Past Canucks 1st & 2nd Round Misses

[Tb0ne]

Hindsight ruins the premise.

. I distinctly remember people jumping for joy that Kopitar fell to our pick... i believe Bourdon would have been a good NHL player but the reasons for passing on Kopitar were especially stupid. Even though he was preforming very well in Swedish hockey the Canucks and others thought that him being from Slovenia somehow mattered.
T. Then the anger over the Patrick White pick, quite a few wanted Perron who at least became an NHL player. Additionally i remember thinking Eberle looked lke an NHL player at the U-18 whereas Hogdson was fairly meh, clearly not as skilled and with short legs, weak speed. Also, i remember some of the more astute draft watchers here clammering for Saad. List goes on.

 

[Uhmkay]

Admittedly I believe taking Bourdon over Kopitar is the biggest reason I haven't seen the Canucks raise a Stanley Cup yet.

That being said, I believe your statement is completely false.

-Mason Raymond, topped out as a 25 goal, 50+ point, two-way guy;
-Michael Grabner, topped out as a 30+ goal, 50+ point, two-way guy; and
-Cody Hodgson, topped out as a 20 goal, 40+ point guy.

Rodin and Gaunce still both have a shot at being players and Rodin just won player of the year in the SHL.

The Canucks didn't go 47 straight picks without finding a good player, they got several players who went on to sign fairly big contracts (i.e. $2.5+ million/season multi-year deals) while holding down top 6 forward roles with other clubs.

The fact that you're making a point with these 3 players when we're talking about the Canucks not finding really good NHL players just proves my point.

If you want to call Raymond a really good player by using a stat he accomplished ONCE, otherwise didn't have more than 15 goals in a season and only 5 points in 29 games this season.

If you want to call Michael Grabner a '30+ goal, 50+ point, two-way guy', I'll call him a guy who fluked out one season, and otherwise has been anything but and is now on pace to score a whopping 9 goals over this full season. He is now barely an NHL player.

Cody Hodgson.... do we even have to discuss how disappointing his career has been? Recently every team in the NHL showed they didn't even want the guy for free as he passed through waivers. Meanwhile, the guys that we're talking about the Canucks never finding went within a few picks of him in guys like Tyler Myers, Erik Karlsson, etc.

These three players were not GOOD finds by the Canucks. And even being young players, there is a very good chance they would all pass through waivers.

 

[MS]

The fact that you're making a point with these 3 players when we're talking about the Canucks not finding really good NHL players just proves my point.

If you want to call Raymond a really good player by using a stat he accomplished ONCE, otherwise didn't have more than 15 goals in a season and only 5 points in 29 games this season.

If you want to call Michael Grabner a '30+ goal, 50+ point, two-way guy', I'll call him a guy who fluked out one season, and otherwise has been anything but and is now on pace to score a whopping 9 goals over this full season. He is now barely an NHL player.

Cody Hodgson.... do we even have to discuss how disappointing his career has been? Recently every team in the NHL showed they didn't even want the guy for free as he passed through waivers. Meanwhile, the guys that we're talking about the Canucks never finding went within a few picks of him in guys like Tyler Myers, Erik Karlsson, etc.

These three players were not GOOD finds by the Canucks. And even being young players, there is a very good chance they would all pass through waivers.

Mason Raymond in particular was a quality 2nd line player on a team that nearly won the Cup. He was a good player and an asset to this team for a long time. To not call him a good find in the 2nd round is ridiculous.

 

[mdobbs]

-Mason Raymond, topped out as a 25 goal, 50+ point, two-way guy;
-Michael Grabner, topped out as a 30+ goal, 50+ point, two-way guy; and
-Cody Hodgson, topped out as a 20 goal, 40+ point guy.

Raymond is the only one who I'd call a legit player. Grabner is borderline, but at 28 he's looking like he can barely stay in the league. Hodgson is pretty much the definition of a bust.

 

[Hit the post]

16. It took 16 posts in this thread to bring up how something is Bennings fault when the thread has nothing to do with him. Not a record. But impressive.

Well to be fair, it's not like that poster is laying the blame 100% on Benning. He (or she) did state it was something that Benning needed to fix (implying some kind of mess he inherited).

