Welcome back to WDYTT, the only hockey column on the internet capable of giving you butterflies in your stomach on a weekly basis.

Speaking of gut feelings, sometimes they’re one of the best ways of getting to the truth. Other times, they’re not. And if we know our readership well enough, we’d predict that the vast majority of you got some sort of feeling in your guts when you read the litany of headlines related to Canucks’ goaltending this past week.

The news came fast, furious, and free of fortune. First, it was Thatcher Demko might not be ready for Training Camp. Then it was that the Canucks were “poking around” the goalie market as a result. Then it came out that Demko might not even be ready for the regular season. Then it was speculated that this was all a result of the Canucks’ insisting on Demko making it back for regular season action in 2023/24 in order to see if he was ready for the playoffs. Then goalie coach extraordinaire Ian Clark stepped back into a smaller role in a decision that caught many off-guard.

It was quite a bit in the span of a week, and we’re just as overwhelmed as the rest of you.

Which brings us back to the topic of guts: In times like this, it’s often useful to perform a bit of a ‘gut-check’ with our audience. A temperature-taking. You’ve all had a lot of headlines related to the crease of the Vancouver Canucks thrown at you over the past several days. You’ve had the comforting rug that is having a starting goaltender of Demko’s quality ripped right out from under your feet.

So, this week, we’re simply asking:

Let it be known in the comment section.

You answered below!

Best pick is a no brainer. Pavel Bure.

The worst pick… my god, there’s so many to choose from, lol. I’ll say Dan Woodley, because Brian Leetch was picked two spots after.

Worst: I’m sure Juolevi will be mentioned. But what about last names you can’t even remember like Hunter, Brenden, and Nicklas.

Best: Bure, but this was a trick pick. Are the Sedins at picks two and three as good as Kesler at 23?

Best hands down is Bure…though Hughes may turn out to be the best.

Jannik Hansen was best of the end of the draft picks by a mile.

Patrick White was the first name that popped into my head of the bad first rounders.

But I think Jason Herter was worse, followed by Alex Stojanov.

Dishonourable mention to Dan Woodley.

It really should not be an argument about Bure being the best, but it was so irregular. The worst, out of many, was Patrick White. How could an unproven high school hockey player have been such a selection?

The best pick is a tough one. 6th rounder Bure is in there, as are the Sedins and 3rd rounder Stan Smyl. For me, this comes down to value at the draft position, as well as overall long-term importance to this team. Bure and Smyl came in later rounds, but even though they were 2nd and 3rd overall, I’m still going with the Sedins, and since Daniel was first, I am taking him.

Reason being that the maneuvering that went on to get this pick was unprecedented and unlikely to ever be repeated. This set the team up for a lot of great hockey for a long time and two players with over 2600 games combined as Canucks is nothing to sneeze at.

Worst pick, well lots to choose from here as well. I am taking Patrick White though. I was one who was ingrained in the David Perron camp as were many other Canuck fans. Guess what? Perron went next and has played over 1100 NHL games. When this pick was made it felt like Nonis simply went off of Bob McKenzie’s draft guide and took the next guy up without knowing a thing about him.

Well, Bure has been covered, so I’m going to go with our Norris Trophy winner. but if you’re going for value and not fall-in-your-lap obvious choices, you gotta think Kesler at #23 was a pretty sweet evaluation. And while he wasn’t a Canuck draft pick, Sami Salo at #239 for the Sens wasn’t too shabby either.

Best – Rick Vaive, 441 career goals.

Worst – Dale Tallon… The original sin.

I’m going to stick with recent selections instead of my lifetime. For the worst selection, I would have to pick Juolevi. Mostly based on the fact that they could have had Tkachuk. As for the best, I’ll pick Pettersson. His selection caught 90% of people off-guard. He never got a lot of praise by the sports analysts pre-draft. He was kind of an under-the-radar selection. Unlike Hughes, who dropped into our lap after Detroit fumbled their selection. Unlike the Sedins, who took many years to be really good. Pettersson wowed us as soon as he stepped on the ice.

Agree with the consensus that Bure is the best; however, I will go off the board for the worst: Petr Nedved. He was a fine player, but I wanted them to draft Jagr at that time. With Bure and Jagr, we could have won the Cup!

My lifetime covers the entire Canucks NHL history, so I’ll go with favourite/least favourite (instead of best/worst) picks since I really became a Canucks fan in the late ‘80s. Without the benefit of hindsight!!

Least favourite: this is a target-rich environment, but I’ll go off the board — as the Canucks loved to do — with Michael Grabner, 2006 R1 (14 OA). At the time I was an STH with the Vancouver Giants, and saw a lot of Grabner when he played for the Spokane Chiefs. He was the dictionary definition of a Euro-floater-goal-suck if ever there was one. The Canucks had actually been making an effort to avoiding drafting good old hard-nosed Canadian WHL players at the time, so to select an import softie had me swearing like you wouldn’t believe. Honourable mentions: Patrick White, Jordan Schroeder, Jason Herter.

