top-six pick wasted on Virtanen in 2014, followed two years later by a top-five pick for Juolevi. Ughh!

Can you imagine how good this Canuck team would be right now it they'd 'hit' on both of those top 10 picks? Maybe snagging a David Pastrnak and a Matthew Tkachuk? Could easily have happened.

But the scouting staff has mostly been overhauled since then. Call me naive, but I don't see the scouts making the same mistakes in 2023.

 

[mriswith]

Yeah.

Those bozo posters make this place not good for anyone's mental health, including their own.

You don't really realize how much certain people deliberately misinterpret arguments and pathologically build straw man arguments until you start arguing with them.

This is the main thing I've learned from these boards in the last year and a half and having had dozens of these arguments where inevitably by a couple posts in, 75% of the argument devolves into trying to keep wild mischaracterizations and false narratives back on track while the main points get dodged, repeatedly. It amazes me how much of this I missed in the Benning era when I agreed with the general point of most people's posts.

I think the massive amount of copium people are inhaling is good for their fandom. The casuals who were gaslit during the Benning years enjoyed those years of hockey a lot more than I did.

Anyone gaslighting themselves on how great it is that we moved from 5th to 11th and mgmt and coaching had nothing to do with losing 6 slots is going to enjoy their fandom more than I will.

Anyone able to simultaneously argue that what we did was correct and anything else is video games while ignoring that 8 other teams straight up tanked/executed the "video games" strategy this year is going to enjoy their fandom more than I will. They'll stay engaged all summer and be excited for next year, that's great for them. My interest has plummeted, far more than I expected.

 

[canuckking1]

Maybe, but as you say doing this would not have been the difference between 11th and 5th. It might have been worth a couple points.

People also get tunnel vision on this team. Like I said, Anaheim was playing Fowler 30 minutes/game. SJ was giving Karlsson a massive icetime boost through Feb/March to try getting him to 100 points and a Norris. Nick Suzuki was barely playing less than Pettersson.

Again, having Hughes/Pettersson/Demko happy and buying in is the absolute most important thing and I have *zero* problem with prioritizing that, especially when you look at the levels of play they hit recently.

It's probably the difference between 11th and 8th. I don't think we were ever gonna pick 5th with the weak ass schedule the team had in the 2nd half.

 

[MS]

So management shouldn't use the most recent information and data and adjust their plan accordingly? If they set out at the start of the season to do something, they should ignore all the evidence they see on the ice and continue blindly down a pre-determined path without considering the actual result/process/performance? That once the puck drop on the first game of the season, all long term planning goes out the window? Unless Tocchett was about to sign with another team, and he is the only coach JR/Allvin wants, what is the rush to get him in in February, instead of say after the season? Is the worry that FA will change his mind again and somehow extend Bruce? What is the actual worry/concerns in waiting 2.5 more months?

In the summer of 2022 when every team is at zero games played and zero points, it was logical to try to make a coaching change. In February of 2023 when nearly 60 games in and you are sitting bottom 6, is it still logical to fire the coach, get the obvious bump in performance, knowing full well that the team will not make the playoff and the only difference is that it will rocket your way up the standing meaninglessly?

Yes, they should stick to the plan because fixing the team's culture and getting the team's three young superstars to buy in long term is infinitely more important than a 3-spot move in the draft.

The obsession that fans have with minimal changes in draft position over literally everything else involved in building a hockey team is frankly comical.

 

[Ita]

Yep, a top-six pick wasted on Virtanen in 2014, followed two years later by a top-five pick for Juolevi. Ughh!

Can you imagine how good this Canuck team would be right now it they'd 'hit' on both of those top 10 picks? Maybe snagging a David Pastrnak and a Matthew Tkachuk? Could easily have happened.

But the scouting staff has mostly been overhauled since then. Call me naive, but I don't see the scouts making the same mistakes in 2023.

I like your optimism.

It's not like there are players drafted after Vasili Podkolzin or Jonathan Lekkerimaki that are significantly better right?

Since the 2018 draft, what's the scouts have been doing does not exactly instill confidence.

 

[Izzy Goodenough]

but, But

Daniil But | Daniil But Profile | Daniil But Scouting Report 2023

Daniil But scouting report for NHL Draft. Profile contains Daniil But stats, videos and written bios

www.mynhldraft.com

Tocchet's choice?

