Brendan Gaunce | C/LW

[Guest Dasein]

So first he had 5 Points in 2 games and now he has 10 points in 4 games, he is quickly getting back to the PPG mark, hopefully he can reach it again, he had a tough start to the year, but now he is rebounding quite well.

I think he has a great chance of being on the WJ team if he doesn't crack our line-up.

I am willing to bet that he won't. The only place we have for Gaunce is the 4th line - and I'm sure management would rather Gaunce develop with big all-around minutes in the OHL than play 5 minutes per game on the 4th line.

[elvis15]

I am willing to bet that he won't. The only place we have for Gaunce is the 4th line - and I'm sure management would rather Gaunce develop with big all-around minutes in the OHL than play 5 minutes per game on the 4th line.

Yeah, I don't see him making our lineup unless we don't bring back Manny (assuming continued drawbacks from his eye injury and him not taking a lesser deal) and don't find someone else to replace him. Lapierre is more likely to get first crack at the 3rd line C position but it's possible he doesn't do enough to earn it (I like him better at 4C anyway) and Gaunce has an excellent camp next year to beat him out, but that is a lot of variables.

Edited January 2, 2013 by elvis15

[Edler's Mind Tricks]

I miss the endless debates about our fourth line... Please come back hockey!

And I think Gaunce IS the type of prospect (unlike Scroeder/Hodgson) who would do well from some time playing 8-10 min a game on the fourth line.

[canucklehead44]

Horrible: 100% bust entire draft years. Of which Nonis has one or two and the Canucks have far too many. While overhyped, the current regime hasn't had horrible drafting.

Btw. Being able to sign Lack and Tanev is a positive, not a negative aspect of this organization. Not that you meant it as negative, but this post was, so...

You might have misunderstood my post. I didn't say we had bad drafting, I said that so far the draft record looks terrible. I would blame it more on bad luck and poor development. A lot of our prospects seem to be declining. Sweatt, Rodin, Kassian, Labate, McNally, Price, Polasek, Connauton, Anthony, Sauve all have worse numbers this season. Prospects should improve as they get more experience.

Schroeder, Corrado, and Archibald seem to be on the uptick which is nice but for their age/experience they aren't exactly dominating. Ben Hutton is also flying under the radar with a good season.

Grenier and Jensen have struggled with consistency. Guys like Andersson, Friesen, Mallet aren't really doing enough in the AHL/ECHL to look like anything more than depth players.

Like I said, it is still too early to to judge so I would give Gillis' drafting an I for incomplete. Overall I would give drafting a C or C+ and development a C-.

Edited January 2, 2013 by canucklehead44

[BoKnows53]

you have gaunce on the 4th line??? he's much too talented to be on that line, or do you mean this season? he's not eligible to be recalled to camp i believe, I think only Corrado was on the list submitted to the chl.

I was talking about next year on the 4th line. If you take a look at the post I quoted in my response by Playboi. He was referring to possible cap issues next season.

As far as having 3 centers on the 4th line. Look at Team Canada at the World Juniors(Huberdeau-RNH-Scheifele). You simply can't just pigeon hole all of your prospects into a single position unless they are a goaltender.

Couple that with the fact that Pinnozotto made our team as a winger last season. Gaunce and Mallet both are versatile and have played LW as well as C in their careers. Zero issue on that front, a three center 4th line would be beneficial in faceoffs as well.

Edited January 2, 2013 by THE_LAW 10

[TOMapleLaughs]

Ah, so when you said this,

The current regime has a horrible drafting record so far IMO but it is still VERY early to judge.

you didn't mean the current regime has a horrible drafting record so far, in your opinion?

Excellent. Thanks for clearing that up. Now I know never to put weight into your opinions ever again. I guess that includes whatever meaningless grades you put on anything as well. Afterall, you didn't mean it, right.

Lol. In my opinion, this regime has been just fine at drafting and player development. It just hasn't lived up to the hype for various reasons. Oh, and I mean it.

