One player makes you excited our the prospect group. That shows how f-ing sad the group is then. Lol.
And his save % is now .931, which is third best in the league among goalies with ten or more starts.
Hard to be disappointed when it looks like we got basically 2 potential top4 D and a top 6 winger and maybe 2 3rd pairing D from 2 drafts…
Canucks had no first rounder or second rounder in 2020; no first rounder in 2021; no second rounder in 2022; no second rounder in 2023; and of course no first or second rounder in 2024.
This hadn't really occurred to me, I wonder if the rest of the league would share that opinion.
That isn't what happened...pointing out one player does not mean that only one player is noteworthy.
You tried to reason with me? "Anyone who thought these junior players were en route to regular NHL duty in 3 years were absolutely dreaming." How do you manage to come up with that from what I said?
You just create a whole new narrative for someone to pretend that yours is right. Impressive.
canucksarmy.com
As does most prospect pools.Dave Hall Canucks army on the prospect pool.
I think I’d be remiss if I did not run with the boss’s question out the gate, right?
What's been the biggest challenge about doing these latest prospect rankings? (aside from me asking you to write all 20 by yourself)
The truthful answer is that this Canucks’ system isn’t chock-full of high-end talent. Sure, a select few filters to the top without question, but there is a real log-jam of “hopeful projects” and older “tweener” type players.
That’s difficult to “rank.”
Realistically, the difference between each of our ranked prospects from, let’s say, 5-12 is very minimal. It’s not that the prospects within that range aren’t skilled; it’s just simply easier to pinpoint and predict what will come of a prospect such as Tom Willander or even Elias Pettersson (D).
For lack of a better term, it’s a bit of a crapshoot in that mid-to-late range.
While every team has those types of mid-range prospects, they typically don’t carry an entire prospect pool filled to the brim. Truthfully, this Canucks prospect pool is just that, with the exception of maybe four.
It’s propped up by two “blue chip” prospects, Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Tom Willander. However, that stock drops off a cliff after three or four.
Canucks prospect Mailbag: How does the current prospect pool stack up against their division rivals?
The NHL is on a rare and long hiatus, giving us time to discuss the th...
Are you able to show a lot of teams that have legitimate top prospects beyond their top 3-4?
Sure these are 2 bright spots but they need to have more hits going forward and a lot of the guys some fans are excited about will end up being waiver wire type of guys or tweeners.
Willander and Lekkerimaki are very good prospects. Do they project like game changers the same as Hughes and Pettersson were? I doubt anyone would argue they are going to. There is probably 10 teams that have players the same or better then the two mentioned above. Canucks then have 3 D that project as 3rd pairing D. There is probably another 10 teams that have that plus a forward or two with an impact projection. (a middle 6er). Then you get into the teams that have been terrible at drafting or giving up far too many prospects trying to win.
EP and Hughes were #5 and #7 overall, and they weren't even surefire elite players when they were drafted, there were a lot of questions about them. And I don't believe Lekkerimaki or Willander need to be elite at the level of EP or Hughes to be big contributors to the team....I also don't necessarily agree that DPetey, Kudryatsev and Minio project as all bottom pairing defensemen. And I also think we have some depth prospects who will carve out NHL careers, perhaps not with any impactful scoring but as 3rd and 4th liners. That is to say, we may not have a fantastic pool, we have a very mid-ranged pool with some pieces that look like blue chippers...I think from where we were a few years ago, its not too bad.
When the team had Hughes and EP1 in their prospect pool, it was probably a top 3 pool in the entire league. This is an entirely unrealistic expectation and I'm not sure there's a single team that has 2 prospects like 2018 Hughes/Pettersson right now.
Jim Benning being stupid is why we have overpaid for bottom 6 players in the past. None of the Blueger/Suter/O'Connor/Sherwood/Joshua acquisitions have been overpayments. Mikheyev was an overpayment, but it's clear that they saw him as a top 6 player and also never got to see him completely healthy. At most Heinen was an overpayment by a few hundred thousand.
99% of the prospects people are upset about missing on are going to be waiver wire guys as well.
I disagree with your entire post as of right now except that Willander and Lekkerimaki should contribute to the team. Things can always change from year to year.
Who exactly is underrating him? Analysts or Canucks fans? The only thing I've heard since he was drafted was that he is likely to be a 3rd pairing defender and that's continued from what I've heard through the years from analysts.
