Canucks Draft Thatcher Demko 36th overall

I think it’s safe to say that on this platform we’ve been fairly critical of the way the Vancouver Canucks have conducted their drafts; both in the past, and as recently as last night’s opening round. It’s always tough to tell how much responsibility the general manager takes in relation to the rest of his scouting department, but there was a sense of optimism around these parts that Jim Benning’s relatively impressive draft record back when he ran the show in Buffalo would come in handy. Really, it couldn’t get any worse than it was during the Mike Gillis regime. 

Three picks in, it appears that the optimism was misguided; a whole lot of those very same problems that have plagued them over the years are rearing their ugly head all over again. After playing it safe with picks number 6 and 24, the Canucks watched uber talented faller Ivan Barbashev get taken just three picks before they settled for a goalie. A goalie, from Boston College, playing for the Vancouver Canucks. This ought to end well!

Here are the list of goalies that have been taken in the top two rounds since 2000:

The main takeaway: who the hell really knows. For every John Gibson there’s a Christopher Gibson, and for every Jimmy Howard there’s a Jeff Frazee. Goalies are a total crapshoot, and it’s why we’ve seen the paradigm drastically shift in favour of not burning higher picks on goalies, but instead using them to select skaters with a higher probability of having useful NHL careers.

Thatcher Demko had fine enough numbers in his first year at Boston College, and he may very well turn out to be the number on goalie for the Vancouver Canucks one day. But the odds of that are pretty minuscule based on what we know about the position, and even then, it won’t be for a number of years.