For a team that is 55 years old soon, is there a worse list of defenseman?
- Thread starter benfranklin
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Marlowe Syn
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North Stars here got some skin on the Snepsts sweepstakes.
Agreed. I would say they are a lot of excellent scoring D that are suspect in their own zone. Glad none of them are on my team.
benfranklin
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- Jun 29, 2024
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Carolina feels like the example of actual defensive defensemen vs high point scorers. Still had some decent names come through even if it was only a few seasons. Canucks are bleak. OEL is about as big as you can go for someone who had a cup of coffee there who was a starish at some point before then.
Slavin, Faulk, Wesley, Howe, Burns, Hamilton, Hanifin, Ozolinsh, Sekera, Coffey, Orlov, Teverdovsky, Hatcher, Ulf, Pronger.
vadim sharifijanov
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an abridged history of vancouver canucks dmen, one nut punch after another:
in our first draft, buffalo got the first pick — gilbert perreault — and we got dale tallon number two
one year later, guy lafleur went first, marcel dionne went second, we got jocelyn guevremont with the third pick
in overtime of game one of the finals, the best dman of our first two decades, harry snepsts, makes the most memorable play of his career
we had to employ jim benning on our blueline
our first true all-star calibre dman was broken down paul reinhart, who even with chronic back pain still was able to help push his old team, the powerhouse calgary flames, to game seven OT before otto “scored," kicking off their cup run
mattias ohlund, our first homegrown dman with number one stud potential, caught a puck in the eye in preseason before his third year and suffered a career-altering eye injury, losing a third of his vision in one eye
we had young adrian aucoin, traded him for dan cloutier
four teams ahead of us in the 2005 draft go for crazy reaches, leaving kopitar to fall to us and we take luc bourdon
luc bourdon dies tragically in a motorcycle accident, RIP
we had to employ jim benning as our GM, and he replaced jason garrison with luca sbisa, kevin bieksa with alex biega, dan hamhuis with erik gudbranson, chris tanev with tyler myers, alex edler with OEL’s cap hit and corpse, and for good measure traded young gus forsling for someone named adam clendening
with matthew tkachuk next up on everybody’s draft list, we select with the fifth pick of the 2016 draft from the london knights olli juolevi
in so many ways the hockey gods owed us quinn hughes
in our first draft, buffalo got the first pick — gilbert perreault — and we got dale tallon number two
one year later, guy lafleur went first, marcel dionne went second, we got jocelyn guevremont with the third pick
in overtime of game one of the finals, the best dman of our first two decades, harry snepsts, makes the most memorable play of his career
we had to employ jim benning on our blueline
our first true all-star calibre dman was broken down paul reinhart, who even with chronic back pain still was able to help push his old team, the powerhouse calgary flames, to game seven OT before otto “scored," kicking off their cup run
mattias ohlund, our first homegrown dman with number one stud potential, caught a puck in the eye in preseason before his third year and suffered a career-altering eye injury, losing a third of his vision in one eye
we had young adrian aucoin, traded him for dan cloutier
four teams ahead of us in the 2005 draft go for crazy reaches, leaving kopitar to fall to us and we take luc bourdon
luc bourdon dies tragically in a motorcycle accident, RIP
we had to employ jim benning as our GM, and he replaced jason garrison with luca sbisa, kevin bieksa with alex biega, dan hamhuis with erik gudbranson, chris tanev with tyler myers, alex edler with OEL’s cap hit and corpse, and for good measure traded young gus forsling for someone named adam clendening
with matthew tkachuk next up on everybody’s draft list, we select with the fifth pick of the 2016 draft from the london knights olli juolevi
in so many ways the hockey gods owed us quinn hughes
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vadim sharifijanov
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RobertKron
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To be fair, they did have Rory Fitzpatrick.
ItWasJustified
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Mattias Öhlund was an elite two-way defenseman.
UpHere
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Your bar for “elite” is laughably low, sorry.
The guys you list, while all good players in their own right, were never in the conversation for personal hardware, weren’t NHL all stars, and were at best second or third fiddle on their national teams (or were the top dog for a week country like Erhoff for Germany).
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Jovanovski for one was back-to-back 6th in the Norris vote, if he wasn't elite then you didn't have more than at most five elite defensemen in the league.
And Edler was a two-time World Champion and Olympic silver medalist with Sweden, very weak they weren't.
Hennessy
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Edler was never top dog for Sweden. Which isn't exactly a weak hockey country, either.
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inthewings
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I was thinking Erhoff the whole time and made a gaff, typing Edler.
But you’re absolutely right and that was kind of my point. All the deeper teams had players above Edler, Hamhuis, Jovo, etc on their rosters.
I know it doesn’t really count, but the Pronger was drafted there.
Mark Howe was a also Whaler in the WHA and in their early NHL existence.
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He might have had some Norris contention seasons, if he hadn't suffered a serious eye injury in his sophomore season. That eye was never 100% again. In his notorious incident vs. Koivu I think he snapped because he thought Koivu targeted his bad eye with the butt-end of his stick.
But, yeah... with regards to this thread and real life performances. The Canucks had some good defencemen over the years, and some entertaining ones, but none who were ever in the serious discussion as one of the best in the league at any given time. It was 5 decades of "good enough" at best.
There are some really good players on that list. Jovocop, Edler, Ohlund and Lumme to name a couple were legit top pairing guys at their best.
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