Canucks: Analyzing Jim Benning’s success at the draft

Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann

Boston Bruins star David Pastrnak has emerged as an elite goal scorer, which is something that nearly every general manager in the league has had to kick themselves for passing on.

During the Vancouver’s first season with Benning at the helm, it was coming off a year where the Canucks were severely lacking pushback — as well as the heavy style of play that Benning had so much success with in Boston.

With the sixth overall pick, they chose Jake Virtanen from the WHL Calgary Hitmen. The move was fairly criticized on Twitter, and looking at who the team passed on, it looks like it may have been justified.

Jared McCann was drafted with the 24th pick and it seems like the reason for his trade (rumoured to be an attitude issue) was apparent from day one, maybe a little bit more recognizance.

In a redraft, the Canucks lost the first round: Virtanen dropped out of the first round on NHL.com , The Sportster has him drop to 11th (minus-five) and Draftsite.com has him going 23rd overall (minus-17). There is no doubting that the Canucks should not have chosen Virtanen in this draft. And even if you take Pastrnak out of the equation, there are just better players available.

More from The Canuck Way

• Which team won the Bo Horvat trade?
• What to expect from newcomers Anthony Beauvillier, Aatu Räty
• Back to the future: How the skate uniforms became a regular Canucks’ feature night
• Canucks kick off 2023 with disappointing 6-2 loss to Islanders
• 2nd period penalty trouble sinks Canucks in 4-2 loss against Winnipeg

McCann is a different story (the player was handled very poorly by the organization, not getting value and giving up more in addition). NHL.com has McCann going 19th, The Sportster has him going 18th and Draftsite.com actually has him dropping to 27th.

On average, the Canucks drafted 15 slots lower than where a redraft would put them with Jake Virtanen.  They gained 3 slots of value on the McCann pick, but promptly did other unspeakable things with that value.

Thatcher Demko crept his way into some redraft rankings: The Sportster bringing him up to 19th overaall; and DraftSite.com has them at 30th.  All of these redraft averages give the Canucks three first round picks in the 2014 entry draft

Other redraft notes:

• The Sportster has Gustav Forsling as the 26th overall pick moving up 100 picks.
• Draftsite.com has Forsling moving up to 12th overall pick moving up 114 picks.

This tells me that overall the depth of the 2014 entry draft was not a very deep one. The few steals that the Canucks made in this draft are long gone, and all the Canucks are left with is Virtanen. The actions and trades that took place afterwards are where the team lost value.

Brock Boeser and Adam Gaudette

The Canucks’ 2015 draft was headlined by none other than yours truly, Brock Boeser. The team made the playoffs as the second seed in the Pacific Division, and they still managed to get their hands on a Calder Trophy finalist at the draft board.

The Bruins made the steal of the draft in 2014, but they fell on their faces this year, failing to draft Boeser, Kyle Connor or Matt Barzal with three consecutive draft picks.

Boeser was “all over” maps for scouts, as TSN’s Blake Price noted, and it seemed like there was a fairly large range for him to get picked. It seems like when Benning’s or (Judd Brackett’s) guy is under the radar, he gets him. Boeser was drafted at 23rd overall.

Adam Guadette was picked 149th, and while there are very little criticisms for later round picks, Benning seems to take criticism for a lot whether it be deserved or not.

The Canucks won this draft, securing two players who are currently on the roster without a second-round draft pick.

Boeser rose to fourth overall on NHL Tonight’s redraft, Puck Prose has him at seventh and DraftSite.com has him being picked at eighth overall. The Canucks selected a Calder Trophy nominee with the 23rd overall selection, and there is no telling where Benning would have been by 2016 if he hadn’t picked Boeser in this slot — especially considering his later follies.

Gaudette has the 38th most points of the 2015 entry draft while playing only 82 games at the time of writing (Dec. 12).

