The Vancouver Canucks entered the 2024 NHL Entry Draft relatively devoid of top-end draft capital.

That reflects the fact that, really, the NHL draft wasn’t a tentpole event for the organization for the first time in over a decade. Coming off of a 50-win dream season that saw Vancouver capture the regular season Pacific Division title, the Canucks spent the vast majority of their highest-value picks improving their roster.

Their second-round pick, for example, has long belonged to the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks, dating back to the Jason Dickinson trade all the way on Thanksgiving weekend 2022. Their first-round pick was sent to the Calgary Flames as part of a platter of assets that brought in Elias Lindholm to bolster the club’s centre depth for the postseason.

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Canucks NHL Draft picks tracker: Grades, fits and analysis

With limited ammunition in the chamber, the Canucks appeared to approach their 2024 draft somewhat differently than what we saw a year ago in Nashville.

Instead of targeting traits, the club appeared to prioritize production. In fact, most of the Canucks’ mid-round selections — Melvin Fernström, Riley Patterson and Anthony Romani — were prolific scorers at the junior level with some gaps in their athletic profiles. Skating in particular is a common industry concern for all three, and part of the reason why they were available to Vancouver in the third, fourth and sixth rounds respectively.

“Skating is one of the things you can improve at the most if you’re willing to put the work in to get stronger and get quicker,” explained Canucks director of amateur scouting Todd Harvey in a post-draft conversation with The Athletic. “We looked at it like, with the talent they do have, we’re willing to bet that they’ll be able to add to their speed.”

In the late rounds, meanwhile, the Canucks appeared to select youthful projects. Both defender Parker Alcos — a Port Moody product — and Swiss project Basile Sansonnens have projectable size, some interesting tools and are exceedingly young relative to other players in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft class. The club will gamble there that they have more developmental runway and an opportunity to pop as their age and physical maturity catches up to other players in the class.

“With his growth, size and skating we think he has some growth left to do,” Harvey explained of Alcos specifically. “And we were happy to be able to get him where we did.”

Let’s open the notebook and go over some additional details from the 2024 NHL Entry Draft.

The Frolf Player

Vancouver’s first selection at the 2024 NHL Entry draft, coming in at 93rd overall, was Fernström, a teammate of Canucks prospects Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Elias Pettersson (the defenseman) at Örebro HK.

He’s a player likely to fit in well in this city whenever he comes over. Not only because he’ll have some familiarity with other prospects in the Canucks system, but also because of he’s taken up disc golf, or frolf, as one of his favourite pass times.

“I like to play frisbee golf,” the Vancouver third-round pick told The Athletic on Saturday. “I got into it last summer with my friends, we started to play a bit and we’ve continue it this summer.

“I have a small set (of discs), it’s not too big,” he says, about his driver and putter discs. “I like that frisbee golf doesn’t take as much time like golf, it’s a different challenge. It’s just fun.”

Hopefully someone on the Canucks staff will point Fernström in the direction of the Little Mountain course during Canucks development camp next week.

On the ice, Fernström spent most of his season in the J20, appearing in six games with Lekkerimäki at the SHL level. He definitely watched Vancouver’s top prospect closely, taking notes on how to improve his game.

While it’s a good sign that Fernström was at a high enough level in his draft year to warrant a look at the SHL level, most top prospects — particularly those as productive as Fernström was at the J20 level — tend to carve out larger roles in the top Swedish men’s league at this stage of their development.


Fernström has enough hockey sense and creativity to project as a dual-threat point producer. (Courtesy of Örebro HK)

“It was a great experience,” Fernström told The Athletic of getting a cup of coffee at the SHL level this season. “I just wanted to take what I learned from the people around me, and think about what I can do better to get my game (to that level).”

In particular, Fernström noticed at a higher level of Swedish professional hockey that it was more difficult to maintain puck possession.

“I want to be able to hold the puck a bit more, trust myself there,” he said. “Then use my game more, the way I did in the J20.

“I think it’s both my speed and strength (that I need to improve,” he elaborated, “Although I don’t think I lack too much there, improving both is still a big part of my development.”

Overall there’s a lot to like about Fernström’s profile given the range that he was selected in. He was among Sweden’s most productive skaters at the U18 tournament, and he led his team in scoring at the J20 level on a per game basis.

Although he’s a shoot-first attacker, what impresses NHL amateur scouts about Fernström’s game is that he has enough hockey sense and creativity to project as a dual threat point producer. What scouts are more concerned about, however, is his inconsistent motor and a lack of speed and quickness — although some evaluators noted that his work rate spiked as he moved up to the SHL level.

Patersson’s ups and downs

Riley Patersson has an interesting profile. A late bloomer who was enormously productive in the OHL as a rookie this season, Patersson had to take the long way — he was passed up in the OHL priority draft until his age-16 season and flirted with going the NCAA route prior to this year — to make the major junior level.

“Everyone deals with ups and downs and adversity in their journey and I’ve experienced some of that so far,” Paterson says. “I know now that I’m a character kid that can overcome some of that stuff.”

This season, Patersson got off to a slow start. Then he broke out in the second half of the campaign, including a 15-point in 12-game run in January that earned him “Rookie of the Month” in the OHL, while playing right wing on a line centred by Utah Hockey Club first-round pick Cole Beaudoin.

Patersson credits the input of his mom, a working sports psychologist, with helping him get past his first-half struggles.

