Vancouver Canucks: Guillaume Brisebois victim of shallow prospect pool

The Canucks have made it clear that Guillaume Brisebois will have an impact behind Olli Juolevi. That kind of thinking exposes a critical flaw in the team’s prospect pool and unfair set of expectations for the young defenceman.

Guillaume Brisebois may not be a name that many Vancouver Canucks fans are familiar with. When you think of our defensive prospects, the first player you think of is Olli Juolevi. But have you ever considered the next group of players behind him?

If your answer is no, the thought likely never came up since Juolevi is generally the focus when discussing the future Canucks’ defence. The debates ensued. Whether Juolevi was the correct pick in 2016 (he wasn’t) or the possibility of him being the number one defenceman the Canucks have been missing (which is extremely unlikely).

After Juolevi, most people would assume there aren’t any impact defenceman to discuss. Well, unless your name is Jim Benning. When asked about the future of the defence in his extension press conference, Benning spoke highly of Guillaume Brisebois and Jalen Chatfield.

It’s odd, but judging from his quotes, the Canucks General Manager is confidently describing this latter pair of defencemen as future impact players. Perhaps he is excited about prospects in general, but Benning has a history of overvaluing his own players.

I don’t need to remind you of his comparison between Brandon Sutter and Patrice Bergeron. Or indirectly comparing Juolevi to Nicklas Lidstrom. There’s also the most recent comparison of Erik Gudbranson to Zdeno Chara.

That’s why myself and several other people watching Canucks management were confused by the statement. I want to dive a little deeper to show you why Brisebois is likely an NHL player, but will not have as much of an impact as Jim Benning thinks.

What I can gather from someone who watches every game

I wanted to gather as much information as possible from the Utica Comets season this year. Eventually, I made my way to CanucksArmy (yeah, yeah, big surprise) and went through every single post-game report from their Comets writer, Cory Hergott. That’s 53 games! I’m not including yesterday’s game since the report wasn’t out at the time of writing.

Going through Utica’s season on one go revealed quite a bit about Brisebois. Early on, he was a quick, physical defenceman who made several mistakes. Lots of turnovers, not a point producer and has a heavy shot. It’s not surprising, considering he is a 20-year-old rookie playing his first season of professional hockey. That description sounds a lot like Luca Sbisa, which is funny, since Cory made that comparison at the end of October last year.

Obviously, Brisebois got better and impressed Cory to the point of expecting more from him. His most common partner during the season was Philip Holm. As Brisebois steadied his game, he got more responsibilities on the Penalty Kill and Power Play. There was a short stretch in December where he got points in back-to-back games and played quite well.

However, I noticed a few negative things. I’m not sure if focus is an issue, since the Canucks had that problem with him in his first two training camps with the team, but he seems to lack consistency in the few points he does produce. Sure, he gets hot and pots in a few points, but then goes cold for month and judging from the reports, is invisible in some of these games.

He produces primary points well, but it’s largely due to tip-ins from his teammates. Brisebois hits, but it does not occur frequently, similar to Sbisa. And some of his defensive mistakes are just atrocious. His first pass is good to start the rush, but other times he can be brutal in his own end.

Comets head coach Trent Cull has made Brisebois a healthy scratch on three occasions this year. Compared to Jordan Subban, that seems light as Travis Green had no issue scratching his young defencemen.

Brisebois is playing top four minutes and I believe he can owe all of that to injuries. If you think the Canucks were hit hard with injuries, the Comets were obliterated. Every day, it seemed like a new ECHL player was added on a PTO. Brisebois had to sink or swim and luckily, he has kept his head above water.

Fancy Stats and what my eyes tell me

Before you start sounding off, the AHL does not track corsi, goal rates or other underlying metrics that I usually like to use. However, prospect-stats.com does their best to estimate even strength production stats in the AHL, CHL and USHL. If you ever want more than boxscore stats, this unsolicited recommendation is for you.

The website can give us estimated 5v5 goals for percentages and relative rates. For Brisebois, his GF% is 46.55 and relative GF% is -4.65. Yeah, it’s not great, but not as bad as I had originally feared. Brisebois doesn’t push the needle to generate audience, but he’s not an outright liability.

