Jim Benning and his management team have picked in the top-10 of the NHL entry draft three times since he was hired. It’s fair to say that the success of those three picks will likely define how his tenure as General Manager of the Vancouver Canucks is seen in the future.
Benning’s first pick, Jake Virtanen, has stumbled to start his professional career, but still has the potential to become a top-six scoring winger. Olli Juolevi has experienced some growing pains, but has the potential to be a game-controlling top-pairing defenceman. And Elias Pettersson, despite some concerns about his size, has the skill and hockey sense to be a first-line, franchise forward.
If they don’t pan out, however, Jim Benning and his team will be haunted by a number of names. In Virtanen’s case, it’s William Nylander and Nikolaj Ehlers, who are already first-line forwards in the NHL. For Pettersson, it could be Cody Glass, taken by the Vegas Golden Knights with the very next pick.
And, for Juolevi, there’s Matthew Tkachuk, who made the jump directly to the NHL last season with 48 points. In the future, Canucks fans might bring up the names Clayton Keller and Mikhail Sergachev.
It’s tough to see players picked immediately after the Canucks took Juolevi already making their NHL debuts and looking like impact players, especially when it seems like Juolevi has faltered and fallen short of expectations.
It starts with his post-draft season with the London Knights, where he matched his point totals from his draft year instead of building upon them. Then there’s the World Junior tournament, where he had just two assists in six games as Finland failed to follow-up on their gold-medal performance where Juolevi had nine assists in six games.
Then Juolevi was underwhelming at Young Stars, getting caught flat-footed and beat one-on-one multiple times. In his first game of the preseason, similar flaws appeared, as he struggled to contain the Golden Knights’ forwards.
These are legitimate concerns, but to some Canucks fans, they’re construed as an attack. And yet, to a different group of Canucks fans, voicing these concerns isn’t nearly harsh enough.
It seems like half the Canucks fanbase wants to declare Juolevi a bust and that the Canucks were fools to draft him over Tkachuk. The other half of the fanbase brushes aside these concerns with numerous excuses: “it’s only preseason,” “Juolevi’s game is better-suited to games with more structure,” or “defencemen take longer to develop.”
There has to be a middle ground. We can acknowledge the flaws in Juolevi’s game without dismissing the potential he still possesses. We can also check for context that might shed light on those flaws without brushing those concerns away altogether.
For instance, Juolevi’s stagnant point totals can be seen in a different light when you consider how he was used with the London Knights last season: as a shutdown defender while mentoring 17-year-old Evan Bouchard as his defence partner.
At the 2017 World Juniors, Juolevi was woefully underused and was frequently the best player on the ice for a young, inexperienced Finnish team. It’s hard to blame him for failing to put up points when his passes were simply landing on less-talented sticks.
At the Young Stars tournament and his one preseason game, there were certainly flashes of potential. He particularly excelled at breaking up rushes in the neutral zone, creating turnovers that became scoring chances the other way. He created a breakaway chance for himself in one Young Stars game with a smart stick in the neutral zone, then nearly did the same against the Golden Knights on Sunday, drawing a penalty instead.
In between his noticeable defensive miscues, you can see the smart, puck-moving defenceman that the Canucks saw when they drafted him. There is still the makings of a top-pairing defenceman in Juolevi.
The only problem is that Juolevi just isn’t there yet, but you can argue that isn’t really a problem, considering where the Canucks are in the course of their rebuild.
While Juolevi is not quite NHL ready, the truth is that they don’t really have room for him in the lineup. Their top-six is set, their seventh defenceman is all but set in stone, and there’s probably not even room for him as an eighth defenceman this season.
Instead, the best course of action is for Juolevi to spend a year in Finland. There, he can play under former Canuck, and your pal-o, Sami Salo, who is an assistant coach for TPS in Liiga and Team Finland at the World Junior tournament. I can think of few people I would want mentoring Juolevi more than Salo.
Let’s keep this in mind: Juolevi is just 19 years old. While the claims that defencemen take longer to develop than forwards are not necessarily supported by the data, one more year before making his NHL debut is not a bad thing at all. He won’t be turning 20 until next May: if he makes the Canucks roster at 20, that should still be seen as a success.
Picking near the top of the draft comes with certain expectations. While there’s still plenty of uncertainty, there’s a sense from fans that picking in the top-10 should be impossible to screw up. So, it’s especially damaging to a GM’s reputation when a top-10 pick doesn’t pan out.
Should Canucks fans be worried about that possibility for Olli Juolevi? No. At least, not yet. It’s far too early to say.