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

I'm actually very fascinated to see what some people on this board say if the #8 wins the lotto.

Will they really continue with the "well, there's nothing we could have done, we were just too good, Demko demanded the starts!" or do you think the reality of missing out on a generational talent and hometown kid will allow them to see that we actually could have accomplished everything they wanted to to prepare for next year, while also not sewering their draft position.

This is just gambler's fallacy nonsense but a lot of posters will fall for it.

Using hindsight bias, 'if only we had the 8th pick' to then retroactively decide that they should have been undermining our young superstars, 'sorry petey and hughes, you don't play this pp I have a feeling the 8th pick is going to be very important' - breaks 4th wall and winks at the camera.

It's just not based in reality.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

Man, there are so many people here with very limited understanding of hockey, coaching, dressing room culture, and human psychology.

One of the first things to understand is that when developing a player, a team, or a system, NHL games are worth their weight in gold.

So the thought that we should have tied our hands behind our back and played Petey and Hughes 14 minutes each and let Martin start down the stretch is insane.

Our young superstars are at the age where they are figuring out their own potential in the highest league in the world. They are also wired to compete and win. We have STEM lords sitting behind their computer saying, 'we should have ignored the human psychology of elite athletes and told them that maybe if we intentionally hold them down we might get to draft 8th and that pick might win the lottery.'

Stallions want to run. You think a game where we're down 2-1 in the 3rd with 5 minutes left and the top PP is rested the players are going to buy-in to Tocchet saying, "alright, let's get Brisebois, Myers, Dries, Kravtsov, and Mcdonough out there'?

Tocchet has to get buy-in, you get that a couple of ways. 1. You get the stars on your side and you do that best by giving them the best opportunity to be their best and impact the games.
2. You get that by having something you can point to. I know going 13-3 in March was frustrating for draft position (and it was for me too), but Tocchet can point to that stretch and say, 'when you play the way I'm asking you to, we can have success'. If we tanked our way through the end of the season he would have far less credibility.

The reason that we won so much down the stretch, aside from a comically weak schedule, was that our superstars dragged a lot of AHL and college players towards victory. This is a good thing. This isn't us playing the 35 year old Sedins 23 minutes a night, or the UFA to be Hamhuis and Vrbata a bunch. This is all a sound future investment that will likely pay off for more than a decade.

Further, all of the 'deadweight' players we had who would be tough to move improved as well. So if you want to deal Miller, Garland, Beauvillier, Boeser, etc. Now that's possible as more than just a cap dump.

I'm not happy with how it turned out, I wish the process had been good and the results had been unlucky and we'd picked 7th or 8th, but it is what it is.

As an organization you need to create trust. A guy like Demko went through a terrible start that seemed to be related to his mysterious off season surgery.
Then he was out far longer than expected.

This is scary and this is his livelihood. He wants to make sure he still has it, can regain his confidence and trust in his body, and he needs game reps to do that.
Imagine telling him that you don't care about that, you're going to play him less than he's comfortable with in games where his performance is earning more games because you're trying to lose just in case we can pick 8th overall. It beggars the mind.

@MS isn't wrong when he says it's video game thinking that completely fails to consider the fact that these are human beings with hopes, dreams, fears, concerns, a need to feel important to the group, etc. Not 1s and 0s in your GM mode on EA sports.

 

[credulous]

i don't know how you square "video game thinking" with the undisputable fact that chicago, columbus, detroit, washington, philadelphia, san jose, anaheim, montreal, arizona and st louis all did exactly what fans here were hoping vancouver would do

i understand the theory that finish strong start strong, rebuild the culture, can't keep elite players on a leash, blah blah blah but the posters acting like it's unthinkable for an nhl team to intentionally handicap it's ability to compete are the ones who aren't aligned with reality

 

[Bubbles]

But the scouting staff has mostly been overhauled since then. Call me naive, but I don't see the scouts making the same mistakes in 2023.

Except Delorme is still there. And our CHL/WHL/BCHL drafting continues to be terrible.

 

[Gstank]

i don't know how you square "video game thinking" with the undisputable fact that chicago, columbus, detroit, washington, philadelphia, san jose, anaheim, montreal, arizona and st louis all did exactly what fans here were hoping vancouver would do

i understand the theory that finish strong start strong, rebuild the culture, can't keep elite players on a leash, blah blah blah but the posters acting like it's unthinkable for an nhl team to intentionally handicap it's ability to compete are the ones who aren't aligned with reality

Do you know what all those teams not have Petey and Hughes in their Prime............

