Last week, CanucksArmy’s newest contributor, Josh Elliott-Wolfe, turned heads with an article titled “Should Quinn Hughes have gone first overall in 2018?”. Even better, Elliott-Wolfe eschewed Betteridge’s law of headlines, which asserts that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no,” by actually making a reasonable case that Hughes was the best player to come out of his draft class.
Today, we’re here to take that line of thought and run with it, by examining where each of the first-round picks the Canucks made in the past decade would rank if subjected to a hypothetical re-draft.
Note: Stats are courtesy of NaturalStatTrick. Draft ranks are for skaters only.
2011 Draft
Nicklas Jensen, 29th Overall
27, RW | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 31 (86th) | 3 (t-76th) | 3 (t-84th) | 6 (t-82nd) | 0.19 (t-68th) |
Jensen was a bust, no doubt about it, but the fact that he was a bust gleaned from the Stanley Cup Finalist draft slot took most of the sting out. Though Jensen has been ripping it up in the KHL for four years running now, he’s likely never coming back to the NHL — and thus, would have to be ranked below any fringe NHLers in a re-draft.
Jensen might stay in the top-100 in a class that only had 98 players record an NHL point, but he’s not going any higher than 90th if the 2011 Entry Draft were to be redone.
Re-Draft Position: ~95th Overall (-66)
2012 Draft
Brendan Gaunce, 26th Overall
26, C | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 118 (59th) | 6 (t-64th) | 10 (t-67th) | 16 (68th) | 0.14 (t-77th) |
For where he was drafted, Gaunce might be interpreted as a bust, but he’s still on the NHL periphery as of 2019/20, so he’s at least not quite as busty as Jensen. Gaunce is what he is at this point, and that’s a reliable minor-league call-up — not without value, but not someone you’d want to draft in the top two rounds.
Gaunce might just sneak into the third round of a re-draft, but it’d be late in the third round.
Re-Draft Position: ~80th Overall (-54)
2013 Draft
Bo Horvat, 9th Overall
25, C | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 446 (7th) | 120 (t-4th) | 155 (9th) | 275 (5th) | 0.62 (8th) |
After two disappointing draft picks to start us off, we’ve finally got a climber on our hands. Ranking higher than his draft position in every major statistical category except assists — and with an even more impressive statline once playoffs are factored in — Horvat would go higher in a re-draft than he did in the actual 2013 NHL Entry Draft. But how much higher?
Only Nathan MacKinnon, Aleksander Barkov, and Seth Jones are head and shoulders above the Canucks’ captain. Horvat belongs in the next tier alongside names like Jake Guentzel, Sean Monahan, Anthony Mantha, Brett Pesce, Elias Lindholm, Josh Morrissey, and Shea Theodore. Of that list, Guentzel and Theodore seem like the strongest candidates to be selected before Horvat.
Re-Draft Position: 6th Overall (+3)
Hunter Shinkaruk, 24th Overall
26, LW | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 15 (81st) | 2 (t-69th) | 2 (t-76th) | 4 (t-74th) | 0.27 (42nd) |
At first glance, Shinkaruk’s point-per-game rate might make him look like the most successful of the Canucks’ recent first-round busts, but that’s more the result of a small sample size than anything. In reality, there are close to a hundred other players from the 2013 draft class that have shown significantly more NHL usefulness than Shinkaruk.
Once the centrepiece of a controversial trade, now Shinkaruk wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow if he fell outside the first three rounds of a re-draft.
Re-Draft Position: ~99th (-75)
2014 Draft
Jake Virtanen, 6th Overall
24, RW | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 279 (15th) | 50 (t-14th) | 45 (28th) | 95 (24th) | 0.34 (t-35th) |
Virtanen is not a bust. Sure, the Canucks drafted him way too high, but Virtanen is still a borderline first-round talent, despite what his point-per-game rate may indicate. Consider that some of the names ahead of Virtanen on that PPG leaderboard include Nikolay Goldobin, Josh Ho-Sang, and Louis Belpedio, he of three NHL games.
With a couple of almost-20-goal seasons under his belt, Virtanen probably belongs somewhere in the late first round, jockeying for position with the likes of Sam Bennett, Nick Ritchie, and, yes, Jared McCann.
Re-Draft Position: 29th Overall (-23)
Jared McCann, 24th Overall
24, C | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 310 (9th) | 52 (13th) | 71 (14th) | 123 (15th) | 0.40 (t-26th) |
Let’s just cut right to the chase and address what we’re all wondering: would McCann go higher than Virtanen in a re-draft?
McCann has been a more consistent presence in the NHL, though Virtanen’s past season represents a higher peak than anything McCann has accomplished. Both players have struggled to gain the trust of their coach, and they were both scratched in the 2020 postseason.
For now, McCann’s reliability probably puts him slightly over the top, but that could change in the very near future.
