Better or worse off than '99?

[NYVanfan]

that was last time we drafted this high, right?
just wondering what ppl who know more about the farm think ... are we in a better or worse spot?
of course we went on then to draft the Sedins, so that alone prob means worse, since we're unlikely to replicate that draft haul...

but other than Ohlund the prior 5 drafts to that year look horrible, so i am vainly hoping we are in better shape ..
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/teams/dr00008756.html

and in fact the next 4 drafts look pretty lousy from back then too, with only Bieksa Umberger and Kesler becoming regulars

in fact, all our drafting looks pretty sorry ... and this is the one vain thread i am pinning hopes to, that the one thing Benning knows how to do is draft.
Now if he'll just stop giving all our picks away that would help..

Click to read more...

 

[Hit the post]

Burke >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Benning.

So, we're worse off than in 1999.

 

[Win One Before I Die]

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000391999.html

98-99 roster above.

The Canucks have never had a prospect pool as strong as what we have now depth wise. And that is before we enter this years draft. We will be back in a season or two. And if the Sedins can slide into a 2nd line role while our prospects make up the first line we will be fine.

 

[DL44]

that was last time we drafted this high, right?
just wondering what ppl who know more about the farm think ... are we in a better or worse spot?
of course we went on then to draft the Sedins, so that alone prob means worse, since we're unlikely to replicate that draft haul...

but other than Ohlund the prior 5 drafts to that year look horrible, so i am vainly hoping we are in better shape ..
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/teams/dr00008756.html

and in fact the next 4 drafts look pretty lousy from back then too, with only Bieksa Umberger and Kesler becoming regulars

in fact, all our drafting looks pretty sorry ... and this is the one vain thread i am pinning hopes to, that the one thing Benning knows how to do is draft.
Now if he'll just stop giving all our picks away that would help..

Definitely better off in terms of in house prospects...

But in 99 they had a brewing Naslund and Bert..

 

[Fat Tony]

Burke's draft day performance was one for the ages.

 

[NazzyWrister]

It makes me sad looking at the draft history of Canucks 1st round picks

We sure sucked at drafting in 1st round

 

[NYVanfan]

Our top 10 OA history... oy

Virtanen
Horvat
Hodgson
Bourdon
Sedin
Sedin
Allen
Ference
Stojanov
Nedved
Herter
Linden
Woodley
Sandlak
Daignault
Neely
Butcher
Lanz
Vaive
Derlago
Gillis
Blight
Ververgaert
Lever
Guevrement
Tallon


and here's the list of Canucks who are in the HOF

Bure
Larianov
Messier
Sundin
Neely

yes, i am in a v depressed mood...

 

[y2kcanucks]

We are certainly much worse off now than we were in 1999. Back in 99 we were a team that was rebuilding. Today we are a team that desperately needs to rebuild, but has an owner and management that think they're a playoff team. I'm hopeful that the sheer incompetence of our management will result in another top 5 pick, but also starting to worry that their gross cap mismanagement will end up costing us a young player or two.

 

[RobertKron]

Pretty different situations. In 99, they'd just come out of the Keenan disaster, they'd just ended a prolonged messy situation by trading away Bure, which meant that over a couple years they'd traded both Linden and Bure. The fans weren't coming out, the team was awful, and there was genuine talk about moving the team out of Vancouver. The team was losing 20, 30 million dollars a year in that era.

Below all that, they had young guys in Ohlund, Sopel, Scatchard, Muckalt, Schaefer, Druken, Holden, Allen, Chubarov, Ruutu, Bertuzzi, Naslund, Aucoin, Cooke, McCabe, Jovanovski 25 and under in the system.

Many of them didn't pan out, but at the time many of them were very promising pieces. Druken, for example, had just put up a goal per game or so, and 100+ points in 60 games in his 19yo season in the OHL. Holden was a 3/4PPG 20yo rookie in the AHL. Muckalt had just had a great rookie season. Ohlund, IIRC, hadn't had his eye injury yet, and looked like he was going to be an elite guy.

Anyway, on-ice, I don't think this is a question you can look at reasonably for a few years. As a business, I don't think there's even a comparison because the landscape has changed so much.

 

[jeromemorrow]

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000391999.html

98-99 roster above.

The Canucks have never had a prospect pool as strong as what we have now depth wise. And that is before we enter this years draft. We will be back in a season or two. And if the Sedins can slide into a 2nd line role while our prospects make up the first line we will be fine.

Haha.. wow! Thanks for the link.. Blast from the past indeed...

From the stars of Alex Mogilny, Naslund, (I guess we could include Messier.. ugh)....

Dave Scatchard.. Bill Muckalt... Donald Brashear... Peter Zezel.. Trent Klatt... Jason Strudwick... Brent Sopel.

Surprisingly, a lot of our dmen went else where and still became good depth dmen.


A lot of similarities in scenario... 99 and 2016... both scenarios are 5 years after we reached the SCF.

I hope Sutter isn't a high-priced Scatchard... And from the brief 20 games that Sutter played, I think there is something there. He looked above average with the Sedins and on ES.

Edler is pretty much the LHS of Ohlund (after his eye injury) because Edler doesn't hit anymore.

I think we're better off just because we have the Sedins.. and our young guns (Virtanen, Horvat and Hutton).

Interesting thread. Also, I do think there's a lot more parity in the NHL now versus the NHL in '99.

 

[Hit the post]

The Canucks have never had a prospect pool as strong as what we have now depth wise. And that is before we enter this years draft. We will be back in a season or two. And if the Sedins can slide into a 2nd line role while our prospects make up the first line we will be fine.

Means nothing if the other half of the equation SUCKS and SUCKS BAD (ie., rest of the GM's role & the rest of the so-called management team).

As well...whatever you may think of McCaw - at least he didn't stick his nose in the team's hockey operations as far as I know unlike some other owner...

 

[ChilliBilly]

How many remember all the fans on here who wanted to get rid of the Sedins for nothing ....

 

[RobertKron]

Means nothing if the other half of the equation SUCKS and SUCKS BAD (ie., rest of the GM's role & the rest of the so-called management team).

As well...whatever you may think of McCaw - at least he didn't stick his nose in the team's hockey operations as far as I know unlike some other owner...

IIRC, and I could be mistaken on this, McCaw's nose was all up in the Keenan, Messier fiasco.

 

[Hit the post]

How many remember all the fans on here who wanted to get rid of the Sedins for nothing ....

How many wanted AV lining up at the EI office on that REALLY LONG losing streak in the first year of Gillis regime?

IIRC, and I could be mistaken on this, McCaw's nose was all up in the Keenan, Messier fiasco.

If he was, then I stand corrected.

(ain't going to be the last time I'm wrong heh...)

 

[Hollywood Burrows]

I don't think it's super useful to compare team building now and pre-cap. But if you look at, say, a trade like the Mogilny-for-Morrison deal, where the Canucks dealt a vet for a promising young piece...Benning hasn't been able to make a deal like that. This year's deadline was a pretty clear example of his failure in that regard, as was the Kesler trade. And expecting him to pull off something like Burke's draft-day Twin-swindling is just lunacy.

Our prospect pool right now is one of the worst in the league, and we don't have young players ready to break out like Naslund and Bertuzzi. We have a bottom-5 management team. Things are much, much worse than in 1999.

 

[MS]

The 1999 Canucks had a GM who wasn't a total imbecile, and had 4 guys under age 25 who would go on to be top-pairing NHL defenders. And ownership, after a period of interference and the Messier fiasco, had stepped back and were letting the GM run the team the way he wanted.

This is worse.

 

[Snatcher Demko]

Too early to make this comparison - the Canucks true retrenchment has not happened yet.

The stage we are in is more like the 1997 Canucks. Still aspiring for mediocrity.

 

[Steveorama]

Much worse now, frankly.
For those who are listing out our list of "young-NHLers-to-be", Canucks fans in 1999 felt the same way about Holden, Schaefer, Muckalt, Sopel, et al.

 

[lawrence]

1999 by far.

2016 had injury excuses, although losing is never an excuse, at times ironically this team dominated some other teams when they weren't really suppose. Remember some games we were crying for a loss and we won? We had one too many scenarios of that.

1999 team was just flat our horrible. We won only won Games because Garth Snow Stole a ton of games for us, we were waiting for the suppose assets of the Pavel Bure trade to come safe us, halfway through the season, we got Dave Gagner (not sure why we picked him up) and Ed Jovanovski, sure but at the loss of Bret Hedican. anyways, 1999 was much worst.

 

[Pure West]

Pretty different situations. In 99, they'd just come out of the Keenan disaster, they'd just ended a prolonged messy situation by trading away Bure, which meant that over a couple years they'd traded both Linden and Bure. The fans weren't coming out, the team was awful, and there was genuine talk about moving the team out of Vancouver. The team was losing 20, 30 million dollars a year in that era.

Below all that, they had young guys in Ohlund, Sopel, Scatchard, Muckalt, Schaefer, Druken, Holden, Allen, Chubarov, Ruutu, Bertuzzi, Naslund, Aucoin, Cooke, McCabe, Jovanovski 25 and under in the system.

Many of them didn't pan out, but at the time many of them were very promising pieces. Druken, for example, had just put up a goal per game or so, and 100+ points in 60 games in his 19yo season in the OHL. Holden was a 3/4PPG 20yo rookie in the AHL. Muckalt had just had a great rookie season. Ohlund, IIRC, hadn't had his eye injury yet, and looked like he was going to be an elite guy.

Anyway, on-ice, I don't think this is a question you can look at reasonably for a few years. As a business, I don't think there's even a comparison because the landscape has changed so much.

I don't think we have a young crop of players remotely as good as the one mentioned above, and in particular that defense. Jovo and Ohlund were top pairing guys for us, Aucoin and McCabe went on to top pair roles with other teams, and Sopel was a pretty solid top 4 guy, and even Allen had a decent career. I think it is very impressive to have that many young players/prospects pan out, as only really Druken, Holden and Chubarov out of that group failed to carve out longer NHL careers. I think the prospect group of the late 90s/early 2000s was very underrated and one of the big reasons for our success in the immediate seasons following.

Now we are drafting lower, and with fewer picks, and far less in the 21-25 department as the horrendous drafting from 2007-2012 has caught up to us. Before this upcoming draft pick, we don't have a single player that looks like a top line talent to replace the Sedins. Very happy Hutton looks like a real player, as without him the group we have on defense coming up is not pretty. What makes that worse, is that since 99 defense has become by far the most important position and the most scarce commodity out there.

99 was certainly a low, but it wasn't year 1 of their rebuild. The very next season it looked like the team was finding some stability and took a big step with a big end of the year push for the playoffs. We are at least 2-3 years from that stage IMO.

 

[Hit the post]

Ohlund, IIRC, hadn't had his eye injury yet, and looked like he was going to be an elite guy.

This is how good Ohlund was...even WITH the eye injury - he still was an elite (defensively) D.