What If The Canucks Chose Matt Tkachuk instead?

[Guntrix]

5 hours ago, King Heffy said:

People here are really underestimating the problems having a gutless turtle with massive character issues would cause in the room.

The Canucks’ problem is that they drafted a useless gutless turtle with character issues (Virtanen) instead of a useful gutless turtle with character issues (Tkachuk). 

[Sophomore Jinx]

6 hours ago, Alflives said:

How about we don’t hire the Moran who screwed up the draft in the first place? Then we take Pasta and Larkin. Then MT. We still get Petey and Hughes. 

[GothamGhost]

11 hours ago, HKSR said:

A hypothetical walk down memory lane... what if the Canucks picked Tkachuk instead of Juolevi?

 

Disclaimer:  All for fun here.  It's my rendition of what I think could have happened.  Don't like it?  Make your own post lol

 

2016 NHL Draft:  "Canucks are proud to select, from the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League... Matthew Tkachuk".

 

2016-17 Season:  Tkachuk comes in and plays as well as he did with Calgary.  Canucks were still terrible though, and so instead of finishing last in the division, they only move up 1 spot in the division ahead of Arizona. 

 

2017 NHL Draft:  Canucks now select 7th instead of 5th.  Rangers still have Arizona's pick and selected Elias Pettersson 5th OA.  VGK still selects Glass, which leaves Mittlestadt as the selection for the Vancouver Canucks.

 

2017-18 Season:  Tkachuk helps the Canucks move up another spot in the division with his 2nd season in the NHL.  Canucks finish ahead of the Oilers and land in 6th place in the Pacific.

 

2018 NHL Draft:  Chicago, Rangers, and Oilers all move up a spot in the draft as the Canucks pick 10th instead.  Chicago lands Quinn Hughes, Rangers still select Kravtsov, and the Oilers select Boqvist.  As many media outlets reported, the Canucks really liked Dobson, so they select Noah Dobson 10th OA.

 

2018-19 Season:  With a 3rd year Tkachuk leading the charge next to Horvat and Boeser, the Canucks finish 5th in the division.

 

2019 NHL Draft:  With a big, strong powerforward already in Tkachuk, rather than selecting Podkolzin, the Canucks select the highly skilled Matt Boldy from the USHL.

 

2019-20 Season:  Tkachuk has another strong season playing on a line with newcomer fellow countryman JT Miller.  Together they put up strong offensive numbers and push the Canucks into 2nd in the Pacific. 

 

2020 NHL Draft:  Canucks don't have a selection as they traded for JT Miller. 

 

2020-21 Season:  A covid impacted year, the Canucks struggle from illness and are also lacking a bonafide top pair defenceman to push them deeper into the playoffs.  They finish last in the division and don't make it through the play-in round.

 

2021 NHL Draft:  Canucks end up with the 6th OA selection due to their poor 2020-21 season.  Knowing they need a LHD badly, they select Simon Edvinsson from Frolunda of the SHL.

 

2021-22 Season:  Big season for Vancouver.  Miller explodes for a 100pt season along with Tkachuk's 100pt+ season as well as Dobson and Boldy coming into their own.  Canucks finish 1st in the division. 

 

2022 NHL Draft:  Canucks select Jiri Kulich 27th OA.

 

2022-23 Season:  Another big year.  With the emergence of Boldy, and Boeser's struggles, Boeser is traded away for the cap space.  Canucks also attract KHL star Andrei Kuzmenko.  Tkachuk, Miller, and Kuzmenko become one of the top lines in hockey.  Secondary scoring comes from Horvat, Boldy, and Mittlestadt.  Dobson continues to anchor the blueline, and the Canucks finish 3rd in the division.

 

2023 NHL Draft:  Canucks select Oliver Bonk 22nd OA.

 

Your new core of the Vancouver Canucks:  Tkachuk, Miller, Horvat, Boldy, Dobson, Demko, Mittlestadt.

 

Top prospects in the system:  Kulich, Edvinsson, Bonk

 

There you have it folks.  Thoughts?

 

Good for you to have such a great imagination. 

 

It was a good read.

[Malibu]

All I know is I spent the whole year calculating and pining for a top 5 pick and when Benning tossed it away it was one of my top 5 pissed off moment in Canuck history, maybe even top 1.

[Grinch]

We would be sitting here with hooberdough eriksson and OEL

[PhillipBlunt]

Newsflash: They didn’t. 

[wai_lai416]

if we ended up with MT and Dobson middlestadt instead of EP and Hughes?? we'll be in a great position cap wise.. MT Dobson Middlestadt cost less than EP and Hughes combine even if say EP signs for 10mil.

[Diamonds]

One major correction to make to the 2017 draft. If the Canucks gained enough points to finish above Arizona, then they also jumped NJ. That means that we actually win the draft lottery and draft 1st overall where we take Cale Makar (who was rumored to be the #1 pick on the Canucks' draft board).

