New Vancouver Canucks general manager Ryan Johnson has been saying all the right things to a fanbase desperate for a new direction. The Canucks have spent over a decade spinning their wheels in off-road shortcuts, but Johnson wants to get the team back on track.

“Our vision is to build through the draft,” said Johnson at his introductory press conference. “Obviously, we’ve got ten picks right now in this year’s draft…those are going to be massive selections in this process. Will there be things we’ll do strategically to add to our draft pool? Absolutely, and that’s stuff that we will talk about, but we want to do it right.”

That’s music to the ears of many Canucks fans, who have seen the team trade away a lot of draft picks to try to prop up a team that was never properly rebuilt. To wit, the 2025 draft was the first time in six years the Canucks made picks in both the first and second rounds, and they’ve made just three first-round picks in that time.

The 2026 draft will be significantly different, as the Canucks currently have two picks in each of the first and second rounds. They may add more, judging from Johnson’s comments.

But let’s take a moment to unpack the phrase “build through the draft.”

It’s generally understood that good teams need to be built through the draft, but that wasn’t always the case. Longtime Canucks fans are already aware of this, as the teams that went to the 1982 and 1994 Stanley Cup Finals couldn’t be said to have been built through the draft.

The Canucks in 1982 had Stan Smyl, Harold Snepsts, and Curt Fraser as key pieces that were drafted by the Canucks, but the scant few other Canucks picks that appeared in the playoffs barely played — though Gerry Minor deserves a shoutout for his four points in the Final against the New York Islanders.

In the 1994 playoffs, the Canucks had Trevor Linden, Pavel Bure, Gino Odjick, and Shawn Antoski as players drafted by the team. That’s it.

Of course, that was before the salary cap increased the importance of homegrown talent, and the Canucks team that went to the 2011 Stanley Cup Final had a lot more Canucks picks on it, led, of course, by Daniel and Henrik Sedin.

Aiming to be as good (or better, if possible) as the 2010-11 Canucks should be the goal for the Sedins and Johnson. That means not only hitting on first-round picks, but also finding key pieces outside of the first round, like Alex Edler, Kevin Bieksa, Mason Raymond, and Jannik Hansen.

That’s the way to build a great team in the salary cap era.

Or is it?

Here’s the thing: recent successful teams suggest that maybe building through the draft is overrated.

The Florida Panthers team that won the 2025 Stanley Cup did so with just four of their draft picks appearing for them in the playoffs: Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Anton Lundell, and Mackie Samoskevich, who appeared in just four games.

Or look at the Conference Finalists in the current Stanley Cup Playoffs. Just three Colorado Avalanche draft picks have appeared in the playoffs for them this year: Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, and Cale Makar.

The Vegas Golden Knights have them beat with just two: Pavel Dorofeyev and Kaedan Korczak.

They certainly don’t look like teams built through the draft.

The Carolina Hurricanes have a few more of their draft picks on their playoff roster: Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, Seth Jarvis, Jaccob Slavin, Alexander Nikishin, and Jackson Blake.

Even still, the Hurricanes are led in points by Taylor Hall and in goals by Logan Stankoven, both of whom were acquired via trade.

The big counterpoint is the Montreal Canadiens, who have absolutely been built through the draft. 11 of their draft picks have played for them in these playoffs, including their three leading scorers: Lane Hutson, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Cole Caufield.

What is particularly impressive about the Canadiens’ youth movement is that they still have a top-ranked prospect pool, with high-end prospects at every position, such as Jacob Fowler, Michael Hage, Alexander Zharovsky, and David Reinbacher.

But even the Canadiens provide an example of how you can’t just build through the draft — or, rather, what building through the draft really means.

Two of the Canadiens’ most important players in these playoffs were acquired via trade: Nick Suzuki and Alex Newhook.

The Canadiens acquired Newhook from the Colorado Avalanche for a first-round pick they had previously acquired from the Panthers for Ben Chiarot, as well as a second-round pick and on-the-outs prospect Gianni Fairbrother.

They could afford to give up a late first-round pick like that because of the time they spent building up their prospect pool through the draft, with a deep system built up from a wealth of picks in the first two rounds.

Suzuki, meanwhile, was a pure rebuilding move, acquired from the Golden Knights along with Tomas Tatar and a second-round pick for Max Pacioretty. It was a steal of a deal for the Canadiens, giving them their captain: a cornerstone of their rebuild.

All that is to say, as much as the Canadiens built their team through the draft, they still had to make some key moves to find the pieces they were missing. An already strong prospect pool and a willingness to trade veteran players allowed them to make those moves.

You can see this in the other teams in the conference finals, apart from the Golden Knights, who have seemingly been constantly (and successfully) retooling since the expansion draft.

The Avalanche found their two most important players, MacKinnon and Makar, through the draft, but also used other draft capital, prospects, and successful picks to trade for players to build around those two stars. That includes the Mikko Rantanen for Martin Necas trade, or sending a goaltender they drafted, Justus Annunen, to the Nashville Predators for Scott Wedgewood.

But the Hurricanes are a better example than the Avalanche of how building through the draft can look.

The Hurricanes supplemented the strong core they drafted with key trades of other players they drafted. They got Taylor Hall out of the Mikko Rantanen trade, sending two players they drafted, Necas and Jack Drury, along with a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick to the Avalanche.

They then flipped Rantanen to the Dallas Stars for Logan Stankoven, two first-round picks, and two third-round picks.

That’s some impressive wheeling and dealing on the part of the Hurricanes, who got two of their top scorers in this year’s playoffs and ended up coming out well ahead in future draft picks.

That’s important for the Hurricanes, who have shown a shotgun approach at the draft, acquiring a lot of picks in hopes of hitting with even one. Consider 2021, when the Hurricanes made 13 picks — none of them in the first round. Most of those picks missed, but Jackson Blake in the fourth round hit, and he has 11 points in nine games in these playoffs.

The Canadiens and Hurricanes, then, provide the best example for the Canucks on how to build through the draft. Acquire a lot of picks, find the foundational pieces for the rebuild, then trade from the picks, prospects, and even successful players acquired from the draft to build on that foundation.

That’s what was missing from the Canucks over the past several years. They had foundational pieces, but struggled to build around them. That’s primarily because they never built through the draft by acquiring a lot of picks, so had nothing to work with when it came to the trade market except trading away more picks.

So, the importance of building through the draft isn’t just drafting the players who will eventually be the core of the team, but also acquiring picks and drafting prospects and players that can be traded. That also highlights the importance of drafting the best player available, as the better you can make your prospect pool, no matter the position, the more assets you’ll have at the ready to build your roster on the trade market.