When Vancouver Canucks fans look back on the Jim Benning era, most will tell you that, save for one brief playoff run, there was not much to remember fondly.
They’d likely tell you the only beacons of light during an otherwise dark time on the West Coast was drafting two franchise players in Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson.
Though, as former president of hockey operations and Canuck captain himself Trevor Linden told Satiar Shah and Dan Riccio of Canucks Central on Wednesday, the decision to draft the Canucks’ undisputed No. 1 centre may not have been unanimous from the jump.
“Jim wasn’t sold,” Linden said. “Jim had his choice, he probably would have taken a different player.”
After 2016, when the Canucks made the now-infamous error in drafting Olli Juolevi when future Hart Trophy finalist Matthew Tkachuk was still available, Linden admitted he didn’t like the way that year’s draft had unfolded. Specifically, he wanted former Canucks director of amateur scouting Judd Brackett and his team more involved in the final decision.
“I did not like how our meetings unfolded,” the former captain said. “In 2017, I really pushed hard to have Judd really step up and really run a robust type of meeting that we can really put our thoughts and feelings on the table.
“I really pushed hard, in that management group, for Judd and his guys to make the pick.”
At the time, Brackett and his staff were high on Pettersson — the now-24-year-old Swede was coming off a dominant year playing for Timra IK in the HockeyAllsvenskan, the second-highest league in Sweden, scoring 41 points in 43 games.
“They were banging their fists on the table, and that’s what I wanted them to do,” Linden said of Brackett advocating for Pettersson. “We didn’t do a good job in 2016, and I think it cost us. Well, I know it cost us.”
Though we can look back on the ‘what if?’ with a grimace and a wipe of the eyebrow, this also offers us a glimpse into the tumultuous working relationship Linden had with the organization near the end of his tenure.
Meant to bridge the gap between general manager and owner, Linden stayed loyal to his former team and transitioned into the role of president of hockey operations in 2014 and hand-picked Benning for the GM role.
Just four years later, Linden was parting ways with the organization and, as Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre reported at the time, the departure was less-than-amicable.
According to Raja Shergill, an analyst on Hockey Night Punjabi, Benning refutes the idea he wanted to pass on Pettersson, telling Shergill that the organization was “always going to draft Pettersson.”
Regardless of how the 2017 Draft went down, Linden had a hand in selecting yet another player that would change the trajectory of the Canucks just one month before his own departure: Quinn Hughes.
“It’s amazing how things fall. From the time I came to Vancouver in 1988, I think this market’s been talking about a defenceman like Quinn Hughes,” Linden said. “Just every single year, just trying to find a guy that can do the things that Quinn can do.
“He’s handled the pressure of being the captain. It’s nice to see him become the captain and get off to a good start.”
Hughes and Pettersson have been two major reasons why the Canucks currently sit at a 9-2-1 record, comfortably second in the Western Conference and atop the individual points leaders.
While the temptation is there to shudder at the thought of this squad sans Pettersson, his 21 points in 12 games should make fans awfully thankful that he’s still donning the blue-and-green.