Gaudette had the 38th most points in the 39th most games. If points were everything, you could easily slot him into the second-round pick, but defencemen and goalies are also extremely valuable. Gaudette would likely land in the second round of a redraft, and there’s no way that the Canucks didn’t secure at least +100 slots of value on draft.

Olli Juolevi

The Canucks took Olli Juolevi fth overall in 2016.  This was a risky play for the team, drafting needs ahead of BPA (best player available).

Juolevi is the only player from the top 17 picks from the 2016 NHL draft to not play a single game. Sam Steel, drafted 30th by Anaheim; had 21 points in his first 48 career games. There is no sugar coating this pick; it has been a bad one.

He is one of only five players drafted in the first round to not play an NHL game. There is a player drafted in the 6th round that has played 33 games, and that’s Maxim Mamin.

Look, I don’t have anything against Juolevi — and he may come up to the club and prove to everyone that he is an NHL player. But looking back, it’s hard to stomach that the Canucks drafted him ahead of players like Matthew Tkachuk, Clayton Keller, Mikhail Sergachev and Charlie McAvoy.

With 201 points in his first 256 careeer games, Tkachuk fits the mold of what the Canucks have looked for in free agency.

In a redraft scenario, everyone has Juolevi moving down — but it’s by not as much as you would think: The Athletic (subscription required) has him going 23rd overall, DraftSite.com has Juolevi going 16th and The Hockey News has him going 13th. I don’t entirely disagree with those numbers, which is 12 slots lower in value than he was drafted.

But it’s all up in the air at this point, and his injury history is very concerning. Juolevi he has yet to force management’s hand to call him up.

This draft arguably saved Benning’s job. Taking Elias Pettersson has worked out extremely well for the Canucks, and he’s helping the franchise turn a corner.

The Canucks had lost Daniel and Henrik Sedin, the two franchise scoring leaders, to retirement. The question became where would the offence come from? Boeser just had an amazing rookie season, but he had a severe back injury that left his recovery up in the air.

The preferred player at the time was not so certain.

Pettersson leads his draft class in points per game with 0.97, which is 30 percent better average than first overall pick Nico Hischier with 0.65. A close, close second is Cale Makar with at the time of writing 28 points in 29 games for an average of 0.96.

There are very few redrafts for 2017, seeing as though players have only played two to three seasons max.  Two redrafts I found both have Pettersson as being redrafted 1st overall ( DraftSite.com and TheComeback.com. It’s not very hard to see; Pettersson is second in points for that draft class, 16 behind Hischier with 74 less games played (at the time of this writing).

Quinn Hughes

Benning got really lucky with this pick, but you need to have the foresight that six other general managers didn’t in order to get lucky.

Quinn Hughes fell to the Vancouver Canucks in this draft, and TSN 1040‘s’s recent topic of conversation on the radio had him as a top three lock, if you did the 2018 draft over again.  The fact that you can already make the case for Hughes being the most dynamic defencemen in franchise history is inconceivable.

If there was one thing that united Canuck fans, it’s the drafting of Quinn Hughes.

There is no arguing that Rasmus Dahlin will be a generational player as the No. 1 pick, and Andrei Svechnikov is an unreal talent at number two. But you can realistically put Quinn in the third overall spot given that he leads the entire draft class in points per game. It’s a small sample size of not even his entire rookie season, but it’s his elite skating and playmaking that change the entire face of this Canucks’ defence core. From a rookie.

While Benning and the Canucks have had a rough ride  during his tenure, he didn’t have much to work with when he got here. All we really know is where we are now. They came in preaching a fast rebuild, but the Canucks had core rebuild pieces they didn’t move, and it kept the legacy of the players alive in Vancouver. That’s something that is fairly underrated in the eyes of the fans.

Overall, aside from a few missteps and general bad luck with injuries, the Canucks have a very solid pool of players thanks to Benning. And while I know that Brackett also has a lot to do with that, we still have to credit his boss — and hopefully his boss credits him.