Favourite: A few excellent picks by the team, but without hindsight I’ll have to go with Petr Nedved for nostalgic reasons. I was with a group of buddies at the then-new GM Place live for the draft, and Nedved was revered for his guts to defect and play in the WHL. Hindsight… well, yeah, not so much. Maybe that is why I was so negative on Grabner a few years later. I thought Quinn Hughes was going to be a mistake with Bouchard and Dobson still available, which may not have been such a good take then but more recently the gap has closed a bit. Honourable mentions: None really without hindsight. EDIT: Trevor Linden: good hard working Canadian prairie kid vs flashy American Modano. My old biases are clear!

Just to throw someone other than Bure out there…best pick: Cam Neely. Though I think Hughes is a good choice, too (at least we kept Hughes!) Worst pick: Jason Herter…at eighth overall in the draft, to only play one NHL game is a real disappointment. Granted, Patrick White never even played in the NHL, but at 25th…that’s like a second round pick.

My favourite draft picks are Hank and Daniel…but one has to wonder what they would have done playing apart…so can’t count them as a single draft pick.

Patrick White was the worst first round draft pick for the Canucks ever. He didn’t even get a sniff of the NHL. Lucky the Canucks were able to trade him for Christian Erhoff.

Next worst pick is Olli Juolevi, who was a complete bust.

The best draft picks in my life time were Daniel and Henrik Sedin who were drafted 2nd and 3rd overall. Brian Burke was masterful in making the trades needed to get them.

The next best for me is the drafting of Pavel Bure, an electric player. The Canucks seemed to be the only team to realize Bure was eligible to drafted, and he was literally a draft steal.

Best: Bure, and it is not even close.

Honourable Mentions: Kesler, Petey, the Sedins, and Schneider

Worst :Olli Juolevi or Virtanen. Although there is a long list of busts, these two were top-five picks that should never end up being busts.

My lifetime spans the whole history of the NHL Canucks (and a lot of years before.) Worst draft picks ever: there are a legion of them, but Josh Holden, Patrick White, Dan Woodley, Jason Herter, Olli Juolevi, and Jake Virtanen stand out for me. I think I’ll show some recency bias and pick Olli Juolevi as the worst of all-time. Best of all-time has to be Pavel Bure with Quinn Hughes a close second. Honourable mentions: Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, and Cam Neely.

Worst: Libor Polasek. A first round pick that was touted to be the Czech version of Mark Messier. I don’t think he even made it to a Canucks training camp.

Best: Hughes.

Worst: Juolevi.

Both drafted by JB.

Since I’ve only been a Canucks fan for the last 15 years, I’m going to modify the question to cover that time period:

*Best – Quinn Hughes. Pettersson has the potential to surpass him, but for a team with a notorious gap in defense to get a Norris-winning captain at 7th pick is fantastic.

* Worst. Juolevi – highlighted by the fact that Matthew Tkachuk got snagged by hated Calgary the very next pick (thankfully, the Flames didn’t get to enjoy him for too long).

Hopping in to echo Wilson here.

I think watching the draft live might impact how one feels about this question, because everyone who watched the 2016 Entry Draft had to same exact feeling.
“From the London Knights…”
For a moment there, Matthew Tkachuk was a Vancouver Canuck. Then the sentence was finished, and the half-hearted justifications began. I, like many, fell into the trap. “Well, Juolevi was the highest-rated D according to…”

It was all always bologna. Tkachuk was and is the pick that everyone wanted, and to have him ripped away midway through a pick announcement was the worst.

And that’s not even mentioning how it’s worked out since then.

For worst, there are a lot of good options. I’m going with Cody Hodgson, due to draft position and expectations. The drama that followed him around was exhausting.

For best, I’d say Bure for sure. But a shout out to Jannik Hansen as well. Round 9, 287 overall. Great value pick.

Best that was traded to soon: Cam Neely.

Worst of all time: Jake Virtanen. Such a shame, I had such high expectations for that player.

Worst: Marc Crawford.

Pat Quinn used to say he thought Crawford was a Russian, because the fans always used to scream “We want Crawford-off.”

Best: Bertuzzi, although drafted by NYI, the best power forward the Canucks ever got.

As someone else mentioned, I was a young ‘un when hockey grabbed ahold of me and it was King Richard that got me hooked in that ’82 series when I started following.

From a personal perspective actually watching the drafts, I can’t do just one best pick;

Best:

2.Pavel Bure. I knew he was ranked extremely high to go in the next year’s draft, so I could not believe it when they called his name. Took me completely off-guard.

Worst:

Not drafting Mickey Renaud. Can’t remember who we got, but having moved to southern Ontario, I was/am a Windsor Spitfires fan and wanted so bad for Vancouver to get him and I remembered Calgary drafted him very shortly before us. Rest in peace.

Best: Jannik Hansen. Drafted 287th and ended up playing 626 games. For reference, this year’s draft had 224 picks.

Worst: Dan Woodley. Picked 7th overall in 1986, he played five games in the NHL. Unlike Juolevi, he never had the excuse of injuries. Brian Leetch was selected two picks later.

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