Only time will tell if the Canucks chose wisely
For an object lesson in the vagaries of the NHL Entry Draft, let’s jump into the time machine and set the date for June 16, 1990 and Vancouver.
On a day that would be memorable to Canucks’ fans for all the wrong reasons, the Winnipeg Jets and Buffalo Sabres were in the process of concluding a huge trade on the draft floor that involved a pair of future Hall-of-Famers: Dale Hawerchuk and Phil Housley.
As the Jets’ first-round pick approached, the framework of the deal had essentially been agreed to with one provision. Sabres’ GM Gerry Meehan coveted Niagara Falls’ power forward Brad May but didn’t think he’d be available when his team picked 19th. The Jets, as it happened, owned the 14th pick and had targeted Michigan State defenceman Michael Stewart.
The roulette wheel started spinning. The New York Rangers, picking 13th, took Stewart causing Meehan and Jets’ GM Mike Smith to huddle and quickly rework the trade. Buffalo threw the late Jeff Parker into the mix, moved up to 14th and took May.
The Jets, meanwhile, had a Boston-area scout named Joe Yanetti who’d seen another power forward playing at Malden High School before suffering a seasonending injury. Yanetti campaigned enthusiastically for the kid. Smith thought, ‘Why not?’ and took him with the 19th pick, one spot after the Canucks had selected Shawn Antoski.
Keith Tkachuk, the player in question, would go on to score 538 goals in an 18-season NHL career. May would never put up those kind of numbers but he played 1,041 games in 18 NHL seasons.
Michael Stewart never played an NHL game. And your point?
During the first round of Friday ’s draft, teams faced any number of similar decisions. Take this kid or that kid. Move up or move down. Those teams invested millions of dollars and thousands of manhours to formulate those decisions, which is what you’d expect for a process that determines the future of a franchise.
But, while there’s a large element of science in choosing 18and 19-year-old hockey players, there’s an element of randomness, of sheer luck, that lurks around every decision.
You only have to look at the history of the draft to understand these competing forces are at work which is what makes the entire exercise so thrilling and so infuriating.
The Canucks were picking seventh Friday which meant their selection would be determined by a series of events taking place in front of them. Now, consider, for the moment, everything that entailed.
As with every draft there was a late riser, in this case Finnish centre Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who complicated the top of the first round. There were questions of need — Montreal was looking for a centre. Questions of subjectivity — there were four defenceman supposedly rated in the top 10; if you asked 10 scouts to rank them, you’d get 10 different answers. Questions of optics — Brady Tkachuk spent his formative years in the Coyotes’ dressing room with his father, the afore-mentioned Keith; Quinn Hughes stars at Michigan in the Detroit Red Wings’ backyard.
And that still didn’t account for Barrett Hayton, the wildest wild card of the top-10.
All of these factors influenced the Canucks’ pick, who turned out to be Hughes after the Habs took Kotkaniemi at No. 3 and the Coyotes surprised by taking Hayton at No. 5 which was intriguing enough. But we’ll still have to wait for three or four years to learn what it all means.
Did Jim Benning get lucky when Hughes fell to him? Did he get unlucky when the Senators, Coyotes or Red Wings took their guys?
Hard to say. What we do know is this pick is absolutely crucial to the Canucks’ future. If they nailed it with Hughes, and one member of their front office opined he’s a better player than Cale Makar, last year’s fourth overall pick, he joins a group of young players who offer the faithful hope and a way out of the darkness in which they ’ve lived for the last three seasons.
If they got it wrong, well, look at the bright side. Canucks’ fans can look forward to more years of picking in the top-10.
Those are the table stakes involved and if they seem disproportionately high for an exercise that involves so much luck, this is the reality of the draft. A couple of times in their history, most notably in ’99 with the Sedins, the Canucks have been on the right side of that equation. Those occasions, sadly, have been rare.
As for disappointments, we don’t have the time or space to adequately account for the number of times the hockey gods have mocked the faithful on draft day but here’s a snapshot:
In 1990, the Canucks picked second, 18th and 21st in a rich, deep draft and could have set themselves up for the next 10 years. Instead of landing Jaromir Jagr, Tkachuk or Marty Brodeur, and Doug Weight, they came out with Petr Nedved, Antoski and Jiri Slegr.
Yes, every NHL team can play that game. The Canucks can just play it a lot more often than most.
So will this year be any different? Wish we could tell you. We know it’s important. We know the Canucks had to find an impact player. Now we wait to find out if they took the right guy.
But keep one thing in mind: these things are supposed to even out over time. Forty-eight years has been long enough.