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.
Canucks fans are as happy as I ever remember them at a draft. Took a while for the Pettersson excitement to build, but for the most part people are ecstatic about Hughes.
— Blake Price (@justBlakePrice) June 23, 2018
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.