Tyson Cole: What do Malhotra and Novotny bring to the table? Canucks finally start to make trades.
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How did the Canucks' nine selections shape their draft weekend report card?
This is Harrison Price from the Historic Wall Center and a historic weekend for the Vancouver Canucks who wind up making nine selections at the NHL Entry Draft. Two in the first round, two in the second round. Joining us now to discuss is one half of the Blackfish podcast. Here on the Nation Network, the Canucks Army Channel, we had Dave Hall on from Buffalo. It's high time we bring Tyson Cole back on to talk about the Canucks draft. First of all, your partner sounded like he was having a blast there in Buffalo covering the draft.
Oh, everything was coming up Dave Hall at the draft. He got Adam Novotny at pick 24. He got Nicholas Aramolson in the second round. Those were his guys, and the Canucks got both of them. So he was on cloud nine over there.
Absolutely, yeah. We talked to him Friday after the Novotny pick, and he was over the moon about that. I'd like your two cents. How do you think they did on these nine picks, and especially the guys early on in rounds one and two?
Yeah. I mean, I'll be honest. Like if, if you're picking four times the top 41 and you don't walk away with, with a solid draft, something went horribly wrong. So I do like it. I mean, you're still getting, you're still getting NHL games for sure. Out of, out of, you know, Caleb Malhotra, it seems like that's the same for Adam Novotny and Brooks Rogowski is pretty safe, but I would have liked to see a few swings, you know, like those were three safe picks to me. Like Um, I'm not knocking the Malhotra and Novotny pick though. I mean, those are kind of slam dunks, but when it got to, got to Rogowski, I'm like, okay, like I don't hate it, but it's also like, are you leaving meat on the bone offensively?
Because you didn't take the offensive offensive center. Well, Caleb's going to be fine, but you didn't take like the swing on Vigo Bjork there. And I don't blame them for not doing that. But then you go with the hulking centerman and Brooks Rogowski with the I just don't know. Like his projection seems to be like a bottom sixer. And are you really taking that at the, with the first pick of the second round, one pick outside of the first round? I don't know, but hopefully it proves me wrong.
Yeah, top of the second round, Tyson, there were some attractive potential offensive contributors. There's Xavier Villeneuve went quickly thereafter to the Chicago Blackhawks. So we all talked about Penticton's Mathis Preston of the Vancouver Giants. But it seems like they put a preference on high floor character guys with size because, I mean, I think they're looking at it going, we've got to find guys who play NHL games here and get them into the pipeline on the front end of the rebuild.
It's hard to knock them for going with that strategy. High character, big bodied, guys who are for sure going to play NHL games. That could be your draft philosophy, but when you take two of those guys in the first round, I don't want to see you leading off the second round with the same kind of thing. It's like, okay, we've done this twice now. Let's try and take a swing. Even in the later rounds, taking... Draft plus one guys like Yaroslav Brizgalov and Connor Davis. There were some... And those guys are, well, 6'4 for Brizgalov, 6'4 for Connor Davis. But there were some other guys there that I thought had a lot better value. And I wasn't sure how they... I've got a take. I've got a take here. And I want to know what you think.
So just because it's a new regime, the drafting has stayed the same. And that makes sense because it's Todd Harvey. But if you look at their drafts since 2020 under Todd Harvey... What was the vibe around the team? It was, okay, we're good down the middle, right? We don't need any centermans. We've got Petey. We've got Bo Horvat. We've got JT Miller. We don't need centers. So they didn't draft any. They drafted five over five drafts out of their 29 picks. What did they need? They needed defensemen. So they used more than half of those picks. I believe it was 15 on defensemen. Now fast forward to present day, and it's like, okay, they've got all the defensemen in the world, but they don't have any centers in the pipeline.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How did the Canucks' nine selections shape their draft weekend report card?
0:02–4:37
2
Why did the Canucks prioritize high-floor, big-bodied players in rounds one and two?
4:37–6:37
3
What concerns were raised about taking Brooks Rogowski at the top of round two?
6:37–13:02
4
How has Todd Harvey's drafting history affected the Canucks' positional pipeline?
13:02–16:55
Speakers
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