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

Mason Raymond in particular was a quality 2nd line player on a team that nearly won the Cup. He was a good player and an asset to this team for a long time. To not call him a good find in the 2nd round is ridiculous.

It does amuse me greatly that Baertschi is propped up constantly on these boards as this great find who is going to be a star on our team (28 points! Wow!) while Raymond is repeatedly brought up as a player who was some failure.

 

[DadBod]

I could've won the $1.3B lottery in January.

My Ticket: 07, 22, 30, 09, and the Powerball was 8
Winning Ticket: 08, 27, 34, 04 and 19, and the Powerball was 10

I should've picked those numbers. What I picked didn't pan out too well.


Hindsight is 20/20 buddy.

/thread

 

[604]

Raymond is the only one who I'd call a legit player. Grabner is borderline, but at 28 he's looking like he can barely stay in the league. Hodgson is pretty much the definition of a bust.

The thing is, they didn't go all those years without finding NHLers.

That's all I'm saying. Over the years the team has been getting one or two NHLers a year with a few really good years. This is pretty much normal.

Do I like our drafting? Not really, but it's not as bad as everyone says.

It would be fair to compare how we draft to throw team that picks after us or against one common pre-draft list. When I did that a long time ago, we did better than a couple and worse than a couple for 1st rounders (compared to TSN, ISS, CSS, RLR, and the team after us), with the exception of Bourdon over Kopitar which skews things against our scouts.

 

[Shareefruck]

It does amuse me greatly that Baertschi is propped up constantly on these boards as this great find who is going to be a star on our team (28 points! Wow!) while Raymond is repeatedly brought up as a player who was some failure.

Why? They're not similar players. Baertschi doesn't have the problems that most people have with Raymond.

Baertschi plays in such a way that makes players around him better and facilitates the play to allow for many scoring chances and offense (this is particularly promising for future projections), whereas Raymond (other than that one year where he had chemistry with Kesler, before he developed that shot), for the most part, hogged the puck/tried to do everything himself, had tunnel-vision, and ended up killing most shifts by ensured that nothing was going to get done during them. He was actually an underrated defensive presence for this reason (and it was amazing how he was always able to retrieve and hold onto the puck for extended periods of time), but if you're down a goal and trying to claw your way back, putting him out there with better players was an absolute nightmare. Even in the 2011 playoffs, I was clamoring for Higgins to get put on that second line instead.

Points aren't the be all end all. Many people preferred Hansen's offensive game (despite consistently getting fewer points) over Raymond's as well. For somewhat similar reasons. Baertschi has shown fantastic offensive potential, just from the way he sees and plays the game.

Agree that Raymond was a great pick in the second round regardless, though. I just like Baertschi's upside quite a bit more.

 

[Rotting Corpse*]

We will be lucky if Baertschi develops into as good of an all-around player as Raymond. That's my point. I don't much care about style.

 

[timw33]

These threads are dumb. The only picks I'll give you where the majority of people knew could've been a mistake and wanted a player that ended up being really good was the Bourdon over Kopitar (go look back at the draft threads it's insane how excited people were that Kopitar dropped to us), White over Perron (in fact, the entire 2007 draft was an abomination), and maybe Rodin over Tatar and any of the other "J" players from that 2011 draft: Jenson over Jurco Jaskin Jenner (Jenner being the best of that pack).

 

[Shareefruck]

We will be lucky if Baertschi develops into as good of an all-around player as Raymond. That's my point. I don't much care about style.

I disagree. I think that Raymond gets unreasonably trashed in hindsight around here, but I think given what Baertschi's shown this season, if he tops out as Raymond, it will be a disappointment, IMO.

 

[Goon42]

hindsight is 20/20 lmao

so much this
0/10 logic would not read again
nucks94 pls go

 

[EpochLink]

Hindsight 20/20 but man, Erik Karlsson would look good on our blue line :/

We haven't had a true number 1 defenseman since when? Lumme? While Ottawa churned out Redden, Chara, Volchenkov, Phillips and now Karlsson.

Hodgson, he was expecting the keys to the castle by his erratic father.

 

[DadBod]

This thread is only relevant if you discuss complete "off the board" picks that went against the obvious & consensus BPA.

 

[Hit the post]

Hindsight 20/20 but man, Erik Karlsson would look good on our blue line :/

We haven't had a true number 1 defenseman since when? Lumme? While Ottawa churned out Redden, Chara, Volchenkov, Phillips and now Karlsson.

