What ever happened to: The Vancouver Canucks 2003 draft class (Part 1)

The Vancouver Canucks have had many terrible drafts since 2000, but the players they picked should not go unrecognized. These are some of their post-draft stories.

August is the most entertaining time of year to be a hockey fan, isn’t it? The draft and free agency are long gone and there is nothing to do but obsess over the minute details of whatever moves have and haven’t been made.

Distractions are necessary, and there are few more fun than reminiscing over past drafts. Who doesn’t enjoy finding out that a franchise star was a seventh-round pick?

Unfortunately, the Vancouver Canucks‘ draft history has had too many misfires in the past decade and a half for there to be diamonds in the rough, but that doesn’t mean that nobody was selected. In this brand new series, I will revisit past draft classes and pay each Canucks pick the respect that they deserve, and recognize their on-ice careers and achievements, and in some cases, off-ice success. Over the next few months, we will count down the the years, and hopefully see some quite familiar faces along the way.

Loui Eriksson is currently the Canucks’ oldest drafted player. We often think of him as being old and slow (among other things), yet he was only drafted in 2003. Therefore, I will open this series with that draft and evaluate some of his peers. Unfortunately, due to the length of pre-2004 drafts, this first edition of “Whatever Happened To…” will be split into two parts, so let’s get started.

Brandon Nolan (4th Round, 111th overall)

There are some players that have a far greater impact on the game of hockey off the ice than on skates and Brandon Nolan is one of those players. A member of the Ojibway Garden Lake First Nation, he grew up in Northern Ontario.

Brandon’s father, Ted, was an ex-NHL player and coached Brandon and younger brother Jordan (now a member of the St. Louis Blues) throughout their childhoods, later serving as head coach of the Buffalo Sabres and the Latvian men’s national team. Through hard work, Brandon was able to overcome many of the challenges faced by Indigenous youth in Canada and joined the Oshawa Generals of the OHL in 2000.

He was initially selected in 2001 by the New Jersey Devils, but re-entered the draft two years later and was picked by the Canucks as an overager. Nolan then bounced around the AHL and ECHL for the next few years, including a 19-game stint with the Vaxjo Lakers of the SHL (Elias Pettersson’s alma mater) eventually settling in the Carolina Hurricanes system. He was finally called up to the Hurricanes on December 22, 2007, where he appeared in six games and got an assist.

Unfortunately, a concussion ended Nolan’s career just two months later, but after two years of recovery, he enrolled in a business administration program and graduated with a diploma in marketing. With his father and brother, he started 3NOLANS Hockey Schools in 2013, a program designed to develop the hockey skills of Indigenous youth, promote healthy lifestyles and build leaders and role models in small communities. Since its founding, 3NOLANS has positively affected the lives of over 1,000 Indigenous youth across Canada.

The Canucks drafted Ty Morris out of the Alberta Junior Hockey League for his offence and grit. In his draft year, the young winger scored 82 points in 58 games for the St. Albert Saints while accumulating 226 penalty minutes. He immediately graduated to the WHL, joining the Swift Current Broncos for just 21 games before moving on to the local Vancouver Giants.

In two seasons with the Giants, Morris produced decent, if unspectacular numbers, while seeing a sharp reduction in penalty minutes from his pre-draft form. Part way through the 2004-05 season, he was sent to the Red Deer Rebels, where he played out what turned out to be his final WHL campaign. The next year, Morris entered the ECHL as a member of the South Carolina Stingrays, where he continued to put up solid numbers (32 points in 52 games).

In 2006, Morris began his first season for Peiting EC of the German Oberliga, playing in a country that would become his home for the next 14 years. There he was able to resurrect the scoring ability that had somewhat escaped him over the previous seasons, scoring 61 points in 47 games for Peiting.

Morris began the 2007-08 season playing for Bad Nauheim of the Oberliga, but was promoted after 14 games to the 2nd Bundesliga — the German second tier –for the remainder of the season. While the 2008-09 season was also split between the two leagues, Morris remained in the 2nd Bundesliga until 2015 — playing primarily for the Landshut Cannibals — apart from 40 games spent with Munich EHC of the top-tier DEL in 2012-13. All the while, he produced at around a point-per-game rate. Since 2015, Morris has been playing for Peiting and has flourished as one of the team’s leading scorers.

Nicklas Danielsson has become one of the most successful members of the 2003 Canucks draft class and certainly the most well-traveled of the bunch. He is still professionally active today, having played in over 700 games — for eight teams across four different leagues — since being drafted 160th overall. However, not one of those games was played on North American ice. The Canucks drafted Danielsson from Brynas IF of the SHL, where he returned for his draft-plus-one year.

Unfortunately, he underperformed the years both before and after being drafted, and by the end of 2003-04, ended up in the Swedish Division 1, now known as the HockeyAllsvenskan, playing for Almtuna IS. Another disappointing season in SHL during the 2004-05 campaign resulted in Danielsson spending the entirety of 2005-06 with Almtuna, where he finally broke out of his shell, scoring at a near point-per-game pace.

This was enough for Djurgardens IF to give the 21-year-old forward another shot in the SHL, where he played until 2010. While his play left much to be desired at first, Danielsson improved over time. In 2010, he signed with Modo for two years, during which he played the best hockey of his career, getting 52 points in 53 games in 2011-12.

By this time, he was ready to venture out of Sweden, and joined Bern SC in Switzerland the next year. Unfortunately, the points didn’t follow, and Danielsson was moved to Prague Lev of the KHL mid-season, where he continued to struggle.

He lasted one calendar year in Prague before returning to the Swiss League, this time with Rapperswil-Jona, where his production spiked again in 2014-15. In 2015, at age 31, Danielsson transferred to Lausanne HC, where he put up decent to excellent numbers over three seasons. Last summer, he returned to Brynas, where he scored 30 points year, and will play until his contract expires in 2021.