NO JOKINEN, HE’S OURS
It rained draft picks all around the NHL, except for Vancouver where trade deadline day was dry, puzzling
Nothing that happened this week was going to fix the Vancouver Canucks. But how it all played out is one of the most damaging symptoms plaguing the franchise.
All around the NHL, draft picks rained down. Every team that needed picks seemed to get wet — except the Canucks.
The team that has pointed out more than once the only way out of its sinkhole is to “draft and develop” was unable to acquire a single pick to help the process.
If it were an outlier, fans could understand. But the Canucks are going on three years since they’ve traded one of their players for a pick. Let that rattle around in your brain for a moment.
The team that hired a scout to run the club, and has been successful finding players deep into drafts, has been unable or unwilling to play to its strengths.
No reasonable person can say that’s “acceptable” with a straight face.
Take Monday’s trade deadline windfall. It was a glorious day for rebuilds. Seventeen draft picks were moved and not one of them to the Canucks. Many of those picks went for depth players.
Take Mike Reilly. He was a third-pairing defenceman in Minnesota and not a good one. He was sheltered and was regularly matched against bottom-six forwards. He had the third-worst impact on shot-attempt differential on the Wild, a playoff team. He was moved for a fifth-round pick.
The Canucks have not had success making deals like that.
“If you had good young players, good players still in their prime, you got good picks for those types of players,” Vancouver GM Jim Benning explained Monday afternoon.
“I think defencemen today held their value and you got picks for depth defencemen. I think that’s something we are going to study going forward and keep in mind for future trade deadlines.”
Of course, the Canucks have many depth defencemen. Their blue-line is full of them. We guess the team needs to study that before it can make a move with one of them.
The Canucks also have good young players in their prime. There are two, Sven Baertschi and Chris Tanev, who match up quite well with many players traded this week for big returns.
“Both of them are important guys to our organization going forward,” Benning said. “We weren’t looking to move either one of them.”
The day wasn’t a total loss. The Canucks moved defenceman Philip Holm to Vegas for Brendan Leipsic. The 23-year-old has some upside and is the type of underused forward the Golden Knights built their success on this season.
But it’s wild that Holm brought the Canucks a bigger return than Thomas Vanek, who was moved for Tyler Motte, a 2013 fourth-round pick who has limited upside.
And, oh yeah, they took Jussi Jokinen off Columbus’s hands in that same deal. Jokinen is 34 and recently cleared waivers.
Benning said the Canucks didn’t get a single draft pick offer for Vanek. But last week the GM said he was looking for “hockey trades” and not picks. That’s where things get twisted in Vancouver.
Some will have you believe the people who want the team to
acquire draft picks are impatient. But think about the logic here.
Team president Trevor Linden was imploring people to be patient
two weeks ago when he announced Benning’s extension.
Yet the regime’s biggest critics fully grasp this is a long-term project
and fixing this team is not going to happen overnight. That’s why they have been lobbying the Canucks to acquire picks. This is one area of managing where Benning has had some success.
It seems the Canucks are unwilling to overturn every possible rock to try to bolster their stable of picks.
When Benning was extended, he had two pending unrestricted free agents. One was Erik Gudbranson, who, based on the prices Monday would have commanded the type of return that would have helped accelerate the rebuild.
Instead, the Canucks signed him to an extension.
The Canucks have only six picks heading into the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. The New York Rangers, who visit Vancouver on Wednesday, have at least six (potentially eight) in the first three rounds.