Earlier this week, we wrote a piece congratulating CanucksArmy alumnus Rhys Jessop on winning the Stanley Cup as a part of the Carolina Hurricanes’ front office.

In that article, we brought up Sham Sharron — the fictional “summer intern who doesn’t watch hockey” that Jessop and fellow ex-CanucksArmy writer-turned-NHL front-office member Josh Weissbock created (based on a similar exercise from Leafs blog Pension Plan Puppets). Sham’s purpose was to ask and answer the question: Could a painfully simple system of drafting out-draft an NHL scouting department?

As was found for multiple draft years, the answer was yes. On the whole, the answer was yes to the point that it was downright concerning:

Since that article, we’ve only called Sham up once, back in 2021. Some highlights from that piece were that in the 2014 draft, Sham selected Nikolaj Ehlers instead of Jake Virtanen, snagged Brayden Point in the second round (Sham has never played the game, so he doesn’t know that the undersized Point is obviously too small to have a chance of making it in the NHL), and also selected Conor Garland, who went undrafted in that draft class in real life. Then Sham makes the no-brainer pick of Matthew Tkachuk over Olli Juolevi and juices his numbers. It was quite the showing from Sham, though the Canucks did out-draft him during most of the Judd Brackett years, as Sham unfortunately didn’t know that Quinn Hughes or Elias Pettersson existed.

For today’s exercise, we’re matching Sham up against the Canucks’ drafting since. Todd Harvey was promoted to the Canucks’ Head of Amateur Scouting in time for the 2020 NHL Draft, and the last time we brought Sham out, we stopped at 2019, meaning we have six new years’ worth of draft classes to go over.

Let’s dive into it.

First, a reminder of the criteria that we — I mean Sham — will be following:

The big one here is that instead of Joni Jurmo, Sham selects Justin Sourdif, the prospect who spent his junior season right in the Canucks’ backyard with the WHL’s Vancouver Giants. Sourdif tallied 15 goals and 20 assists through 78 games this past season. In reality, Sourdif went five picks after Jurmo, as the Florida Panthers selected him with the 87th overall pick. Sham also grabs Adam Raska with his last pick, who has played 13 career NHL games. That’s not much, but it is 13 more than everybody else the Canucks selected in this draft.

Another year where Sham finds a great talent from the CHL where the Canucks elected to look overseas. Here, the Canucks select Danila Klimovich, while Sham goes with Logan Stankoven because Sham doesn’t scout and missed that one tournament where Klimovich racked up a bunch of power play goals for Belarus. Sham also snags two guys who have played NHL games in the fifth round in Justin Robidas and Joshua Roy.

Sham flat-out reached by taking Jagger Firkus with the 15th overall pick, but he just couldn’t ignore the 80 points Firkus put up. Sham passed on other prolific CHL scorers like Reid Schaefer and Owen Beck in order to select Firkus, and Firkus has yet to play any NHL games, though he did put up 56 points in 63 AHL games this past season, so maybe Sham will be laughing at all of us in a few years’ time. With Lekkerimäki and Elias Junior Pettersson to show for it, the Canucks take this draft while Sham holds out hope that Jagger Firkus can figure it out one day.

Tom Willander looks poised to be a bottom-four NHL defenceman, with real potential to develop into a solid 2/3. But for now, Zach Benson, the kid from Chilliwack that Sham selected at 11th overall, has played more NHL games and scored five goals in 13 playoff games. If the goal is to get the most NHL games out of a draft class, then Sham has the edge over the Canucks here as well. This will certainly be a fun one to look back on down the line. Denver Barkey is a nice find for Sham in the third round as well. Barkey, who turned 21 in April, appeared in 10 playoff games with the Philadelphia Flyers during the most recent playoffs.

The book is certainly still out on the 2024 draft class, but Riley Patterson sure looks promising at this juncture. None of these players — Sham’s or the Canucks’ selections — have played NHL games, so it’s up to interpretation to assign a “winner”, but we’d lean Canucks here.

Cole Reschny’s 92 points in 62 games caught Sham’s attention more than Braeden Cootes’s 63 points did, so Sham went with Reschny at 15th overall. Cootes earned an NHL roster spot out of his first training camp, and Reschny did not. POINT CANUCKS! Sorry, we don’t make the rules.

As always, we conclude by looking at the total NHL games played from Sham’s crop of picks against the Canucks’. Here are the results:

To me, the purpose of Sham Sharron isn’t to debate if it’s the Canucks or the laziest fictional intern imaginable that has the “better” drafting record. It’s instead to point out that it’s pretty darn close, and that’s at least a bit concerning.

Let’s hope they take Sham to the cleaners in a little over a week when they enter one of the most pivotal drafts in franchise history.