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Chapter 1: What are the highlights of the Canucks Talk mock draft picks 9 through 16?
Welcome back to Canucks talk here on Sportsnet 650. Jamie Dodd, Thomas Drance. We are live from the Kintec studio. Step strong with orthotics and footwear from Kintec. 650-650 is the Dunbar Lumber text line. Guests on Sportsnet 650 call in on the Able Auctions hotline. Email sales at ableauctions.ca to get your business assets sold and your building cleared.
And now joining us on the Able Auctions hotline to continue the official Canucks talk mock draft from the athletic. He is Scott Wheeler. Scott, thanks for doing this today. How are you?
I'm doing well. I'm home stretch here, and I promised myself I wasn't going to do any of these, but when Drance calls, you answer.
Thanks, buddy. Wow.
Chapter 2: How does the potential Canadiens-Canucks trade involving Brendan Gallagher complicate matters?
You're the man. That's an honor. We appreciate it, and we had your colleague.
I think it's a miracle, frankly, that you guys got Corey to do this, too. He doesn't do radio for just anybody.
Well, we're two for two in big gets then. Yeah. We had Corey yesterday. He started. And actually, now it wasn't the same order, but reading your mock draft that you published today at The Athletic, two rounds, and I encourage everyone to go check it out. Corey yesterday and you and yours had the same eight players going off the board one through eight. So we're in a good starting spot.
And Scott, by the way, Scott, by the way, went six for eight in his mock draft last year.
There you go.
Eight for ten.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Jannik Hansen provide on Elias Pettersson's value?
Eight for ten.
Eight for ten.
I can correct you, actually. Well, fair enough, but also six for eight. Yes. So I don't know if it's a correction, but no, Scott, my point was going to be, but in your mock, there were two picks, the two picks that you got wrong.
You said not wrong, but because you were still directionally accurate that you said, and you said in your work, you were like, I'm not sure if this pick is this guy or this guy. And the two guys you listed were just flipped.
Yes. So it was it was a say that they were it was down to those two players. I was locked in last. You were locked in. I don't know what to say.
Do you feel as locked in this year? And is there a inflection point in the draft similar to the Martin Martone decision that Nashville faced that you're like, oh, that one can go either way?
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Chapter 4: Why is drafting the best player available crucial for the Canucks?
The Rangers at five are kind of that inflection point. Coincidentally, it was at five and six last year as well. I've heard three different names to the Rangers. Peter Barr, New York Rangers writer, messaged me today saying, is it your guy? I took Smiths in our mock draft and he sort of said, is it Smiths? And I said, well, he's one of three guys that I've heard they're considering.
And so they're the team that I'm not completely locked in on. And then at number nine, the late entry of the Ottawa Senators team
into this conversation in the top 10 does have me on my heels a little bit because I just haven't had the, I didn't have the time prior to the release of my mock this morning to sort of put the calls in on, on where the sends are leaning with that pick in the same way that I did have that time to put calls in and text in on everybody else in the top 10 or 15.
So I felt really good about who the Florida Panthers were going to take at nine. And I think I had it locked in and, And I feel a little bit less good about who the Ottawa Senators are going to take at nine. But I still, I'm playing more of a hunch there. Well, let's start with those Ottawa Senators who now hold the ninth pick.
And as you said, difficult to nail down because they just acquired it.
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Chapter 5: What does a successful offseason look like for a rebuilding Canucks team?
I also wonder if we're going to be talking about the Ottawa Senators picking ninth or some other team by that point.
And just to recap you before we start. So Corey did the first eight picks. You're going to do nine through 16. We're going to have Bucs. do sort of the third leg of the exercise, and then Sam Constantino bring us home on Thursday as we complete the first round with a panel of the foremost draft experts in the business.
Prawnman went McKenna one, Stenberg two, Malhotra three to the Vancouver Canucks. Chase Reed, four to the Chicago Blackhawks. Carson Carls, five to the New York Rangers. Vigo Bjork, six to the Calgary Flames. Schmitz, seven to the Seattle Kraken. And Verhoff, eighth to the Winnipeg Jets. Scott, you are on the clock picking for the Ottawa Senators should they hold the pick. And ninth overall.
If they hold the pick, I lean Ethan Belchez for them here.
Chapter 6: How do veteran players impact the Canucks' roster decisions?
I understand that the consensus guy may be one of the two defensemen in lefty Malte Gustafson or righty Daxon Rudolph. I just don't know that they take a player... in Rudolph's profile two years after they took Carter Yakumchuk, a righty who's going to run your power play, which is basically exactly what Dax and Rudolph represents.
Frankly, they both have some of the same problems in terms of not being great skaters as well. So I think there are just a few too... I think the consensus guy there is Rudolph, but I think there are a few too many sort of similarities with what they already have. And Yakumchuk now, if they decide...
to say move Carter Yakumchuk instead of moving number nine, then maybe you take Dax and Rudolph and you move Carter Yakumchuk as part of a package to get better and go about it that way. But if they don't do that, I lean Ethan Belchez here based off of how Don Boyd and his scouting staff with the Ottawa Senators have drafted in the past.
They love the big, physical, competitive, pro-built, pro-styled, athlete and Belchez is that with emphasis, he's a unicorn in this draft class from a pure sort of athleticism look standpoint. And he, he would check a lot of boxes for them. They're light on the wing as well. The sense, I think it's a pretty glaring need, frankly, the wing for them. And it's not a glaring need for most teams, but,
We typically see teams prioritize the centers and the D in the top 10.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of Darren Dreger's report on Canucks veterans?
But I think Belchez is a player that they could be potentially all over. And I think if he doesn't go nine to them, he's probably going 10 or 11.
I think it would be like I'd be probably saying on Twitter and, you know, in general texts to you and Slack messages to you, Wills, that that was a brutal miss by the Ottawa Senators that they pass on on Rudolph.
Yeah, and I tend to be in the same boat. I've kind of had Rudolph in my top 10 all year and had Belchez more as a guy who's closer to 15 for me than he is to 10, at least in the finishing sort of home stretch here. Earlier in the year, Ethan was viewed as a top five pick in this class. He scored 10 goals in his first 13 games in Windsor. He's a 6'5 forward with skill.
There was a lot of excitement. I remember seeing him play twice, once in Saginaw and once in Brantford. when I was down there doing separate stories and sort of walking out of the rink, talking to his, one of his now future coaches at MSU and some scouts and people were talking about him in like a three, four conversation at that time.
And then he breaks his collarbone and he misses the second half. And right before that had happened, he'd, sort of hit a bit of a wall in terms of production. He hadn't impressed quite as much on a very deep Windsor team in the last 10 or 15 games there.
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Chapter 8: How can the Canucks improve their appeal to players despite market challenges?
He wasn't very good at the CHL USA Prospects Challenge in Calgary and in Lethbridge. And so there had just been some softening on him. But I feel like that's come back around, even though he hasn't played any hockey. I got the sense coming out of the combine that he was more in the top 10 conversation than maybe people realized. And I think he kind of goes in that 9, 10, 11 range.
So that brings the Nashville Predators up on the clock at number 10. And as you note in your write-up of this pick, and I'll let you announce it here in a second, but Chris McFarlane taking over there adds a new wrinkle to trying to project what Nashville does as well.
Yeah, they've had a clear type over the years. And Brady Martin, who they took last year, obviously, at fifth overall, is kind of that type to a tee. They've taken a ton of really competitive players. You go back through their list, Zachary LaRue, Fedor Svechkov, Igor Surin, a lot of their first
round picks over the last several years have had as the central part of their identity, kind of that competitive heartbeat of a team, scrappy, feisty. They haven't always taken the pure skill guy. They did lean the pure skill guy when they took Riker Lee in the second half of the first round last year, but they've tended to have a type.
And I'm not sure that Rudolph necessarily fits that type, but I also can't imagine him getting much further than 10th overall. So Rudolph will be my pick here for the Nashville Predators this they've drafted, in terms of defensemen, a lot of lefties over the last couple of years. They used a first-round pick on Tanner Molendijk, a smooth-skating lefty.
They used a first-round pick last year on Cameron Reid, a smooth-skating lefty. And they don't really have the premium right-shot guy. So if Rudolph gets to 10, I would bet that McFarland is smart enough to take him.
A gift for McFarland at 10th overall as Dax and Rudolph goes there. All right, St. Louis Blues, the St. Louis Blues, they... have kind of quietly killed it at the draft, I feel like, Scott, across the last five, six years. Not that they've done an exceptional job team building, but it just feels like they're always putting it on the fairway and finding pretty high upside guys as they do that.
What do you expect from them at 11 if the board has unfolded in this manner on draft day?
Well, everybody around the league seems to think that they're going to sort of zero in on a center here. And Viggo Bjork and Caleb Malholzer are going to be long gone. So the next name that typically sort of enters into the equation is Tynan Lawrence.
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