Hodgson, he was expecting the keys to the castle by his erratic father.

I'll take Ohlund in his prime over Karlsson in his prime. Think that warrior was made for the post-season (too bad the teams wasn't).

But I'm nuts (and a huge homer - not the Simpsons kind...).

 

[Icebreakers]

Jensen over Saad/Jenner was pretty bad.

 

[Hit the post]

Jensen over Saad/Jenner was pretty bad.

To be fair, the Hawks themselves passed over Saad THREE times before finally selecting him.

 

[me2]

To be fair, the Hawks themselves passed over Saad THREE times before finally selecting him.

Benning passed on him at 40! A much much worse miss.

 

[EpochLink]

I'll take Ohlund in his prime over Karlsson in his prime. Think that warrior was made for the post-season (too bad the teams wasn't).

But I'm nuts (and a huge homer - not the Simpsons kind...).

Jovanovski and Ohlund I can say we're our good ones along side Salo. Sopel was solid nonetheless.

But damn, Erik Karlsson UGH....

 

[604]

These threads are dumb. The only picks I'll give you where the majority of people knew could've been a mistake and wanted a player that ended up being really good was the Bourdon over Kopitar (go look back at the draft threads it's insane how excited people were that Kopitar dropped to us), White over Perron (in fact, the entire 2007 draft was an abomination), and maybe Rodin over Tatar and any of the other "J" players from that 2011 draft: Jenson over Jurco Jaskin Jenner (Jenner being the best of that pack).

I agree with this.

 

[THE Green Man]

Any team can play the hindsight game. I don't think it's at all fair to look at the draft with that hindsight and pick and choose the absolute best player possible at every spot, as any kind of realistic measuring stick. That's a completely unrealistic standard, and one by which every single team fails.


However...

It is a truly sad and unfortunate record. And ultimately, if you have nothing to show for your 1st/2nd round picks for effectively 7 straight drafts...that pretty well tells the story of our current predicament. This is why we have nobody to act as reinforcements as the Sedins and the rest of that "2011 Core" tail off with age. That's where this whole "age gap" comes from. From a ~7 year span of guys who should be in their prime or just entering it. That's your "next wave"...but we've got absolutely zilch out of that.

So we're probably headed for a particularly deep and dark "rebuild". And it's really just starting. Because there's a total black hole of even "foundation pieces" out of those 1st/2nd rounds in that half dozen+ year window. We may have landed a few gems out of the later rounds like Hutton...and through FA like Tanev. But ultimately, those are the type of supplementary bonus players other good teams are also finding...in addition to batting a reasonable average on 1st/2nd round picks turning into players for the organization (which we didn't have at all).

And that complete void out of the top-60 picks is the sort of thing that is beyond just using "hindsight" to cherry-pick the "best players". It's into the realm of setting this franchise on an inevitable path to ruin and rebuild.

But it is what it is. What's done is done.

All that's left now is to look back, shake our heads at how completely miserable the drafting/development for this team was over those years...and watch as this team sinks and starts the actual early stages of a rebuild...half a dozen years behind schedule.

I think the point of this thread is that for many many years it was never the Canucks drafting the far and away better player at these positions. We were never the team picking the Giroux, Lucic, Perron, Ryan O'Reilly, PK Subban, Jamie Benn, James Neal, etc.

After 2004, take a look at our drafting. We literally couldn't find a single useful player all the way until 2012 when we drafted Ben Hutton in the 5th round. Not a single other player since the 2005 draft.

That's 47 players that we drafted, and it seems like we managed to get ONE decent NHL'er (Ben Hutton). That's 1 in 47 folks.... ONE. The only one that we can't say is Luc Bourdon (RIP). Besides those two... we busted each and every single time.

And yes, every team can say they had picks they wish they could take back. Can you find another team that went 47 straight picks and literally couldn't find one GOOD player???

Well to be fair, it's not like that poster is laying the blame 100% on Benning. He (or she) did state it was something that Benning needed to fix (implying some kind of mess he inherited).