[Combover]

We had a bad team with no direction, a total idiot for a GM with no plan well except  failure followed by excuses. he could have drafted Gretzky and he would have f’d it up. 

 

The drafting improved under bracket but Jbs ego couldn’t handle that.
he stabbed the guy that got him the job the back

it wasn’t just on ice product it was the entire   Organization was decimated by Dim jim.

He was so bad it could be a conspiracy theory like Bettman himself was paying benning to destroy this club because no single human could be a stupid and as bad at his job as Benning was.

 

 

Jb is and was a steaming pile of dog crap. 

Actually that offends dog crap because even a pile of crap couldn’t have been worse. 

 

 

 

 

[Shcott]

I remember I was super high on tkachuk in that draft and thought he was the clear choice for us. Then there was rumblings they liked Juolevi and some mocks even had us taking him over tkachuk. I thought it was just rumours and we were taking tkachuk for sure and then well, yeah…I tried to be hyped about juolevi and drafting a d man in the first round but even then I liked sergachev over juolevi. Oh well 

[cripplereh]

What if we won cups Everytime we got to the finals,what if we hit Gretzky,what if we didn't trade Neely,and so on......

[Canuckleheads Fan]

Tkachuk would have boogied from Vancouver as quickly as he split from Calgary. He fled high-tax Canada to a state where the weather is always great and there is no income tax. He would have no Interest in staying in Canada no matter where he was playing. We will be lucky if Petey doesn't do the same.

[HKSR]

Lol you can pretty quickly identify the people replying that didn't actually read the original post OR understand the intent of it 

[AnthonyG]

On 2/9/2024 at 3:32 PM, Shift-4 said:

 @HKSR you have overcomplicated it for my brain

Can I just say it would be great to have Weegar in the lineup?

With his old ball and chain Huberdone hangin off his ankles….?? No thanks.

[King Heffy]

On 2/9/2024 at 11:20 PM, Sophomore Jinx said:

[Roger Neilsons Towel]

I was at the season ticket holder draft party at Rogers Arena and I boo’ed when we drafted Joulevi over Tkachuk. I couldn’t believe it. Such a fumble on Benning’s part.

 

However, I will say that I wouldn’t change what happened, because that is what has led us here to a 1st place team with an amazing core and a player who is arguably becoming the best Defenseman to ever play the game.
 

I wouldn’t trade Quinn Hughes for anything. Bobby Orr 2.0

 

[kilgore]

Appreciate all the creative writing for the OP. 

But there are literally billions of different butterfly effects.  As someone else alluded to, if we made certain different decisions, it would also affect other teams decisions, so it would affect the entire league and the success or failures of other teams as well.  Which would ultimately come back to affect us, which then would affect other teams, etc into the twilight zone.

 

If JB had actually been a drafting specialist as he was touted as, we may have begun a rebuild earlier, just based on our early picks.  Heck, if Aquilini had listened to Linden, Torts, Gillis....and instructed JB in no uncertain terms he wanted a garage sale, and a start over right when he arrived. And we sold off or traded away most of the core from 2011 immediately, we may have tanked enough to be high in the lottery and land McDavid in 2015!  Long shot sure.   Maybe it would have been Matthews a year later.

 

And that means we'd probably be playing well enough by the time Petey and Hughes draft years they'd have been out of reach.

 

But if you are going down this rabbit hole, it also could have been Nylander or McAvoy in 2016.  If Benning was such a drafting genius he may have seen what other didn't and moved them up.  So many what ifs.

 

JB could have still picked Joulevi but started a real rebuild right after drafting Petey.  While he was still in Sweden tearing up the SHL, strip it down so that when Petey arrived, we'd already have a jump on it, plus the addition of Hughes.

And in all honesty, even though a proper rebuild should have been started in 2014, I do kind of relate to Aquilini's temptation of squeezing out one more run from the old core.  But...the big mistake was hanging onto that fantasy for too long. 2017 could have been the more realistic re-start year, in hindsight.  But that didn't happen. Among a billion other things.

 

 

[iinatcc]

5 hours ago, Roger Neilsons Towel said:

I was at the season ticket holder draft party at Rogers Arena and I boo’ed when we drafted Joulevi over Tkachuk. I couldn’t believe it. Such a fumble on Benning’s part.

 

However, I will say that I wouldn’t change what happened, because that is what has led us here to a 1st place team with an amazing core and a player who is arguably becoming the best Defenseman to ever play the game.
 

I wouldn’t trade Quinn Hughes for anything. Bobby Orr 2.0

 

 

Love Hughes but I wouldn't mind having a core composed of Tkachuck, Pettersson (considering how the top 3 went, could have been available even provided they picked ahead of the Rangers), and maybe Dobson