You might have misunderstood my post. I didn't say we had bad drafting, I said that so far the draft record looks terrible. I would blame it more on bad luck and poor development. A lot of our prospects seem to be declining. Sweatt, Rodin, Kassian, Labate, McNally, Price, Polasek, Connauton, Anthony, Sauve all have worse numbers this season. Prospects should improve as they get more experience.

Schroeder, Corrado, and Archibald seem to be on the uptick which is nice but for their age/experience they aren't exactly dominating. Ben Hutton is also flying under the radar with a good season.

Grenier and Jensen have struggled with consistency. Guys like Andersson, Friesen, Mallet aren't really doing enough in the AHL/ECHL to look like anything more than depth players.

Like I said, it is still too early to to judge so I would give Gillis' drafting an I for incomplete. Overall I would give drafting a C or C+ and development a C-.

[SEAN HARNETT]

You might have misunderstood my post. I didn't say we had bad drafting, I said that so far the draft record looks terrible. I would blame it more on bad luck and poor development. A lot of our prospects seem to be declining. Sweatt, Rodin, Kassian, Labate, McNally, Price, Polasek, Connauton, Anthony, Sauve all have worse numbers this season. Prospects should improve as they get more experience.

Schroeder, Corrado, and Archibald seem to be on the uptick which is nice but for their age/experience they aren't exactly dominating. Ben Hutton is also flying under the radar with a good season.

Grenier and Jensen have struggled with consistency. Guys like Andersson, Friesen, Mallet aren't really doing enough in the AHL/ECHL to look like anything more than depth players.

Like I said, it is still too early to to judge so I would give Gillis' drafting an I for incomplete. Overall I would give drafting a C or C+ and development a C-.

Jensen is only 19. Mcnally was producing but got the boot from his school. Mallet is in his first season so cut him some slack. Anderssonis also in his first season in North America and has played pretty well. The rest have cause for concern and cant really disagree.

[canucklehead44]

who do you all suggestive we should have taken instead of Gaunce, the only player that comes to mind would be Samuellson from the WHL. I was hopping we picked him, but Gillis went more for character. Samuellson plays wing and center so we could have developed him as a centre

I am happy with the pick. Samuelsson would have been awesome as well, he is having a great season. Tanner Pearson has 20 points in 32 games as an AHL rookie which is pretty solid.

[thad]

Lp

[NuxFan09]

Gaunce and the Belleville Bulls just continue to struggle offensively as they lost 3-0 to the Peterborough Petes today. Gaunce finished the game with a -1 rating.

[canucklehead44]

Ah, so when you said this, you didn't mean the current regime has a horrible drafting record so far, in your opinion?

Excellent. Thanks for clearing that up. Now I know never to put weight into your opinions ever again. I guess that includes whatever meaningless grades you put on anything as well. Afterall, you didn't mean it, right.

Lol. In my opinion, this regime has been just fine at drafting and player development. It just hasn't lived up to the hype for various reasons. Oh, and I mean it.

Lol I think you still misunderstood. Look at the statistics of our prospects, and the lack of NHL talent, it is hard to say that Gillis has a good draft record since his picks haven't panned out...yet. And as I said, it is still early to judge since the majority of the players haven't had much of an opportunity to prove themselves at the pro level.

Also a draft record will look bad if the development is poor. Example: Was Brule a bad pick? He does make CBJ's draft "record" look bad, but one could argue that being rushed into the NHL too early ruined his development. However, if CBJ didn't pick him I am sure he would have gone 7th or 8th overal.

In terms of player development, it is sad to see three 2nd round picks: Rodin, Sweatt, and Sauve combine for 5 goals, 17 points in 55 games this season. All three of them put up much better numbers in their rookie season.

