We continue on Hughes week with looking back at his draft season, and what the Canucks can potentially learn from that year as they approach one of the most important drafts in franchise history.

Heading into the 2018 NHL Draft Lottery, the Canucks held the sixth-best odds at drafting first overall. But as is the Canucks lottery luck, they fell to seventh overall.

The Buffalo Sabres had the best odds and kept their first-overall selection. With the 11th-best odds to move up, the Carolina Hurricanes moved all the way up to second overall. And the Montreal Canadiens jumped just one spot, moving from fourth to third overall.

Rasmus Dahlin was the consensus No. 1 draft selection for his entire draft season and was viewed as the prized possession of the class. Following him were a trio of forwards in Andrei Svechnikov, Filip Zadina, and Brady Tkachuk. Then the next run was defenceman, highlighted by Noah Dobson, Evan Bouchard, Adam Boqvist and Hughes.

But of course, drafts are never that predictable.

The first two selections went as expected, with the Sabres selecting Dahlin and the Hurricanes drafting Svechnikov. Then we saw the Canadiens shock the world and select centreman Jesperi Kotkaniemi.

That was a shock. Kotkaniemi was not regarded as a high draft pick heading into his year, but his stock grew increasingly as the draft process went along. According to NHL.com’s final mock draft, Kotkaniemi was projected to go ninth overall. Still a top-10 selection, but Kotkaniemi was clearly on the other side of the tier break.

However, the Canadiens needed a centre. They had Alex Galchenyuk, Phillip Danault and an aging Tomas Plekanec. Montreal did not have that bona fide top-six centre to lead them into the future, so they reached on Kotkaniemi.

The next pick was less surprising, seeing the Ottawa Senators run up to select Brady Tkachuk. But the Arizona Coyotes’ selection at fifth overall was just as surprising as what the Canadiens did at third, when they drafted another centre, Barrett Hayton.

Like Kotkaniemi, Hayton was viewed on the wrong side of the tier break, but became the more appetizing option for the Coyotes given their recent draft selections.

Nine of Arizona’s 14 draft selections in the 2016 and 2017 drafts were defencemen. Two of their three first-round picks in those seasons were spent on defencemen, selecting Jakob Chychrun and PO Joseph. So, selecting the centre in Hayton over the defenceman in Hughes could be justified at the time.

That left the Detroit Red Wings with a decision to make: select the falling Filip Zadina, or draft from the second tier of defencemen, highlighted by someone in their backyard, in Michigan Wolverine Quinn Hughes.

Ultimately, the Red Wings decided to end the fall and select Zadina. In an interview with The Athletic’s Harman Dayal, Red Wings GM Ken Holland said, “We did our ranking, our final list, and my expectations coming in were that we were going to take a defenceman. We didn’t expect Zadina to be on the board when we picked and we were excited to get him in Detroit. … We were going for a guy that we thought could be a scorer in the top six.”

Diving into the Red Wings prospect pool at the time, the Red Wings had a plethora of defencemen drafted in the first three rounds over the past three drafts already in the system: Vili Saarijarvi, Dennis Cholowski, Filip Hronek, Gustav Lindstrom, and Kasper Kotkansalo. So, they could use a high-profile scoring winger to add to their prospect pool.

Dayal later shared that while Holland wouldn’t confirm which of that next crop of defencemen was at the top of their list, Hughes was not at the top of that list. So even if the Red Wings passed on Zadina, Hughes would likely be there for the Canucks’ taking. But another wrinkle comes when determining whether the Canucks would let Zadina slide even further, or select him over Hughes if they had the opportunity.

This, of course, allowed the Canucks to select Hughes with the seventh overall pick. The selection was an absolute home run for Vancouver, and with him leading the entire draft class in points, it easily contends for the best pick in the entire draft. But had it not been for some reaches and fallings throughout the first six picks, Hughes may never have landed in the Canucks lap.

Fast forward to this season, where Hughes is now a member of the Minnesota Wild, and the Canucks are hoping to strike gold yet again in the 2026 NHL Draft. With that in mind, what can the Canucks learn from that draft?

Well, it’s simple. The Canadiens and Coyotes drafted for positional need, and it didn’t really work out for them.

Kotkaniemi played 171 games for the Canadiens before he was offer sheeted by the Hurricanes. In those games with Montreal, Kotkaniemi scored just 22 goals and 40 assists for 62 points. Hayton, still a member of the relocated franchise that drafted him, has played 358 games for the Coyotes/Mammoth, scoring 65 goals and 90 assists for 155 points.

Those aren’t complete busts; however, passing up on the crop of high-end defencemen that went shortly after them – Hughes 481 points in 501 games, Bouchard 324 points in 421 games, and Dobson 276 points in 461 games – to draft for positional need delayed their rebuild. Sure, they are on the come-up now. But it took them a few years longer than it likely would have if they had drafted the best player available rather than filling voids on their roster.

The Canucks are in a similar position to those teams today. If the Canucks end up falling to third overall and miss out on the top two wingers in the draft (Gavin McKenna and Ivar Stenberg), that leaves them with a deep crop of promising young defencemen (Keaton Verhoeff, Chase Reid, Alberts Smits, Carson Carels, and Daxon Rudolph) to choose from.

However, looking at the Canucks’ young talent on the roster that will be a part of the team’s future, they have a solid foundation on the blueline with Zeev Buium, Tom Willander, and Elias Pettersson. Whereas down the middle of the ice, outside of Braeden Cootes, the Canucks don’t really have organizational depth at the centre position.

There are a pair of centre options who are projected to be top-10 picks (Caleb Malhotra and Tynan Lawrence). But the question becomes whether they deserve to be there based on pure talent, or is it more like the cheerleader effect with the lack of centres in this draft, where the individuals are perceived as more attractive when compared to the group they’re a part of, rather than taking a step back and looking at them individually compared to the entire crop.

Malhotra and Lawrence look like promising NHL prospects, but are they getting pushed up ahead of some of these defencemen purely because of the position they play?

With how the season has gone, the Canucks need just about everything to help them. So, at the start of their rebuild, it’s important the Canucks learn from the mistakes made ahead of them by the Canadiens and Coyotes passing up on Quinn Hughes to reach for a pair of underperforming centres, and select the best player available at the top of the draft, rather than drafting for positional need.