2023 NHL Draft Day 2 Faber’s Live Blog: Names to watch and who we’d take with each Canucks pick

We are all set up for day two of the NHL Entry Draft. The Canucks will be busy today with six selections and a busy third and fourth rounds.

The Canucks currently possess the 75th, 89th, 105th, 107th, 119th, and 171st picks in the draft. They are without a second-round pick, so we will have to see if they try to make some moves to change their draft position.

Throughout today’s live blog, we will be giving a quick take on the prospect. To be honest, there may be some that we have not seen or heard about at all — especially with later picks.

We will keep an eye on our list and decide who we would have taken with the pick. Then, five years from now we can see if we hit any home runs or if we were beat by an NHL scouting staff.

I’m going to guess that the NHL scouting staff does better than the blogger but who knows? Sham Sharron was pretty good in his time.

We are just a few minutes away from day two beginning here in Nashville. Breakfast has been served — it’s bacon, eggs, biscuits and gravy as well as some snacks. They ran out of coffee when I went up to get a cup and the wifi is spotty.

The air conditioning is good here and thank goodness because I have been cooking in Nashville over the past four days.

It’s be interesting to see if the Canucks have a chance of moving up into the second round. We don’t think they are getting into the top-50 but can see some ways how they could move up from 75 to the 50-70 range if there’s a player that they really like.

Before we begin round two, let’s note some of the top names that slid out of yesterday’s round one. Gracyn Sawchin, Andrew Cristall and Riley Heidt all seemed like they would be locks in the first round but are still sitting their as day two is about to begin.

We are seeing a bit of a goalie run here with three goalies going in the first nine picks. Adam Gajan is the first goalie off the board as the 35th overall pick to Chicago, Michael Hrabal went 38th overall to the Arizona Coyotes, and Trey Augustine went 41st overall to the Detroit Red Wings.

Round two saw eight defencemen be selected and we now move on to a round where the Canucks actually have a pick. We’re on the third round.

As we enter round three, there are still a lot of quality defencemen on the board. We’ve got our eyes on right-shot defencemen Cam Allen, Gavin McCarthy, Hoyt Stanley, Vojtech Port, and Dylan MacKinnon — all of these RHD make sense for the Canucks. Let’s see how it plays out.

The Canucks went with a right-shot defenceman at 75. They selected the 6’0″, strong puck-mover out of the OHL in Hunter Brzustewicz.

Brzustewicz had 57 points in 68 games this past season. We like the pick a lot as he is an offensive talent who could improve on some of his defensive play but also isn’t really bad at anything. His skating is above-average and it’s more about just building up his overall game — there’s not a weakness that needs to be addressed.

Our pick would have been LD Caden Price out of Kelowna as we believe he is a better defender but he’s also a left-shot guy and we have no problems with the Canucks taking the right-shot Brzustewicz.

With the 89th selection in the draft, the Canucks selected Sawyer Mynio and we love this pick as well. He was top-three on our board at the time of the selection.

Mynio is a good local kid who moves the puck well, isn’t incredible at anything but doesn’t really have a major weakness as well. If he improves his skating, he has a solid chance of becoming a depth defenceman.

Our pick would have been right-shot defenceman Aram Minnetian out of the USNTDP.

We spoke with Mynio and Brzustewics while the Canucks were on the clock for 105 and 107. Both were very excited to be selected by the Canucks. Mynio was born in Kamloops but rooted for the Oilers growing up — he has now changed to rooting for the Canucks, obviously. As for Brzustewics, he told us that he is a big Lego fan and actually built a six-foot-long Titanic recently.

Let’s get to the 105 and 107 picks.

At 105, the Canucks selected 20-yeard-old centre Ty Mueller out of the NCAA. This one certainly came as a surprise as we didn’t expect the Canucks to be selecting a 20-year-old player in the draft.

Mueller had a solid season with Omaha, but honestly, I haven’t watched him at all so I can’t bring much insight here. I don’t love the pick.

My selection at 105 would have been Hoyt Stanley, who ended up going 108th overall in the draft. Stanley grew up a Canucks fan, is a 6’3″ defenceman and slid due to the fact that he played in the BCHL.

As for pick 107, the Canucks selected left-winger Vilmer Alriksson out of Djurgården’s J20 team. Alriksson is a 6’6″ winger who skates well. We’ve had a couple of viewings on him but didn’t see enough to really dive in on the prospect. I guess that will change now as he is officially a Canucks prospect.

Size is always good but this fourth round could have been a lot more fun if they just kept rolling with defencemen.

Our pick at 107 would have been the overage defenceman Rodwin Dionicio. He’s 19 years old and will be coming to the AHL very soon. His offence took a huge step after he was passed on at the 2022 draft and we are somewhat surprised that he is still available in the draft.

At pick 119, the Canucks went with Matthew Perkins out of the USHL. He’s a centre/winger who scouts are saying has below-average skating and hands but thinks the game well. We will have to watch him more to get a true feeling on the type of player that he is but from reading some quick reports, we’re not sold just yet.

We would have gone with Chase Cheslock in this spot. Taking a 6’3″ right-shot defenceman with some upside to be a support defenceman in an NHL team’s bottom-four seems like a good idea for this team at this spot.

The Canucks took another right-shot defenceman with their final pick of the 2023 draft. They selected Aiden Celebrini out of the AJHL. Celebrini is off to Boston University and will join Tom Willander as well as his brother, and projected first overall selection of the 2024 draft, Macklin Celebrini.

Aiden Celebrini is a solid skater, he plays with above-average physically, and just in general, we like this pick. There’s obviously a connection there with his father formerly working for the Canucks. It’s a solid selection in the sixth round but was not much of a home run swing for sure. Celebrini felt like a seventh-round pick but the Canucks went with the right-shot defenceman in the sixth round.

We would have gone with Connor Levis out of Kamloops and the WHL. He is a goal-scoring winger who has played centre at times over his WHL career. He has the potential to be one of the top scorers in the WHL next year. He’s 6’2″, plays physically and has a tremendously quick release.

And that’s it for the Canucks’ draft! Here is the final comparison of who I would have selected compared to who the Canucks actually selected with each pick: