The Vancouver Canucks are scheduled to play their 50th NHL season in 2020-21—the same year that could bring the next NHL lockout, if either side decides to opt out of the current CBA. Because a draft was also held before the wiped-out 2004-05 lockout season, yesterday marked the 48th time that the Canucks went through the draft without securing the first-overall pick.
Jason Botchford ran through all the bad luck that has surrounded the Vancouver Canucks over the years in an article for the
Vancouver Sun last year, when the Canucks dropped from third to fifth in the draft lottery.
I'm sure you've heard the story before: when they entered the league with the Buffalo Sabres in 1970, the first-overall pick was determined by the spin of a roulette wheel. Botchford picked that moment as the No. 1 sign that the Canucks might be cursed:
At first, it looked like the Canucks won the roulette wheel spin in 1970 which determined which team was going to draft first overall, and get Gilbert Perreault.
If the ball landed on numbers 1-6, the Canucks won. If it was 7-12, the Sabres.
When it stopped on II, Vancouver was announced the winner.
But, it turned out, that wasn’t the Roman numeral for two. That was No. 11.
It’s been a long slide ever since.
Gilbert Perreault, of couse, is a Hockey Hall of Fame player who sits 33rd on the all-time NHL points list with 1,326 NHL points in 1,191 games—all with Buffalo.
With the second pick, Vancouver chose Dale Tallon, a defenseman. He lasted just three seasons with the Canucks before being traded to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for Jerry "King Kong" Korab, who lasted 31 games in Vancouver, and Gary "Suitcase" Smith, who stayed with the Canucks for three seasons and recorded the Canucks' first-ever playoff win, as they fell in five games to the powerhouse Montreal Canadiens in their first postseason appearance in 1974-75.
Nicknames were great in the 70s!
The Canucks did hold the first-overall pick for a hot second in 1999.
Jon Azpiri of Global News ran down that story last year—how the Canucks owned the third pick but Brian Burke needed another to go ahead with his plan of drafting both Sedin twins.
After giving up solid defenseman Bryan McCabe and Vancouver's first-round pick in 2000 to the Chicago Blackhawks, Burke then set his sights on prying the first-overall pick out of Tampa Bay.
In the end...
The Canucks sent the fourth overall pick and two third-round picks to the Lightning for the first overall pick in the 1999 draft.
The Canucks made a final deal to ensure they could call up the Sedins to the stage at the same time. They sent the first overall pick to the Atlanta Thrashers, who promised to select Patrik Stefan, leaving the Canucks to pick Daniel and Henrik with the second and third picks.
It was known at the time that the Sedins wanted to play together, but going into the draft, they weren't very hopeful.
“We went to the draft knowing nothing. We expected to be on different teams,” Daniel said. “Vancouver made it happen so we are forever grateful.”
That's it for sniffs at first overall. The Canucks have picked second four times: Tallon in 1970, Trevor Linden in 1998, Petr Nedved in 1990 and Daniel in 1999. But with the draft lottery odds now the way they are, Trevor Linden was dead right when he set the stage for Saturday's drawing by reminding people that it was much more likely that the Canucks would fall, than that their pick would line up with where they finished in the standings.
By the time Bill Daly had finished revealing 10 of his 15 cards, it was clear that the next one, for the fifth pick, would be Vancouver. It was quickly revealed that Philadelphia had jumped into the top three from their 19th-place finish, then Dallas moved up from 24th and, finally, New Jersey made a move from 27th.
By that point, we didn't know the order, but we knew that the top three was full. That automatically bumped Colorado back to the fourth spot, and Vancouver to the fifth.
The Flyers, Stars and Devils each had small individual odds of moving up to the top three but taken all together, Vancouver was swimming against 14 other teams. It's all that competition that makes it hard, now, for teams to even hold their positions in the standings.
The purpose of the draft lottery is to try to discourage tanking so in that sense, this year's drawing perfectly illustrated that point.
I give big credit to Taylor Hall for having a sense of humour about the situation as he watches his old team in Edmonton burn it up in the playoffs.
Hall earns that title, too. He was the first-overall pick in 2010, kicking off that amazing streak of four No. 1s in six years for the Oilers—Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in 2011, Nail Yakupov in 2012 and, of course, Connor McDavid in 2015.
It's even possible to argue that Hall did directly cause this lottery result.
Yep.
After getting burned in 2016 in the first year of the new lottery structure, the Canucks were ready to deal with the fallout this time around. All week, they've been preparing the fan base for the idea that any pick in the top five will be just fine, so they were able to keep their post-lottery comments on the same wavelength.
For me, the result certainly wasn't unexpected. I would have been pleasantly surprised if the Canucks had gotten the opportunity to be in the hunt for Nolan Patrick or Nico Hischier, but I wasn't pencilling them into the mix.
In some ways, this situation will make next year a little less pressure-packed. I was nervous about the Canucks trying to force an 18-year-old into the lineup in order to appease the fanbase but now, I doubt that'll happen.
We still have two more months to parse out who's available, and who the Canucks might take at No. 5. Craig Button of TSN has IDed centre Cody Glass as Vancouver's possible target in his first mock draft for 2017.
The first round of the draft will unfold on June 23 at United Center in Chicago.
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