Canucks Draft Gems Retrospective – Part One: Mike Rogers
By Taylor Perry
7 years agoThe NHL draft is a mere 37 days away. Teams will take to the floor of the First Niagara Center in Buffalo, New York and try to select players whom they hope will solidify the futures of their franchises. Fans, meanwhile, will scream at their respective television sets and bemoan the lack of managerial expertise exhibited by their favourite club. (Actually, that may just be a Canuck thing. I’ve gotten in so deep I can no longer tell the difference). Either way, the draft is one of the most important dates on the NHL calendar and it’s a lot of fun for fans – even if your club happens to be historically bad at it.
It’s a common idiom that even a broken clock is correct at least twice a day – or that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile – so even the rather inept Canucks have managed their share of admirable picks. Not their fair share, mind you. The Canucks can point to far fewer successes than most teams over the course of their nearly five decades of existence, given their number of draft picks over that span. But the organization can still point to some successes, all the same. Of course, this being the Canucks, sometimes those players found success with other teams. Where the Canucks and drafting are concerned, credit must be taken wherever it presents itself.
Draft success can be measured in a number of ways, but the focus in this series will be on depth picks – those made after the third round. One need look no further than the Edmonton Oilers to appreciate the importance of these picks. The Canucks might not have a 1990 New Jersey Devils draft record of which to speak (seriously, check out the assets acquired by the Devils that year), but they have had some decent hits with individual picks. And those, of course, will be the centre of our attention in this upcoming series, starting today with a shifty centre from Calgary, Alberta.
Mike Rogers, Centre, 5th round, 77th overall, 1974 Draft
Quick – how many players have the Canucks drafted who went on to record a 100-point season in the NHL? Give yourself a pat on the back if you guessed four. In typical Canucks fashion, however, the first player on the list – the above mentioned Mike Rogers – never played a game with the franchise. But he still managed to score 100 points in an NHL season, which is no easy feat. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, the Canucks drafted him. As might be expected, he hit the century mark in the 1980s – when seemingly everyone was doing it – but he did so in three consecutive seasons, making the feat all the more impressive.
The diminutive centre, even by 1974 standards (he stands a mere 5’9″), was a noted star with the Calgary Centennials of the Western Canadian Hockey League (the present day WHL). In his third and final season with the club, which also happened to be his draft year, he finished third in league scoring with 140 points. One would think that this performance would have attracted the attention of NHL scouts, but this was the 1970s, at the height of the Philadelphia Flyers’ “Broad Street Bullies” hey day. Small players, even very talented ones, had no place in a league that emphasized brawn over skill.
There was also the small matter that Rogers happened to belong to another professional club – the Edmonton Oilers of the fledgling World Hockey Association (WHA). Earlier that year, he had been selected by the Oilers in the second round, 19th overall, of the WHA secret amateur draft. And yes, that is not a typo. The WHA held the first two rounds of its amateur draft behind close doors in February of 1974, only to complete the remaining nine rounds of the draft in May. Nonetheless, this secret draft did not deter other NHL teams from drafting the likes of Clark Gillies, Doug Risebrough, and Dave “Tiger” Williams – players blessed with slightly more physical size.
So the Vancouver Canucks eventually drafted Rogers in the fifth round, after Ron Sedlbauer and future Canuck legend Harold (“Haaaaaa-rold”) Snepsts, and he promptly bolted to the WHA. He proceeded to lead the Oilers in scoring that first season and won the Paul Daneau Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player. Struggling through something of a sophomore slump the following season, Rogers was traded to the New England Whalers. He remained there until the club joined the NHL in 1979.
Now here is where the story takes on an even more sombre tone for Canucks fans. When the Whalers merged with the NHL, the Canucks still held his NHL rights. The organization had the option to claim Rogers – essentially for free – but then-Canucks coach Harry Neale decided to pass on the skilled forward (sound familiar?) believing he couldn’t envision him on the roster. Instead, the Whalers retained Rogers’ rights and he rewarded them by recording back-to-back 105-point seasons. After landing with the New York Rangers, he managed to turn the trick and have one last season of 100 points or more. The only other players to record 100 points in each of their first three NHL seasons are Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Peter Stastny – pretty rarefied company. Rogers continued to be a reliable point producer for the next several years, although not at the level where he began his NHL career. He retired from professional hockey in 1987.
Mike Rogers was more than just the player who got away. He is the player who got away twice, without ever once donning a Canucks uniform. It’s an unfortunate way to commence this series, but an appropriate one. The franchise’s first great pick was never even a Canuck at all. Adding insult to injury, after his retirement, Rogers continued to haunt the Canucks by doing colour commentary for the rival Calgary Flames. Good for him. For Canucks fans, not so much.
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