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.

Ryan Kesler has become perhaps the most well-known member of the Canucks’ 2003 draft class. He split the two seasons following his draft between the Canucks and the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League, before spending the entirety of the next eight seasons with the Canucks.

During this time, Kesler became one of the Canucks’ best players, reaching peaks of 41 goals and 75 points. He won the 2011 Frank J. Selke award and was integral to defeating the Nashville Predators in the second round of those playoffs enroute to the Stanley Cup Final.

However, his relationship with the Canucks and the city of Vancouver quickly soured and he was traded to the Anaheim Ducks in 2014. He has remained with the club ever since, showing steady decline along the way.

Furthermore, hip problems have caught up with Kesler. This past May, he underwent hip surgery that will keep him out for the 2019-20 season and has the potential to end his professional career altogether.

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Marc-Andre Bernier (2nd Round, 60th overall)

Marc-Andre Bernier’s story is that of a promising prospect who could just never find his groove in the Canucks system. After being selected by the Canucks, he played four seasons in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League with both the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles and Halifax Mooseheads.

In 2005-06, Bernier made the jump to the AHL, where he was unable to register a point in 16 games played, resulting in him playing out the season with the ECHL Columbia Inferno.

He got another crack at the AHL the following season but was once again unable to capitalize on the opportunity and returned to the ECHL, where he spent the entirety of the 2007-08 season. The Canucks and Bernier decided to part ways and he signed with the Edmonton Oilers, though he never played an NHL game for them.

North American professional hockey was not for Bernier, and he joined the French Briancon team. His time in the French league was more successful. In six seasons with Briancon, Bernier earned the captaincy after scoring at a significant 1.5 points-per-game pace.

In 2015, he joined Gap HC before returning to Canada in 2017. He played his final professional season with the Sorel-Tracy Blackhawks of the Ligue Nord-americaine de Hockey, where he managed 21 points in 29 games before riding off into the sunset.

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.