RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE
Offensive defenceman Quinn Hughes fills huge void
The Vancouver Canucks swear this wasn’t part of a master plan.
But if last year was the their attempt to fix the offence at the NHL Entry Draft, this was their big swing at repairing the blue-line.
The Canucks went defence with three of their first four picks in Dallas this weekend. They hadn’t done anything like that since 2002. They’ll be hoping this class will work out much better than that one which included Kirill Koltsov, Dennis Grot and Brett Skinner.
“It’s just how it worked out,” Vancouver GM Jim Benning said Saturday in Texas. “Take last year, when we got Kole Lind at the top of the second round. We had him rated way higher. Last year, there was a lot of depth at forward so that’s how it turned out.
“This year, there was depth on the defence.”
The Canucks’ defence is in desperate need of a re-imagining and it’s hoped this weekend will begin trending that process in the right direction.
Vancouver’s first round, marquee pick Quinn Hughes is the elite skating playmaker, while second-round selection Jett Woo is more defensive and well-rounded. They may not fix the current issues, but they should give Canucks followers hope the future could be different.
The Canucks’ director of amateur scouting Judd Brackett said there was complete consensus in the Canucks’ war room on the Hughes pick Friday.
Yeah, no kidding.
Maybe there was a time when the Canucks had a prospect like Hughes, one with his kind of playmaking and offensive upside, but it was in a galaxy that is now far, far away.
“For us with Quinn, it was his skating ability, the puck possession and recovery,” Brackett said. “We talk about wanting to play faster and to improve the power play so those are all things that he hits on. He hits on multi-faceted skills so it was a real fit for us.”
Turns out, it was a real fit for Hughes, too.
Benning said: “When we interviewed him, we asked him where he wanted to play and he said: ‘In Canada.’ He wants to be under the microscope ...
“He will be. He wants that pressure. That’s just the type of player he is. He wants to be in a place where they care a lot about winning and he wants to be the guy.”
Brackett said the strength of this draft “was in the back end.
“Yes, we had a need in terms of our prospect pool long-term but that played into the strength of this draft,” Brackett said.
In the fourth round, the Canucks took 18-year-old Finnish defenceman Toni Utunen.
“To be honest, we liked him throughout the year,” Brackett said. “The Finnish team as a whole had a very good finish at the end of the year.
“I felt like he was the mainstay on their back end and provided leadership. I do (see offensive upside) but more in the transition sense.”
In the sixth round, the Canucks drafted Russian forward Artyom Manukyan. He is listed at just 5-7, but blew up Russia’s junior league with 100 points. Manukyan was passed over twice in the NHL Entry Draft but Brackett said the Canucks considered taking him last year.
“He’s a little bigger than listed (at 140 pounds) but he is undersized,” Brackett said. “We watched him quite a bit at the Subway Series and the World Juniors. He’s a proven scorer in his junior league back home and broke records.
“He does everything with pace. He’s another guy who you talk about courage and character and as a young guy, you need that.”