Welcome back to WDYTT, the only hockey column on the internet that’s somehow still managing.

Speaking of managing, there are some different folks doing it for the Vancouver Canucks these days. New GM Ryan Johnson and co-POHOs Henrik and Daniel Sedin have now been on the job for about a month, and it’s been a pretty big month.

As you’re reading these words, the Canucks’ front office will have completed a number of trades, the 2026 NHL Entry Draft, and at least the opening segment of the Free Agent Frenzy. They’ve been busy, but have they been doing tidy business?

Gone are Nils Höglander and every RFA the team could have retained. Here are Brendan Gallagher and a nine-person new draft class headed by Caleb Malhotra and Adam Novotny. More changes are no doubt on the way, but enough has been done at this point to say that the new regime has made its initial mark.

They say that first impressions count for a lot. Well, Johnson and the Sedins had their first impressions with this fanbase long ago as players. Their first managerial impression is now in the books, too, and we’re very interested to hear your takes – and your grades – about how the Canucks’ front office has performed thus far.

This week, we’re asking:

Let it be known in the comment section.

You answered below!

I quickly scanned the list, and in my opinion, Quinn Hughes is the best first round draft pick that the Canucks ever made.

Sedins, ‘cause they were also a part of the best regular seasons in Canucks history.

The Sedins and Trevor Linden will be popular choices, but I am going with the late Luc Bourdon.

He was a big physical defenseman with a big shot who would have anchored the blueline for years to come and might have been the difference for a first Stanley Cup.

He tragically died much too young in a motorcycle accident.

He overcame a lot just to play hockey including juvenile arthritis, which confined him to a wheelchair as a child.

I have to go with Quinn Hughes. It’s too bad management didn’t build anything around him instead of doing the opposite.

Alex h:
Hughes is a no-brainer for me, the only Norris winner in Canucks history.

Henrik Sedin.

That Cam Neely guy turned out alright elsewhere. Nedved was pretty outstanding.

My Top 5:

Cam Neely doesn’t count.

I believe the most useful answer to this question would be to identify a selection chosen beyond the top few picks, who then turned out much better than his draft slot would have predicted. Ideally, we would be talking about a guy where the Canucks scouts beat the consensus to unearth a gem, or were able to choose a guy who massively outperformed alternative potential choices. So, by those criteria I would tend to disqualify the Sedins (where it was really the trade machinations to acquire the picks, not the draft itself, that was most impressive) as well as Hughes (who was a no-brainer only still on the board because multiple other GMs made powerfully stupid decisions to pass on him). Similarly, I can’t give them too much credit for Trevor Linden at 2nd overall, given how painfully obvious of a pick he was. Otherwise, it’s like saying “Connor McDavid is the best 1st round pick in Oilers history”: yeah, I guess, but all 30 GMs would have picked him 1st, so it was really the Oilers’ successful tank-job and lottery luck that stood out, not their draft day acumen.

By the criteria set above, I believe the best candidates are, in chronological order, Cam Neely (9OA, 1983); Matty Ohlund (13OA, 1994); Ryan Kesler (23OA, 2003); Cory Schneider (26OA, 2004) and Bo Horvat (9OA, 2013). Any of those players would be a defensible choice, but I am going to give the crown to Ohlund. 1994 was a weak draft year, and for the Canucks to get a legitimate blue line rock like Ohlund out of it was a coup, especially considering that the rest of the 1st round witnessed the selection of mostly plumbers, journeymen and outright busts (and of course, Dan Cloutier, 26th overall). It’s hard to overstate just how valuable Mattias was across 11 seasons in Vancouver, and to get him in the teens in a bad year was simply a great piece of drafting, not to mention in a period of Canucks draft history that was otherwise pretty dismal.

To fully understand the question, then you need to be looking at the picks that gave the best value for the draft position, likely going beyond the top 10. With that I give the win to Mattias Ohlund who was taken at 13 OA and was a long-time Canuck and defined the Canucks’ defense during his time on the blue line. Defenders who eat a lot of minutes, take the toughest matchups, and provide offense are hard to come by and often their value is underrated.

