

Screenshot via Canucks TV

On Monday we quoted a Laurence Gilman interview about draft preparation that was posted by Canucks TV. We then embedded the video in full in our daily headshots post. Obviously we weren’t paying close enough attention, as the above image and its potential significance completely escaped us.

Luckily the good folks at HFBoards, and user "thefeebster" in particular, are comparatively sharper instruments. At 1:31 of the aforementioned draft video, "thefeebster" noticed what appears to be a Canucks master draft list from the "2010 Final Meeting." This document, which certainly looks like how we’d imagine the Canucks draft list for the 2010 NHL Draft would, becomes legible if you adjust the quality of the video to 1080 pixels and zoom in a few times…

Read on past the jump.

First off, it would seem to be pretty careless for the Canucks to let a potentially sensitive – and potentially embarrassing – document like this surface publicly. Just because it’s somewhat shocking and uncharacteristic of the organization, I find it difficult to imagine that the above image is actually a screencap of the teams 2010 draft board.

On the other hand, the rankings on this document certainly don’t match up with, say, the ISS list for 2010. Also, you can see annotations at the top-half of the left column, and it appears that whichever member of the front office to whom this document belonged was scrawling the actual draft order on the list itself (before giving up early in the second round). That leads me to believe that it is what it looks like, but obviously we can’t say for certain either way.

"TheFeebster" took the time to transcribe the entire list into a more readable format, and we’ve copy and pasted his work into this post:

Hall Seguin Burmistrov Gormley JACK CAMPBELL Tarasenko Gudbranson Skinner Fowler Forbort Johansen Connelly McIlrath Visentin Granlund Kuznetsov Nino Tinordi Bennett Sheahan Bjugstad Merrill Melchiori Corbiel-Therault Hishon McNally Straka, Petr Jarnkrok, Calle Gailev, Stanislav Lindberg, Oscar Polasek, Adam Kabanov Ross, Brad Rensfeldt Hayes, Kevin Dominque, Louis Petterson-Wentzel Schwartz, Jaden Knight, Jared McFarland, John Faulk, Justin Zucker, Jason Larsson, Johan Watson, Austin Toffoli, Tyler Etem, Emerson Pitlick, Tyler Pickard, Calvin Johns, Stephen Pysyk, Mark Marincin, Martin Culek, Jakub Howden, Quinton Hamilton, Curtis Friesen, Alex Spooner, Ryan Gudas, Radko Mrazek, Petr Holl, Justin Pulkkinen, Teemu Wannstrom, Sebastion Bocharov, Stanislav Nelson, Brock Alt, Mark Martindale, Ryan McNeill, Reid Aubry, Louis Leach, Joey MacMillan, Mark Petrovic, Alex Simpson, Kent Brittain, Sam Cehlin, Patrick Gustafsson, Johan Iilahti, Jonathan Brodin, Danielk Nemeth, Patrik Coyle, Charlie McCormick, Max Kitsyn, Maxim Donskoi, Joonas Wind, Cameron Smith Pelley, Devante Tommernes, Henrik Hannay, Sawyer Zahn, Teigan MacKenzie, Matt Weal, Jordan Chudinov, Maxim Houser, Michael Wedgewood, Scott Sundher, Kevin Beukeboom, Brock O’Donnell, Brendan Herbert, Caleb Archibald, Brandon Chaput, Michael Salmivirta, Mikael Hjalmarsson, Simon Marchenko, Alexei Brickley, Connor Clark, Jason Henley, Cedrick Gauthier Leduc, Jerome Gardiner, Max Schemitsch, Geoffrey Smith, Dalton Yogan, Andrew Barbeshev, Sergei Hakanpaa, Jani Aittokallio, Sami Stahl, Tyler Kantor, Michael Marshall, Ben Abeltshauser, Konrad Shipley, Steven Kuhnhackl, Tom Bulmer, Brett Grubauer, Phillip Arnold, Bill

I’m just blown over by how fascinating this list is – if it’s truly Vancouver’s 2010 draft board, that is. For example, you’ll remember that the Canucks traded their 2010 first round pick to Florida in the Keith Ballard acquisition, but the traded pick was a conditional one. That condition? That if one of a short list of players remained on the board when the twenty-fifth overall selection rolled around, then Vancouver would keep the pick and surrender their first round pick for the 2011 NHL Draft instead. If memory serves, the trade was ultimately completed when the Montreal Canadiens selected Jared Tinordi with the 22nd overall pick in the draft.

So which players other than Tinordi were the Canucks hoping would be available with the twenty-fifth overall pick? We know, I suppose, that the list didn’t extend past #22 (because John Merril, Vancouver’s 22nd ranked prospect according to this list which may or may not be anything, wasn’t selected until the 38th pick). So was Nick Bjugstad, who the Canucks were reportedly very desirous of last summer, among those protected players? Was Riley Sheahan?

I also find it pretty fascinating that that the Canucks had two goaltenders ranked in the top-15 of their draft list. That’s an illuminating nugget with respect to how the club views prospect goaltenders…

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Notable "wtf" features of this draft list include Charlie Coyle being ranked in the mid-70s on the list. Already in Coyle’s young career he’s proved that assessment to be way off the mark. The other massively questionable scouting decision? Jack Campbell at fifth overall. Yikes.

Still, I’m not sure having Jack Campbell ranked fifth overall is any worse for Canucks fans than the fact that local product and already productive NHLer Brendan Gallagher wasn’t on the teams radar, like at all. Obviously they just didn’t view him as a prospect…

Of course, it’s not all bad. At least the Canucks scouting staff nailed Taylor Hall over Tyler Seguin. There are also some pretty interesting late round pick outs, which is something you like to see.

Finally, the Canucks had Henrik Tommernes – a player they ultimately selected with their 7th round pick a year later, in 2011 – ranked one slot ahead of Sawyer Hannay, who they actually did select in the seventh round in 2010. But they passed on Tommernes for some reason in 2010, and waited an additional year to select him. I guess it all worked out, but I’d be curious to hear the rationale behind that sequence of decisions…

So what do you think Canucks fans, is the list real or some sort of prop that we shouldn’t take seriously?

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