Article content continued

After Slegr, Chris Simon, Felix Potvin, Doug Weight and Geoff Sanderson were all selected in the second round.

You are invited to fantasize about what could have been for Quinn’s teams with, say, Primeau, Tkachuk and Weight in the lineup.

Fast-forward to 2005. The West Coast Express-era Canucks was starting to show liver spots but the team had drafted Kevin Bieksa in ’01, Ryan Kesler in ’03 and were coming off an ’04 draft which included Cory Schneider, Alex Edler and Jannik Hansen.

Owing to another NHL lockout, the draft order that year was determined by lottery and the Canucks ended up with the 10th pick. They chose Luc Bourdon. The next two picks were Anze Kopitar and Marc Staal.

We do not intend to minimize the heart-breaking personal tragedy around Bourdon, but there was a hockey part to this story. We’ll let you fill in the blanks.

The third missed opportunity for the Canucks came in the three drafts between ’07 and ’09. Again, the Canucks had missed the playoffs in 2005-06 and again in ’07-08, but had still put together the core of the 2011 Cup finalists.

Now, we’re not going to tell you they should have taken P.K. Subban over Patrick White, or Erik Karlsson over Cody Hodgson, or Ryan O’Reilly over Jordan Schroeder. But, incredibly, the Canucks didn’t pick one long-term NHLer in those three drafts.

Not one.

Hodgson, the 10th overall pick in ’08, played 71 games in Vancouver and had the biggest impact of any player selected in that span. Anton Rodin, the second-rounder in ’09, could change that now that he’s arrived as a 25-year-old. But the Canuck just needed a couple of players in those three drafts to help the 2011 team and/or prolong its shelf life and they threw up three air balls.