Also worth noting is that Ohlund played the 5th most games of any player taken in the first round in 1994 which helps to show that he was a high value pick.

Honorable mention to Ryan Kesler who was a later first round pick but he was also selected in a very strong draft year, arguably the best first round in NHL history.

Caleb Malhotra. RJ&Co believe Manny is the guy best suited to start the journey that brings the team to the promised land. How can they not draft his son when he’s been developing him for almost 20 years!

Chris the Curmudgeon makes an interesting point about who turned out better than expected. Taking that in a slightly different direction, who turned out best relative to their draft year? Here we have an almost indisputable answer. The 1999 draft year is the only year from 1980 to 2015 (which still has 66 active players) that accumulated less than 30,000 games played at 28,048 of which the Sedin twin’s 1636 games accounts for 9.4% of the total. Even more shocking is the meagre 10,523 points earned by all picks from 1999 of which the Sedins accounted for over 20%, with 2111 points between them. They were great by most methods of evaluation, but 20% of the entire draft year is just crazy. So the Sedins get my vote over several other worthy candidates, including Quinn Hughes who needs a few more years to be in the conversation for me – although his current trajectory clearly places him there.

The Sedins. (Yes, that is technically two players, but they are always talked about as one). The Sedins are Hall of Fame players, they are wonderful people who contributed to their community, they were loyal to the team, they are respected by all players in the league, and now they are again part of the Canucks future.

Hughes was great but not loyal.

Harold Drunken:
Alex Stojanov. Seventh overall in 1991. 107 games played, 2 goals, 5 assists.

Traded to Pittsburgh for Markus Naslund.

For me, the greatest first round draft pick in Canucks history is Trevor Linden, with Alex Stojanov a close second, not for what they did on the ice in Vancouver, but for the legendary butterfly effect of their trades. Trading Linden effectively set up the pieces for the West Coast Express and gave management the necessary pieces to facilitate a trade with Chicago to draft the Sedin twins. Stojanov was also one of the greatest picks in history because trading him to Pittsburgh netted the Canucks Markus Naslund. As captain, Naslund built the foundation and culture that turned Vancouver into a perennial playoff force for fifteen years, a feat no other Canuck captain before or after Naslund has been able to accomplish.

Tricky one. Sedins were highly-rated guys picked near the top of the draft where (theoretically) it should be hard to mess things up, BUT Burke’s machinations to get both plus the hindsight clarity that they were literally the only not-wrong picks at the top of that draft, probably make these the “best” picks to me – factoring in value + opportunity cost if they had picked someone else + effort and intentionality needed to actually make it happen.

Hughes was a great pick but arguably also a no-brainer after other teams inexplicably let him fall, plus there were a lot more solid players in that draft so the downside risk was less. But still an excellent call.

Horvat is low-key a really good pick, both in terms of the value from #9 and the risk/boldness of trading Schneider, who at that time was a blue-chip goalie of the future.

Bure at 113 OA was a pretty amazing pick, though it comes with an asterisk as it happened at a time when the scouting and drafting dynamics were different. But on pure value for the draft position, I don’t think you can beat it.

Other notable picks from a value and/or significance to the franchise perspective: McCann, Boeser, Kesler, Ohlund, Edler, Linden, Smyl, Lidster.

Cam Neely, too bad they never figured that out…

Have to go with Hank and Danny since they were a package deal.

Going through the best run in team history to now leading the team into the next generation.

Quinn should be in the conversation but he bailed.

Rick Vaive.

5th overall in 1979.

Had 3 x 50 goal seasons and scored almost 450 NHL goals.

But he was part of the worst trade in Canucks history.

D’oh!!

I have to say Stojanov, who turned into Nazzy..

Henrik Sedin.

Linden is my pick. Best steal in a draft, though, was Bure.

Toss up between the two Sedins and Cam Neely. Character matters so Hughes falls behind those three.