Canucks need scoring, not size
YOUTH: GM Jim Benning should pass on blue-liner Brandon Carlo in this weekend’s NHL entry draft
He is 6-foot-5 and a svelte 196 pounds — and that’s at age 18. His 80.5-inch wingspan, measured at the combine, is the length of a 6-foot-7 person.
Oh, and skating is one of his biggest assets.
Reach, range and mobility. When it comes to physical skill, what more could you want in a blue-liner? Just wait until he adds 20 pounds. All that, and Brandon Carlo is still one of the more divisive prospects who will be taken early in Friday’s draft.
Funny, because he is one of the safest picks, with one of the highest floors. And for teams who love big defencemen, an area the Canucks have been obsessing about since Jim Benning arrived as GM.
In his first few months on the job, Benning drafted one 6-foot-6 defenceman, another who is 6-foot4, and then he traded a package that included a third-round pick to land 6-foot-4 blue-liner Andrey Pedan.
So, it’s to no one’s surprise that the Canucks have spent a lot of time scouting Carlo this season, and even publicly expressed interest in the prospect. He plays like a giant who rolled off the beanstalk the wrong way. He’s got that nasty side.
On paper, he does appear to be a perfect fit.
Except he’s not. Not for Vancouver. Not now.
Maybe things would be different if they were looking for the next Bryan Allen. And there’s nothing wrong with Allen. He had a nice 15-year-career.
But right now, the Canucks’ system needs offence. It needs dynamic goal scorers and elite skaters. It especially needs puck-moving defencemen who have the top-pairing upside.
Carlo is not that. Carlo will be 19 in November, and put up 25 points in his second year in the WHL.
He reminds me of Jarred Tinordi, the 6-foot-6 defensive defenceman who was getting all the buzz leading up to the 2011 draft.
As the story goes, the Canucks were going to take Tinordi but the Montreal Canadiens beat them to it. The Canucks turned around and traded their first-round pick to Florida in the package that landed them Keith Ballard.
And now, time seems to be running out for Tinordi in Montreal.
Carlo is not an offensive player and will likely never be anything close to that, and that’s why the Canucks have to pass if he’s there at No. 23.
The consensus among mainstream coverage is that the Canucks have to get bigger. That’s not entirely wrong.
But far more important than that is the need to develop some offensive stars.
The Canucks don’t need to take a defenceman at No. 23. They do, however, have a need to take a player with a high offensive ceiling.
If Bo Horvat and Jared McCann are really going to be counted on to withstand the Connor McDavid years, they need weapons. They need lots and lots of weapons.
What that means is the Canucks should avoid Carlo. They shouldn’t trade up for Lawson Crouse, the massive Kingston winger who was not quite a point-a-game player in the OHL.
They should avoid Paul Bittner, another of those “big and strong kids” who the league tends to overvalue because he’s 6-foot-4 and in the WHL.
This was the year where size didn’t matter. This was the year where Patrick Kane and Tyler Johnson finished one-two in post-season scoring.
This is the year Johnny Gaudreau proved everyone wrong.
The Canucks’ pool of defensive prospects has more than enough size. Heck, they overpaid Luca Sbisa just to make sure that stayed true.
This is a critical stage of Benning’s regime. For the Canucks to be successful doing this “retool-on-the-fly” thing, he has to hit home runs at the draft.
Carlo has all the tools to be a very good, long-tenured NHL defenceman. But he’s not going to be a home run. At least not when it comes to producing goals.