 

[DFAC]

I am going to take a very active role for the next few days/weeks and look at very specific players. There are a few I Really wanna focus on, See if I am missing something.

Going to track these players for a bit (Look at Full games, Highlights, clips, etc).
I wanna focus on Skating, Compete, and what I feel is underrated, Confidence with the puck.

Colby Barlow
Samuel Honzek
Nate Danielson
Brayden Yager
Riley Heidt

Out of those guys, I really wanna focus hard on Yager, Honzek and Barlow.
Especially Honzek because I have seen him in person 2 times, and he was extremely impressive.

Ill keep you guys updated, Most people know my top 8.

You should add ASP and Ryan Leonard to that list

 

[Diamonddog01]

Man, there are so many people here with very limited understanding of hockey, coaching, dressing room culture, and human psychology.

One of the first things to understand is that when developing a player, a team, or a system, NHL games are worth their weight in gold.

So the thought that we should have tied our hands behind our back and played Petey and Hughes 14 minutes each and let Martin start down the stretch is insane.

Our young superstars are at the age where they are figuring out their own potential in the highest league in the world. They are also wired to compete and win. We have STEM lords sitting behind their computer saying, 'we should have ignored the human psychology of elite athletes and told them that maybe if we intentionally hold them down we might get to draft 8th and that pick might win the lottery.'

Stallions want to run. You think a game where we're down 2-1 in the 3rd with 5 minutes left and the top PP is rested the players are going to buy-in to Tocchet saying, "alright, let's get Brisebois, Myers, Dries, Kravtsov, and Mcdonough out there'?

Tocchet has to get buy-in, you get that a couple of ways. 1. You get the stars on your side and you do that best by giving them the best opportunity to be their best and impact the games.
2. You get that by having something you can point to. I know going 13-3 in March was frustrating for draft position (and it was for me too), but Tocchet can point to that stretch and say, 'when you play the way I'm asking you to, we can have success'. If we tanked our way through the end of the season he would have far less credibility.

The reason that we won so much down the stretch, aside from a comically weak schedule, was that our superstars dragged a lot of AHL and college players towards victory. This is a good thing. This isn't us playing the 35 year old Sedins 23 minutes a night, or the UFA to be Hamhuis and Vrbata a bunch. This is all a sound future investment that will likely pay off for more than a decade.

Further, all of the 'deadweight' players we had who would be tough to move improved as well. So if you want to deal Miller, Garland, Beauvillier, Boeser, etc. Now that's possible as more than just a cap dump.

I'm not happy with how it turned out, I wish the process had been good and the results had been unlucky and we'd picked 7th or 8th, but it is what it is.

As an organization you need to create trust. A guy like Demko went through a terrible start that seemed to be related to his mysterious off season surgery.
Then he was out far longer than expected.

This is scary and this is his livelihood. He wants to make sure he still has it, can regain his confidence and trust in his body, and he needs game reps to do that.
Imagine telling him that you don't care about that, you're going to play him less than he's comfortable with in games where his performance is earning more games because you're trying to lose just in case we can pick 8th overall. It beggars the mind.

@MS isn't wrong when he says it's video game thinking that completely fails to consider the fact that these are human beings with hopes, dreams, fears, concerns, a need to feel important to the group, etc. Not 1s and 0s in your GM mode on EA sports.

The only issue with trying to get the best out of Petterson, Demko and Hughes is that it doesn't appear that this small core / group of young stars currently can actually win meaningful hockey games. At least they haven't proven this as of yet. So while watching them pile on the points and score entertaining goals is nice should the organization really be exerting this much energy on retaining them? The question is somewhat rhetorical as I'm not sure, the only thing that's really apparent thus far is the team desperately needs more elite talent if it wants to make the playoffs. Without that talent one injury could easily derail next year's season yet again.

Apart from that - your post involves an ad hominem and related platitudes, appeals to and yet pretty much every other team took a very different route. Were they all playing video games?

 

[credulous]

Do you know what all those teams not have Petey and Hughes in their Prime............

it's not like those teams don't have good young players. why are pettersson and hughes so fragile it's imperative the canucks be as competitive as possible but it's okay to hold back mctavish, suzuki, gaudreau, seider, kyrou...