If you go to his stats page, they break down is point production levels relative to what we see from first, second and third pairing defencemen. From left to right (red to blue) is third, second and first pair players. Brisebois gets a lot of ice time in the second pairing range, and most of his stats are on that border between second and third. His shot generation is low, so it would be nice to see him shoot more, given that is one of his strengths.

With the injuries, call ups and that pesky veteran rule, Brisebois has played more even strength minutes than any other Comets defenceman (estimated at over 700 minutes). As for his counting stats, Brisebois currently has two goals and 11 points in 50 games played. Fun fact: Dylan Blujus, who was brought in on a PTO and signed with the Comets has 12 points in half as many games.

I mention Blujus because Brisebois has gone quiet again with Holm called up to the Canucks. Blujus has stepped up nicely, eating up lots of minutes and playing very well for the Comets this year. Brisebois had a very good game on February 16th and was the third star of the game for his awesome goal.

Brisebois still looks like he needs two more years in the AHL. I am curious to see if Travis Green will be lenient with Brisebois since he shoots left but often plays on the right side.

Impact players and a shallow pool

This all sounds great, right? Wrong. Jim Benning may consider Brisebois’ season is excellent, but I disagree. First, if there were no injuries, do you honestly think he would be playing this much? Trent Cull is doing an excellent job developing his players, but I am sure that Brisebois wouldn’t be leading the blue line in minutes with a healthy lineup. Cull had no choice. He took a chance and it paid off.

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Second, Brisebois is on pace for 16 points, assuming no more healthy scratches. Despite receiving ample time at even strength and on the power play, he isn’t very productive. I know production isn’t everything, but if a player struggles to produce at the AHL level, what do you expect at the NHL level? The Canucks have enough defensive defencemen. That’s not the issue. They need offence from the back end and Brisebois is not the guy to provide it.

Let’s be realistic here. Even if Brisebois makes the NHL (which is somewhat likely), he will probably top out as a third pairing defenceman. Even in an Alex Biega-like role, he may find a place on an NHL roster. Does that really scream impact player?

Someone with the potential to become a third pairing contributor is nice for a third round pick. However, in the context of a rebuild, I wouldn’t start celebrating him like he’s going to make a difference in the future. When you talk about your future core, third pairing defencemen are not a part of it. And if they, then you have a major problem.

Which exposes the largest weakness in the prospect pool: defence. The Canucks are fine at forward and goalie as I have said many times, but they have no top four defencmen after Juolevi. This does not even address the lack of top pairing defencmen.

There isn’t a wave of new defencemen joining the Canucks over the next three years. As it stands, Juolevi is the only one. You can add the first pick from the 2018 draft, but isn’t that just counting your chickens before they hatch at that point? It seems frivolous to talk about prospects that aren’t even in the system yet.

Consequences

This is the stiff price you pay when you only average seven picks at the draft every year. The NHL gives the exact same number of picks to every team. If you want to be ahead of the curve, you need to pick early and pick often. The Canucks have done one of those things and struggled with the other.

Your defence is important. I’m sure it’s never more obvious when you watch Nashville play very well in transition while the Oilers had to sacrifice their top players in a poor attempt to keep their heads above water.

Someone like Brisebois plays the transition game. Perhaps the Canucks see in him what they hoped they saw in Luca Sbisa. But they need to exercise some common sense. The team only has three defensive prospects signed that have any chance at making the NHL.

They can’t assume all of them will make it. The point is to surround Brisebois with several others that have as much if not more potential than him. That way, you don’t have a team betting on you being far better than what it is likely. If that’s the plan, you can easily see where this is going.

Brisebois and Chatfield are not on the same level as Juolevi. They should not be used together in the same group. I remember when the Virtanen’s, McCann’s, Tryamkin’s and Hutton’s were supposed to help Bo Horvat lead the charge. I wonder what happened there?

Next: Canucks' defence trade deadline situation

I’m not trying to pick on Brisebois, but you have to honestly ask yourself why the Canucks expect so much from him. The talent gap between him and Juolevi is huge and not something Brisebois can make up easily. I think Daniel Wagner put it best: