What 'building through the draft' should mean for the Canucks
My latest column for CanucksArmy unpacks the meaning of building through the draft.
New Vancouver Canucks general manager Ryan Johnson has been saying all the right things to a fanbase desperate for a new direction. The Canucks have spent over a decade spinning their wheels in off-road shortcuts, but Johnson wants to get the team back on track.
“Our vision is to build through the draft,” said Johnson at his introductory press conference. “Obviously, we’ve got ten picks right now in this year’s draft…those are going to be massive selections in this process. Will there be things we’ll do strategically to add to our draft pool? Absolutely, and that’s stuff that we will talk about, but we want to do it right.”
That’s music to the ears of many Canucks fans, who have seen the team trade away a lot of draft picks to try to prop up a team that was never properly rebuilt. To wit, the 2025 draft was the first time in six years the Canucks made picks in both the first and second rounds, and they’ve made just three first-round picks in that time.
The 2026 draft will be significantly different, as the Canucks currently have two picks in each of the first and second rounds. They may add more, judging from Johnson’s comments.
But let’s take a moment to unpack the phrase “build through the draft.”
It’s generally understood that good teams need to be built through the draft, but that wasn’t always the case. Longtime Canucks fans are already aware of this, as the teams that went to the 1982 and 1994 Stanley Cup Finals couldn’t be said to have been built through the draft.
The Canucks in 1982 had Stan Smyl, Harold Snepsts, and Curt Fraser as key pieces that were drafted by the Canucks, but the scant few other Canucks picks that appeared in the playoffs barely played — though Gerry Minor deserves a shoutout for his four points in the Final against the New York Islanders.
In the 1994 playoffs, the Canucks had Trevor Linden, Pavel Bure, Gino Odjick, and Shawn Antoski as players drafted by the team. That’s it.
Of course, that was before the salary cap increased the importance of homegrown talent, and the Canucks team that went to the 2011 Stanley Cup Final had a lot more Canucks picks on it, led, of course, by Daniel and Henrik Sedin.
Aiming to be as good (or better, if possible) as the 2010-11 Canucks should be the goal for the Sedins and Johnson. That means not only hitting on first-round picks, but also finding key pieces outside of the first round, like Alex Edler, Kevin Bieksa, Mason Raymond, and Jannik Hansen.
That’s the way to build a great team in the salary cap era.
Or is it?
Drafting + smart trades definitely seems like the way to go. Accumulating picks feeds both of those things, and that's where I'm waiting to see if this regime is really going to be any different than what we've seen over the past 15 years or so.