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Did the Canucks Unintentionally Reveal Their 2010 Draft Board?

Thomas Drance
10 years ago
alt
Screenshot via Canucks TV
On Monday we quoted a Laurence Gilman interview about draft preparation that was posted by Canucks TV. We then embedded the video in full in our daily headshots post. Obviously we weren’t paying close enough attention, as the above image and its potential significance completely escaped us.
Luckily the good folks at HFBoards, and user "thefeebster" in particular, are comparatively sharper instruments. At 1:31 of the aforementioned draft video, "thefeebster" noticed what appears to be a Canucks master draft list from the "2010 Final Meeting." This document, which certainly looks like how we’d imagine the Canucks draft list for the 2010 NHL Draft would, becomes legible if you adjust the quality of the video to 1080 pixels and zoom in a few times…
Read on past the jump.
First off, it would seem to be pretty careless for the Canucks to let a potentially sensitive – and potentially embarrassing – document like this surface publicly. Just because it’s somewhat shocking and uncharacteristic of the organization, I find it difficult to imagine that the above image is actually a screencap of the teams 2010 draft board.
On the other hand, the rankings on this document certainly don’t match up with, say, the ISS list for 2010. Also, you can see annotations at the top-half of the left column, and it appears that whichever member of the front office to whom this document belonged was scrawling the actual draft order on the list itself (before giving up early in the second round). That leads me to believe that it is what it looks like, but obviously we can’t say for certain either way.
"TheFeebster" took the time to transcribe the entire list into a more readable format, and we’ve copy and pasted his work into this post:
  1. Hall
  2. Seguin
  3. Burmistrov
  4. Gormley
  5. JACK CAMPBELL
  6. Tarasenko
  7. Gudbranson
  8. Skinner
  9. Fowler
  10. Forbort
  11. Johansen
  12. Connelly
  13. McIlrath
  14. Visentin
  15. Granlund
  16. Kuznetsov
  17. Nino
  18. Tinordi
  19. Bennett
  20. Sheahan
  21. Bjugstad
  22. Merrill
  23. Melchiori
  24. Corbiel-Therault
  25. Hishon
  26. McNally
  27. Straka, Petr
  28. Jarnkrok, Calle
  29. Gailev, Stanislav
  30. Lindberg, Oscar
  31. Polasek, Adam
  32. Kabanov
  33. Ross, Brad
  34. Rensfeldt
  35. Hayes, Kevin
  36. Dominque, Louis
  37. Petterson-Wentzel
  38. Schwartz, Jaden
  39. Knight, Jared
  40. McFarland, John
  41. Faulk, Justin
  42. Zucker, Jason
  43. Larsson, Johan
  44. Watson, Austin
  45. Toffoli, Tyler
  46. Etem, Emerson
  47. Pitlick, Tyler
  48. Pickard, Calvin
  49. Johns, Stephen
  50. Pysyk, Mark
  51. Marincin, Martin
  52. Culek, Jakub
  53. Howden, Quinton
  54. Hamilton, Curtis
  55. Friesen, Alex
  56. Spooner, Ryan
  57. Gudas, Radko
  58. Mrazek, Petr
  59. Holl, Justin 
  60. Pulkkinen, Teemu
  61. Wannstrom, Sebastion
  62. Bocharov, Stanislav
  63. Nelson, Brock
  64. Alt, Mark
  65. Martindale, Ryan
  66. McNeill, Reid 
  67. Aubry, Louis
  68. Leach, Joey
  69. MacMillan, Mark
  70. Petrovic, Alex
  71. Simpson, Kent
  72. Brittain, Sam
  73. Cehlin, Patrick
  74. Gustafsson, Johan
  75. Iilahti, Jonathan
  76. Brodin, Danielk
  77. Nemeth, Patrik
  78. Coyle, Charlie
  79. McCormick, Max
  80. Kitsyn, Maxim
  81. Donskoi, Joonas
  82. Wind, Cameron
  83. Smith Pelley, Devante
  84. Tommernes, Henrik
  85. Hannay, Sawyer
  86. Zahn, Teigan
  87. MacKenzie, Matt
  88. Weal, Jordan
  89. Chudinov, Maxim
  90. Houser, Michael
  91. Wedgewood, Scott
  92. Sundher, Kevin
  93. Beukeboom, Brock
  94. O’Donnell, Brendan
  95. Herbert, Caleb 
  96. Archibald, Brandon
  97. Chaput, Michael
  98. Salmivirta, Mikael
  99. Hjalmarsson, Simon
  100. Marchenko, Alexei
  101. Brickley, Connor
  102. Clark, Jason 
  103. Henley, Cedrick
  104. Gauthier Leduc, Jerome
  105. Gardiner, Max
  106. Schemitsch, Geoffrey
  107. Smith, Dalton
  108. Yogan, Andrew
  109. Barbeshev, Sergei
  110. Hakanpaa, Jani
  111. Aittokallio, Sami
  112. Stahl, Tyler
  113. Kantor, Michael
  114. Marshall, Ben 
  115. Abeltshauser, Konrad
  116. Shipley, Steven
  117. Kuhnhackl, Tom
  118. Bulmer, Brett
  119. Grubauer, Phillip
  120. Arnold, Bill
I’m just blown over by how fascinating this list is – if it’s truly Vancouver’s 2010 draft board, that is. For example, you’ll remember that the Canucks traded their 2010 first round pick to Florida in the Keith Ballard acquisition, but the traded pick was a conditional one. That condition? That if one of a short list of players remained on the board when the twenty-fifth overall selection rolled around, then Vancouver would keep the pick and surrender their first round pick for the 2011 NHL Draft instead. If memory serves, the trade was ultimately completed when the Montreal Canadiens selected Jared Tinordi with the 22nd overall pick in the draft.
So which players other than Tinordi were the Canucks hoping would be available with the twenty-fifth overall pick? We know, I suppose, that the list didn’t extend past #22 (because John Merril, Vancouver’s 22nd ranked prospect according to this list which may or may not be anything, wasn’t selected until the 38th pick). So was Nick Bjugstad, who the Canucks were reportedly very desirous of last summer, among those protected players? Was Riley Sheahan?
I also find it pretty fascinating that that the Canucks had two goaltenders ranked in the top-15 of their draft list. That’s an illuminating nugget with respect to how the club views prospect goaltenders…
Notable "wtf" features of this draft list include Charlie Coyle being ranked in the mid-70s on the list. Already in Coyle’s young career he’s proved that assessment to be way off the mark. The other massively questionable scouting decision? Jack Campbell at fifth overall. Yikes.
Still, I’m not sure having Jack Campbell ranked fifth overall is any worse for Canucks fans than the fact that local product and already productive NHLer Brendan Gallagher wasn’t on the teams radar, like at all. Obviously they just didn’t view him as a prospect…
Of course, it’s not all bad. At least the Canucks scouting staff nailed Taylor Hall over Tyler Seguin. There are also some pretty interesting late round pick outs, which is something you like to see.
Finally, the Canucks had Henrik Tommernes – a player they ultimately selected with their 7th round pick a year later, in 2011 – ranked one slot ahead of Sawyer Hannay, who they actually did select in the seventh round in 2010. But they passed on Tommernes for some reason in 2010, and waited an additional year to select him. I guess it all worked out, but I’d be curious to hear the rationale behind that sequence of decisions…
So what do you think Canucks fans, is the list real or some sort of prop that we shouldn’t take seriously? 
Sticktap @Bishnu_B

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