The rule of thumb in the hockey world is that you can’t judge a draft until at least five years later. That gives enough time for high-end draft picks to establish themselves as NHL stars and also for late-bloomers to make their way up through the ranks into the big leagues.
For example, five years after the 2013 draft, first overall pick Nathan MacKinnon has established himself as a Hart Trophy candidate, while Toronto seventh round pick Andreas Johnsson just made his NHL debut and showed some promise after excellent seasons in the SHL and AHL.
Sometimes, however, you can start to judge a draft a lot sooner. For instance, teams only hold the rights of drafted players out of major junior for two years. If the majority of a team’s picks are from the WHL, OHL, and QMJHL, you might get an indication of a draft’s success or failure a lot sooner than five years.
That appears to be the case for the Canucks’ 2016 draft, as it has become clear that the Canucks won’t sign three players from that year.
Been told the #Canucks are not signing 20 year old forward Brett Mckenzie from the 2016 NHL Draft. Vancouver will also not sign 20 year olds Cole Candella and Jakob Stukel.
— Rick Dhaliwal (@DhaliwalSports) May 1, 2018
Of the six players the Canucks drafted in 2016, four are already off the table: Cole Candella, Jakob Stukel, Rodrigo Abols, and Brett McKenzie. That leaves just two players: Olli Juolevi and William Lockwood.
Assessing a draft isn’t quite a binary proposition: it’s not just success or failure, 0 or 1. There are many shades of grey in between those two points. For instance, all four of the players that won’t be staying in the Canucks’ organization were drafted in the fifth round or later. The odds of success for players drafted in that range is minuscule.
At the same time, Canucks GM Jim Benning has set expectations extremely high for the draft. Back in 2016, he outlined his beliefs about the draft and what he thinks the Canucks can get out of each one.
“We look at the draft as a tool where we can add, depending on how many picks, five to seven players every year that can turn out to be, with development, NHL players,” said Benning. “So the draft is very important.”
“We look at our late round picks, we spent a lot of time [on those],” he continued. “My philosophy is you have to make sure to hit on your first and second round picks and then we want to try and find two more players from the third to the seventh round. I think that’s what distinguishes between teams that do a really good job and teams that just do a good job.”
Technically, finding two more players after hitting the first and second round picks would be four NHL players, not five to seven, but that’s still a lofty goal. Most teams don’t find four NHL players in every draft; the average is closer to two.
Benning came close to his lofty target in the 2014 draft, even if a couple of the NHL players he found are playing on other teams. The 2015 draft has potential as well, depending on how Adam Gaudette, Guillaume Brisebois, and Lukas Jasek develop. And the 2017 draft might have been the Canucks’ best yet under Benning.
The 2016 draft, on the other hand, has already fallen short. The possibility of doing a “really good job” is gone and the hopes for just “a good job” rest solely on Juolevi and Lockwood.
Part of the issue with the 2016 draft is the lack of picks. The Canucks sent their second-round pick, 33rd overall, as well as their fourth round pick, to the Florida Panthers as part of the Erik Gudbranson trade. An additional second-round pick, 55th overall, that they acquired from the Anaheim Ducks for Kevin Bieksa, was traded away to the Pittsburgh Penguins as part of the Brandon Sutter trade.
It’s a lot harder to hit on a second-round pick when you don’t have one.
Without those picks, Benning and the Canucks were really hoping to find an NHL player late in the draft. Cole Candella seemed like a good bet, as a well-rounded, two-way defenceman with few flaws, who fell down the draft due to an injury. Unfortunately, while he had few flaws, he also lacked any true standout abilities. He didn’t show enough progression to earn a contract, even as the Canucks badly need defensive depth in their prospect pool.
Stukel was a gamble in the sixth round, as the Canucks hoped a late-season surge after a trade in his second-year of draft eligibility was indicative of him turning a corner. Stukel has plenty of speed and hit career highs in his over-age season, scoring 37 goals and 64 points in 71 games. In the high-scoring WHL, however, those numbers are merely okay for a player who turned 21 during the season.
Stukel’s hands and head never seemed able to keep up with his feet in the chances I’ve had to watch him play, and it isn’t surprising the Canucks won’t be offering him a contract.
Then there’s the seventh round, where the biggest issue isn’t that they didn’t find an NHL player, but who they passed over with their two picks: Ty Ronning.
There were plenty of fans who were hoping the Canucks would draft the son of fan-favourite Cliff Ronning. Instead, the Canucks took Rodrigo Abols, who was already 20 years old at the time and wasn’t going to be drafted by anyone else, and Brett McKenzie.
Abols is now playing in Sweden, while McKenzie had a disappointing over-age season, scoring just 49 points in 64 games. While McKenzie capped off his season with a great playoff run, it wasn’t enough to convince the Canucks to sign him.
The New York Rangers, meanwhile, gave Ty Ronning a three-year contract after the pint-sized forward set a Vancouver Giants record with 61 goals in 70 games this past season. There’s no guarantee that Ronning will make it to the NHL, of course, and I am admittedly biased as Cliff Ronning was my favourite player as an undersized youngster growing up in the Fraser Valley, but it seems like a pretty big miss on the part of the Canucks.
Now it’s down to Juolevi and Lockwood.
Juolevi, at least, looks like a surefire NHLer. It’s been frustrating, however, for Canucks fans to watch defencemen taken after Juolevi in the 2016 draft already experience NHL success. Charlie McAvoy is playing on the top pairing of a cup contender in Boston. Mikhail Sergachev put up 40 points in Tampa Bay. And Jakob Chychrun has already played two seasons in Arizona and averaged over 20 minutes per game this past season.
Still, Juolevi has time. The five-year timeframe makes sense for assessing Juolevi, who should be at least a second-pairing defenceman at the NHL level. With seasoning in the Finnish Liiga under the tutelage of Sami Salo, Juolevi could still be an impact NHL player.
There are some serious question marks when it comes to Lockwood. While Lockwood was a bit of a reach at the draft, his development path has looked excellent, as he put up respectable numbers for a freshman in the NCAA. The right winger had shoulder troubles during his freshman season, however, then suffered a season-ending shoulder injury during the outdoor game at the World Junior tournament.
Both injuries were to the same shoulder and could affect his ability to play the crash-and-bang style that has made him an effective player. The Canucks have to hope that Lockwood can recover completely and prove himself during his junior year at the University of Michigan.