If you compare the Nonis regime to the Gillis regime, Nonis already had 8 picks suit up for an NHL game (10 in total) in the same amount of time Gillis has had 2. That said, at day of draft I have loved Gillis' selections and hated Nonis'. 2007 was abysmal though, both at the time and in hindsight.

[Fred65]

If you compare the Nonis regime to the Gillis regime, Nonis already had 8 picks suit up for an NHL game (10 in total) in the same amount of time Gillis has had 2. That said, at day of draft I have loved Gillis' selections and hated Nonis'. 2007 was abysmal though, both at the time and in hindsight.

You could argue with the Canucks doing so much better under the MG regime that it's more difficult to make it on the MG team versus the DN team, which accounts for the discrepancy

[avelanch]

You could argue with the Canucks doing so much better under the MG regime that it's more difficult to make it on the MG team versus the DN team, which accounts for the discrepancy

best 1st post ever.

[UFCanuck]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbVTkM1bGjo

Pretty similar analysis by TSN on these two guys "Solid". Just his skating is lacking in confined areas, he should be able to improve that through his summer training though.

Edited January 4, 2013 by playboi19

[SamJamIam]

Gaunce's skating was found after camp to not be an issue of technique or physical ability as he was just fine during training camp.

[canucklehead44]

You could argue with the Canucks doing so much better under the MG regime that it's more difficult to make it on the MG team versus the DN team, which accounts for the discrepancy

That is a good point, +1. And I agree with you, although Grabner, Shirokov and Schneider played their first games during the Gillis regime. But of course there is a bit of a delay. The 2004 draft was phenomenal. Two all star calibre players (Schneider & Edler), a 2nd/3rd line tweener (Hansen) and a solid 4th liner (Brown). Our first rounder was 26th overall and we had no second round pick that year. Unfortunately the 2007 draft was brutal. If Nonis drafted Perron, Smith or O'Brien (3 of the 4 players taken after White) he would have had an awesome draft record overall.

A lot of our current prospect pool is long term, it will take a few years before we will really get a taste of how effective his draft selections were. Overall the progress this season is a bit discouraging but it could mean nothing. Look at Peter Andersson's progression. He went from a solid 5 points and +3 (6 points +2 in 10 games, Swe-1) to 0 points, -5 in 27 games (4 points, +4 in 30 games Swe-1) followed by a year where he was stuck in Swe-1 for the entire season. That is a significant decline. After his his successful rookie career I would have expected Anderson to be a top pairing dman in the SEL by his 3rd season. Despite this major decline he has made a successful move directly into the NHL where he has stuck around as a 7th dman (and has played solid, albeit unremarkable.

[UFCanuck]

2009 draft scouting report of Ryan O'Reilly

Unlike a lot of the other prospects profiled thus far, O'Reilly's value seems to lie almost exclusively in his "intangibles" which are cited endlessly in just about every scouting report you can find on the kid. That's both good and bad - good, because things like determination, leadership, will to improve and succeed, etc are particularly valuable in prospects since the road to the NHL is a difficult one. On the other hand, hearing that his attitude is his best attribute is about as worrying as hearing the same thing before meeting your blind date...

O'Reilly played for a lousy Eerie Otters last year and his results were "good" but not great. He managed a second best 66 points on the back of a team high 50 assists. His +1 rating wasn't significantly out of line with the team average, although there were much better (+24) and much worse (-21) players on the club by this metric.

His 16 goals in 66 games is a little worrisome. It's the smallest total of any of the CHL forwards I've profiled thus far and it's actually a step backwards from his rookie total of 19. The fact that he didn't take much of step forward in terms of points per game from last year (0.85 PPG versus 0.97 PPG) is something else that concerns me.

O'Reilly is also completely average in terms of size: at 6' and 205 pounds he certainly isn't small, but he's not overly large either.

As mentioned, the kid seems to endear himself to scouts via a tireless work ethic and extremely high utility owing to a willingness to contribute in every area of the ice. Sean Keogh from the OHL Prospects blog says

There is little O’Reilly is not able or at least willing to do on the ice. He can score, hit, play defence, win faceoffs, kill penalties and in general play in almost any situation.

