As a little interlude between rounds of our toughest Canuck marathon (thanks, by the way, for all your votes today), we continue with our draft day retrospective…

Boondoggle - The Canucks have often been accused in recent years of avoiding the WHL come draft time.  And there may be some truth to that.  We’re still investigating.  But if it is true, after the 2000 pick of centre Nathan Smith from Swift Current, you can’t blame them for being a little gun shy.  In their draft history, the Canucks have been alternately obsessed with trying to find the elusive blue chip defenseman or the even more elusive number one centre.  Smith was yet another attempt at the latter.  To date, he has played 26 NHL games and has yet to register a point.  Wow.  Who could they have had instead?  Well, one pick later centre Brad Boyes was taken - exactly what they were searching for when they picked Smith.  Other notables that year who were picked after Smith include Justin Williams, Niklas Kronwall, Nick Schultz, Ilya Bryzgalov, Jarret Stoll, Andreas Lilja, Antoine Vermette, Paul Martin, Lubomir Visnovsky, John Michael Liles, Matthew Lombardi and Henrik Lundqvist.  As tough as Ron Delorme may have been, he clearly took a few too many shots to the head.

Boon - When the Canucks made their infamous run to the ‘82 Final, expectations for the following seasons were high.  Some would argue unjustifiably so given the fluky nature of that run.  But when you look back at their drafting record of 1980 and 1981 and the number of quality players in the pipeline who hadn’t contributed in 1982, you can further appreciate why there was some optimism.  Those 2 draft years generated Garth Butcher, Petri Skriko, Rick Lanz, Doug Lidster and Patrick Sundstrom.  Sundstrom, the silky Swede, was selected in the 9th round of the 1980 draft and went on to score at a point per game clip for 5 full seasons in Vancouver.  Plus he was great trade bait, netting us Kirk McLean and Greg Adams, both key figures in the Canucks’ early 90’s success.  You won’t see another 9th round pick like this (mostly because the draft is only 7 rounds now).