“She worked with me to overcome some of the mental stuff, especially with the slow start,” Patersson said in an interview with The Athletic on Saturday. “Both my parents. They let me think through it after each game, and they’re always there to support me with a smile on their faces.”

Listed as a centre positionally during the draft broadcast, most NHL talent evaluators I spoke with noted that Patersson played almost exclusively on the wing this past season. There’s a good deal of regard for his skill set, and some belief that he’s versatile enough to profile as a centre long-term, but some concerns about his speed and about some inconsistency in his work rate and motor.

In terms of his production profile, however, it’s really strong. Patersson’s size and draft year production compares closely with what solid middle-six NHL players like Dan Paille and Connor Brown managed to accomplish at the OHL level in their draft year. A skilled, versatile forward with that kind of statistical profile represents decent value for the Canucks in the fourth round.

Romani’s glow-up

In the sixth round, the Canucks selected a player who was on several teams radars as a promising late-round dart throw.

Anthony Romani is an overage player — he went unselected as a first-time draft eligible player at the NHL Entry Draft in 2023 — and a late bloomer whose game grew significantly over the course of the past 12 months.

After producing fewer than 25 goals and 50 points as a draft-eligible skater, Romani’s production blew up. This past season he was the OHL’s leading goal scorer for the North Bay Battalion, producing an eye popping 58 goals and 111 points.

That’s real production, and while there’s some concern from scouts about Romani’s skating and his ability to play in the hard areas of the ice at the next level, there’s no question in the industry about his goal scoring touch.

In any event, Romani’s ability to play inside isn’t a concern for the Canucks. In fact, improvement in that area is why they believe Romani’s production exploded as a second-time draft-eligible skater this year.

“His goals started translating,” says Harvey. “Everyone talks about goal scoring, but it’s not just about goal scoring from the outside, he started getting to the font of the net and that’s why it started translating this season. We’re really excited to have got him.”

If you exclude all first-round picks and look at Romani’s size and production as a draft plus-one skater at the OHL level, his comparables include some real NHL players, including top-line contributors like Tyler Toffoli and Kevin Labanc, and useful depth contributors like Kyle Wellwood and Tobias Rieder.

Romani will have a lot of work to do to improve his strength and skating, but to get a goal threat with a statistical profile that promising in the sixth round represents really excellent work from Vancouver’s amateur scouting staff.

The local kid

Hailing from Port Moody, Vancouver’s second sixth-round pick is a lanky, 6-foot-3 right-handed defender named Parker Alcos.

Alcos is raw and lacks a real standout trait — aside from his height and handedness — but there’s real intelligence in his game. He’s played a major role on a heavily overmatched Edmonton Oil Kings team over the past two years, and while that hasn’t put him in a position to look good on a nightly basis, the way he’s held up has earned him some admiration from Western Area scouts around the NHL. And importantly, from the Canucks.

“We know the situation he was in, and the amount of minutes that he played on a team that was lower in the standings,” said Harvey. “With his growth, size and skating we think he has some growth left to do and we were happy to be able to get him.”

As a late-round bet, the Canucks could’ve done a lot worse than selecting a tall right-handed defender with some development room to grow into his body and high hockey IQ. That on-ice intelligence will give him a chance, even if Alcos is a significant player development project.

Odds and Ends

Let’s recap some other league business and draft observations in point form to close off our notebook:

  • The Canucks locked up Dakota Joshua prior to the draft, signing the big-bodied, high motor forward to a four-year deal worth $3.25 million. On Day 2 of the NHL Entry Draft, we got a reminder of why that deal is such a team-friendly one from a Vancouver perspective. The demand for this rare player type, after all, remains sky high throughout the NHL. Early on Saturday, White Rock, B.C., native Beck Malenstyn — who would’ve topped my list of “next Dakota Joshua” candidates — was dealt to the Buffalo Sabres for a second-round pick. Malenstyn is legitimately good, but he only scored six goals and had 21 points last season. Six-foot-3, hard-working, heavy hitting forwards, however, just carry such unique value around the league. That was vouched for once again when the Lightning moved Jeannot, recouping a second-round pick to offset the Ricky Williams-like price the Lightning originally paid for Jeannot a couple of years ago, in an ill-fated trade that launched the Nashville Predators retool. If teams are willing to give up assets like that for inferior version of Joshua, imagine how much teams might’ve bid for his services if he’d made it to July 1? The bidding war really could’ve been one for the ages.
  • With the San Jose Sharks taking Macklin Celebrini, Vancouver-born players (and serious Canucks fans) have now been selected with the No. 1 pick in back-to-back NHL Entry Drafts. It’s truly a golden era for elite hockey development in this city, and across this province more generally. Once you throw in No. 4 pick Cayden Lindstrom, the pride of Chetwynd, B.C., and Tij Iginla, who was born in Lake Country, B.C., three of the top-six picks at the 2024 NHL Entry hail from Canada’s westernmost province.
  • The Washington Capitals added Logan Thompson on Saturday from the Vegas Golden Knights at the cost of two third-round draft picks. That leaves the Capitals at risk of losing Calder Cup winning starter Hunter Shepard, 28, on waivers this fall. Shepard doesn’t have ideal NHL-level size — he stands just 6-foot-1 — and hasn’t been tested at any length at the NHL level. He is, however, a reliable, elite American League puck stopper on a league minimum deal for next season. If Vancouver is in the market for veteran goalie help, Shepard is the sort of buy low opportunity that would make a lot of sense to consider and explore.

(Photo of Riley Patersson: Mark Blinch / NHLI via Getty Images)



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