At the next level, I do not see big offensive potential, but would be surprised if he does not make the NHL in some capacity

.

A Patrick King article for Sportsnet echoes many of Keogh's sentiments regarding O'Reilly:

It's often said that some of the most uniquely-talented players possess a drive and love for the game that far exceeds that of their peers. As teammate Shane Owen says, truer words were never spoken as O'Reilly tends to arrive an hour or two earlier than his teammates to prepare himself for games."I've never seen someone so dedicated to the sport before," Owen said. "He does everything he can just to make himself better.

Now for the bad news. O'Reilly is apparently a below average skater even at the OHL level, which is a significant concern when trying to make the step up from the minors. Keogh tempered his glowing review of O'Reilly with some words of caution:

The limiting factor with O’Reilly is his skating. Not only is he not that quick, but his stride is technically weak, leaving him without much room to improve his power, acceleration, balance or agility. At the OHL and U18 level he can keep up, but it would take a lot of work to get his skating to the level where he can unlock any greater potential he may have.

That's a big red flag for me, at least in terms of a first round pick. Skating is fundamental to the game and you can have all the passion or will you want, but it won't help you if don't have the speed or balance to compete. Below average skating probably significantly erodes his potential to make an impact at the NHL level.

Why the Flames might pick him

A few years ago I would have declared O'Reilly to be slam dunk Flames pick: Sutter transparently covets things like leadership, character, will to improve and "coachability" in players, even established NHLers. The fact that O'Reilly is roundly considered a "safe" pick due to his compliment of intangibles would have made him a top 3 target at the Calgary draft table previously.

Why they might not

That said, the Flames scouting staff have seemingly shifted focus away from potential role players in the last couple of drafts - the change was visible in '07 when the first two picks went towards Backlund/Negrin, while the '08 draft featured guys like Nemisz, Wahl and Brodie. With this in mind,I think Calgary will likely be looking for something more than a guy with a 3rd/4th line ceiling in their first round target.

http://www.matchstic...ft-ryan-oreilly

This is scary similar to what they said about Brendan Gaunce. Same comments about his skating, same about his work ethic and intangibles.Both were considered safe picks in their draft year. They got the same amount of points in their draft year on a bad team.

Now compare O'reilly's draft profile to B.Gaunce's:

http://blogs.thescor...brendan-gaunce/

http://thehockeywrit...file-built-nhl/

Scary Similar, scary good.

O'reilly jumped right into the NHL as an 18 year old on the 3rd line and was a big reason the Avalanche made the playoffs.

He broke out with 55 points in his 3rd NHL season last year.

Edited January 5, 2013 by playboi19

[SamJamIam]

2009 draft scouting report of Ryan O'Reilly

http://www.matchstic...ft-ryan-oreilly

This is scary similar to what they said about Brendan Gaunce. Same comments about his skating, same about his work ethic and intangibles.Both were considered safe picks in their draft year. They got the same amount of points in their draft year on a bad team.

Now compare O'reilly's draft profile to B.Gaunce's:

http://blogs.thescor...brendan-gaunce/

http://thehockeywrit...file-built-nhl/

Scary Similar, scary good.

O'reilly jumped right into the NHL as an 18 year old on the 3rd line and was a big reason the Avalanche made the playoffs.

He broke out with 55 points in his 3rd NHL season last year.

If anyone in our prospect pool was going to follow O'Reilly's path, it would be Gaunce. Can he? We'll see.

[Lui's Knob]

Lp

[Ossi Vaananen]

I'm calling it now, Belleville for the 2014 memorial cup. I mean add a year to Jordan and Malcom Subban, as well as Brendan Gaunce and Zharkov - that's a pretty powerful team. Add in whatever rookies make the team combined with potential deadline acquisitions and I see them winning the OHL.