These 3 posts are what I was intending this thread to discuss. Not the multiple "hindsight is 20/20" posts that contribute nothing. I said it's a flawed way of looking at things from the start. But for me I am just tired of reading the JB hate when there really isn't anything new to talk about. JB has made many poor moves, so in those deals there isn't a debate from me vs the anti-Benning camp, rather support, but we need to remember what he did inherit and how he needs to close the age gap from the close to a decade of no success in the early rounds. Even those who did become NHL players, NONE are remaining in the organization. Pretty hard to keep an organization competitive while losing that many players who were supposed to be able to contribute.

It does amuse me greatly that Baertschi is propped up constantly on these boards as this great find who is going to be a star on our team (28 points! Wow!) while Raymond is repeatedly brought up as a player who was some failure.

Could be possible, but this team struggles greatly to score and this is his first full season in the NHL. In Raymond's first full season he only had 23 points so I do expect Baertschi to have a better career, both via the stats and by the eye test. I never liked MayRay as a player because of the countless button hooks that led to turnovers essentially at the opponents offensive blue line. Sven on the other hand knows when to dump and chase and is the way better playmaker than Raymond ever was.

so much this
0/10 logic would not read again
nucks94 pls go

LOL. Make me goof. It's a thread for discussion, don't like it don't read it.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

the 2nd round has been our albatross basically for the entire two and a half decades i've been a fan.

off the top of my head, the only really great 2nd round pick we've had is mike peca, who was a phenomenal pick in the '92 draft after we threw away our first rounder on the immortal libor polasek. i was just a kiddo but many of us on the playground were hoping to get valeri "the pocket russian rocket" bure with our late first that year. the little bure ultimately fell to the 2nd round himself, though he was gone before we got a second shot at him.

most years, we didn't even have a second rounder. so many picks traded by burke and nonis, later gillis, and more recently traded away to "fill the age gap" by benning.

but off the top of my head, second rounders that turned into nothing: leif rohlin (omg best defenseman outside the NHL111111111111), mike fountain, taylor ellington (but he kind of sort of turned into half of ehrhoff), yann sauve (hit by a car), and rick girard (but man was he awesome at the WJC).

okay now i'm actually going to look it up:

other 2nd rounders that turned into nothing-- rob woodward (zero recollection of him), rob gordon (don't remember him either), chris mcallister (ugh, so many big stiffs during the pat quinn era), ryan bonni (so many guys i don't even remember yelling at the screen about while watching the draft), konstantin koltsov (but i hear he had a nice career in europe), denis grot (zero memory), marc-andre bernier (but at least we didn't also whiff in the first round of that draft), rodin (but you're telling me there's a chance...), alexandre mallet (come on mikey, what are you, pat quinn?)

other 2nd rounders that were okay to good-- jiri slegr (huge slapshot that never hit the net, but i was excited about him; traded for a russian buddy for bure who was terrible), jassen cullimore (chris pronger's defense partner in peterborough, was never anything for us, but carved out a decent career as a big slow bottom pair guy; traded for brashear so a decent return), dave scatchard (good grindy defensive guy that we probably should have kept; traded in the felix potvin trade), harold druken (meh but at least he played; was supposed to carry our offense into the 21st century with steve kariya, haha), chubarov (we're not worthy), mason raymond (pretty much what you want out of a 2nd rounder that's not a crazy home run), and high hopes right now for thatcher demko.

years we traded away our 2nd-- 1996, 1999*, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015

those picks were traded for, respectively-- esa tikkanen ('96), atlanta not picking brendl or either of the sedins in the '99 draft ('00), dan cloutier ('01), johan hedberg ('04), mika noronen ('06), steve bernier ('10), a 3rd and a 4th that turned into david honzik and joseph labate ('11), derek roy ('13), baertschi ('15).

* no idea what happened to the '99 pick, but it looks like it was traded to colorado, who then traded it to washington.

 

[rypper]

I wanted the canucks to take Oscar Moller in 07, instead we took Taylor Ellington. I just remember seeing him have a pretty awesome season with the Chilliwack Bruins. He was a gritty skilled swedish player. I know he didn't amount to much for the kings but maybe in our development system he could have been something different.

Of course PK Subban went 9 picks earlier, so if we're ignoring hindsight I'd say take him lol.

 

[opendoor]

* no idea what happened to the '99 pick, but it looks like it was traded to colorado, who then traded it to washington.

It was compensation for signing Crawford.