Re-Draft Position: 28th Overall (-4)
2015 Draft
Brock Boeser, 23rd Overall
23, RW | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 197 (23rd) | 75 (9th) | 86 (13th) | 161 (10th) | 0.82 (7th) |
A year ago, Boeser would have ranked in the upper echelons of any 2015 re-draft. A bit of a stepback season for Boeser and breakouts for several other draftmates have conspired to drop him a few spots, but he remains firmly ensconced within the top half of the first round and represents the Canucks’ biggest climber by far.
Rating obviously ahead of Boeser are, of course, the six players with higher PPGs; Connor McDavid, Mitch Marner, Jack Eichel, Mikko Rantanen, Mathew Barzal, and Sebastian Aho.
That’s where it gets tricky. Of those ranked below Boeser in PPG, defenders Thomas Chabot, Zach Werenski, and Ivan Provorov seem like sure bets to leapfrog him. Then, there are arguments to be made for Kyle Connor, Anthony Cirelli, and Ilya Samsonov. We’ll lean into our hometown bias and give Boeser the edge on two of the three, but it’s darn close.
Re-Draft Position: 12th Overall (+11)
2016 Draft
Olli Juolevi, 5th Overall
22, LD | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 |
As we arrive at our first Canucks draftee with zeroes across the board — save for a single game this past postseason — we also fortuitously arrive in “too soon to call” territory. Traditional hockey wisdom holds that any re-draft fewer than five years out is a fool’s errand. We’re going to give it a shot, anyway.
A full 68 other 2016-drafted skaters have played at least one regular-season game, and 55 of them have recorded points, but it remains possible that Juolevi is still a more promising NHL prospect than at least some of them. Indeed, as one whittles through the list, at least half are players that most Vancouver fans wouldn’t be comfortable swapping Juolevi for. It’s definitely possible to find 31 better players than Juolevi in the 2016 draft, but not many more than that.
Re-Draft Position: ~33rd Overall (-28)
2017 Draft
Elias Pettersson, 5th Overall
22, C | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 139 (5th) | 55 (1st) | 77 (2nd) | 132 (2nd) | 0.95 (1st/2nd) |
That Pettersson is the most successful offensive player in his draft year thus far isn’t really in question. The only reason he’s not first overall in points-per-game is Morgan Geekie and his probably unsustainable four points in two games. Pettersson is scheduled to pass Nico Hischier for the top spot in assists and points within the first month of the 2021 season, and he might not ever give it up.
But before Pettersson claims the coveted retroactive-first-overall crown, he’ll need to fend off challenges from two defenders in Cale Makar and Miro Heiskanen. Makar took home rookie of the year honours (grumble, grumble) and isn’t far off Pettersson’s career PPG, while Heiskanen carried the Dallas Stars to the Stanley Cup Final on the back of his two-way excellence.
Pick any of the three at first overall, and you’re walking away satisfied. We’ll give it to Pettersson for now on the strength of his complete game, but it’s a photo finish and the race isn’t anywhere near over.
Re-Draft Position: 1st Overall (+4)
2018 Draft
Quinn Hughes, 7th Overall
21, LD | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 73 (5th) | 8 (t-6th) | 48 (3rd) | 56 (4th) | 0.77 (1st) |
Josh Elliott-Wolfe already made the argument, and we don’t find much reason to differ. What Rasmus Dahlin has done in Buffalo is impressive, and he has all the makings of a franchise defenseman. Andrei Svechnikov is destined to become one of the NHL’s premier wingers, and he’s doing so with serious style.
But Hughes is already leading the draft class in PPG after his rookie campaign, and it’s tough to imagine his production going down. Vancouver fans already know how special of a player they have in Hughes, and the rest of the 2018 class is going to have a hell of a time playing catch-up.
Re-Draft Position: 1st Overall (+6)
2019 Draft
Vasili Podkolzin, 10th Overall
19, RW | Games | Goals | Assists | Points | PPG |
Career (Draft rank) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 |
Okay, this one is definitely too soon to call, especially so in the case of Podkolzin, a player whose progress has been sandbagged by the politics of KHL deployment. The Hockey News recently ranked Podkolzin as having surpassed Alex Turcotte and Philip Broberg, sliding up to eighth place, but that’s mostly arbitrary at this point.
Time will have to tell, because we can’t.
Re-Draft Position: ???
Does anyone else sneak into a retroactive first round?
There are also a handful of players that the Canucks have drafted outside the first round over the past decade that might slip into the first round of their respective re-drafts.
Thatcher Demko went 36th overall in 2014, just missing out on the first round. Now on the cusp of establishing himself as an NHL starting goaltender, Demko would easily climb at least a dozen spots if the draft were redone today.
Adam Gaudette was a fifth-rounder in 2015. If a re-draft occurred right this very moment, he might not have climbed all the way up to the first round, but he’d be awful close, and another solid season probably gets him in there.
Beyond that, it’s just too soon to say, though all of Michael DiPietro, Jack Rathbone, Tyler Madden, and Nils Höglander certainly have the potential.