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A chart-tastic view of the Vancouver Canucks

The Vancouver Canucks are an interesting team. They get called chokers as much as the Sharks, yet don’t have quite the same sustained success. Their superstar duo was drafted a year after the Sharks’, and they didn’t even have to trade for one of them post-draft. Oh, and the Sharks are playing them in the playoffs. That makes them more interesting than most.

Regular readers of the blog will know how to read this, but allow me to give a primer for anyone new. The chart is a graphical representation of all the moves the Canucks have made to arrive at their current roster. I go all the way back to the draft picks they have every year as part of the draft, as well as free agent signings and waiver wire pickups. Any time there’s a trade or draft pick compensation, that goes on the chart.

Following the chart itself isn’t too complicated. Players with the grayed Canucks logo are roster players. Trade dates with the team the Canucks traded with are listed by one of the lines somewhere, usually wherever I could find space. If a player has draft information below their name, the Canucks owned them as a draft pick at some point. If the name is italicized, they were traded as a draft pick.

Click on the chart for a larger, more readable version. Scroll down for some analysis.

Van2013t_medium

There are 33 roster players included on this chart, as listed by the Vancouver Canucks official website. That is quite a lot of players. Granted, most of them are not expected to play (there are four goalies listed!), but I didn’t want to accidentally exclude a roster player for whatever reason so I simply included all of them. Luckily, only ten of the players were acquired through trade, so that did not prove to be too much of a problem.

Here’s the breakdown. There are 99 players on this chart. Which is a lot, but still fewer than the pre-2013 Sharks (129!). As can be assumed, the majority of those players are what I term original; they were acquired through free agent signings, waiver claims, or drafted by an original draft pick (i.e. one that has not been traded). 53 players are original.

Of those 53 original players, 22 are on the roster. Eight were drafted, twelve were free agent signings, and two were waiver wire pickups. First, I must say that I’m impressed that the Canucks were able to get two roster players from the waiver wire, especially as they’ve been so good for so long and have not had the same priority as, say, a team that somewhat recently picked up Frazer McLaren off waivers.

The second is something I want to talk more about: twelve free agents on the roster. Eighteen free agents on the chart in total. The Sharks’ biggest free agent signing in franchise history was Scott freaking Gomez (apologies to 38-year-old Rob Blake). I’m sorry, it doesn’t even matter if it’s quantity over quality, Canucks fans can never complain about attracting free agents.

Onto the draft. As has been a trend with pretty much all the charts I’ve ever made, first round picks were used most, with 10 originals used. Seven second round picks were used, six thirds, one fourth, five fifths, one six, and two ninths. Apparently, the seventh and eighth rounds don’t exist, and five is the cosmic number.

Ten of the roster players were acquired through trades, accumulating 24 trades in the process. A lot of that was through Daniel Sedin (who I will deal with later). Eight of those roster players were acquired outright, while two of them – Daniel Sedin and Alexander Edler – had their draft picks acquired and were then drafted.

Miscellaneous Tomfoolery

Daniel Sedin

Why couldn’t have he been like his brother? 33 players are in his branch alone, which means he accounts for one third of the entire chart. He also accounts for 11 trades, which is almost half of all trades. There’s a bit of a mystery with the Craig Darby pick – my research returned two different trades the Canucks made that got them that pick. So I did eenie-meenie-miney-mo and picked one of them. I think I picked the more complicated one.

[Alex]andre/er

On this chart, I counted two Alexanders, two Alexandres, and one Alex. I honestly thought there were more, because it felt like every other name I wrote down was “Alexandre”.

Subway

The period from 2008-2013 is crazy busy with trades and free agent signings, it looks like a poorly planned subway system. Or, basically, any subway system in the United States.

Best Names

Brett Scheffelmaier and Jyrki Lumme, thank you for making me laugh every time I read your names. Also, I realize that Jyrki is probably pronounced “Yerky,” but I think the world is a better place if there was actually a guy named “Jerky.”

Is this a typo…?

Tuomas Pihlman. I get that some places like their Us. I just don’t know why.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

There was a name I spotted while researching Roberto Luongo’s past. A name so American, it sounds like the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. That’s right: John Adams. And since Luongo has the second President of the United States in his lineage, he’s obviously ineligible to play for Canada in the Olympics. Which means the US actually won the gold. WOOOOO.

I’m going to Disney World! (Alt: Guess a lot of Canucks *puts on sunglasses* see the Sunrise. YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHH!)

Man the Canucks like trading with the Florida Panthers. Because that’s totally a successful team filled with great players.

That’s about it for my extremely superficial analysis. As always, much credit goes to Pro Sports Transactions, which is awesome and not known about by enough people.

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