Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Tenth Overall Pick

Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.

We’re looking back at the 2005 NHL Draft, which kicked off the salary cap era and ushered in many of the current NHL superstars. The question we’re looking to answer is knowing now what we didn’t know then, how different would this draft look now with the benefit of hindsight?

Here are the results of our redraft so far:

1st Overall: Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
2nd Overall: Carey Price (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim)
3rd Overall: Anze Kopitar (Carolina Hurricanes)
4th Overall: Jonathan Quick (Minnesota Wild)
5th Overall: Kris Letang (Montreal Canadiens)
6th Overall: Tuukka Rask (Columbus Blue Jackets)
7th Overall: Bobby Ryan (Chicago Blackhawks)
8th Overall: Marc-Edouard Vlasic (San Jose Sharks)
9th Overall: Ben Bishop (Ottawa Senators)

Now we move forward to the tenth pick, which was held by the Vancouver Canucks.

To recap how this works:

• We will go through the 2005 NHL Draft and have our readers select, through a voting process, who they think should have been taken with the selection.
• The entire first round will be redrafted, spanning picks one through thirty. The new selection is chosen by the majority of votes.

Back in 2005, the Canucks selected defenseman Luc Bourdon.  He made his NHL debut just one year later, getting into nine games before going back to junior and it appeared he was ready to become a regular a few years later after he split 2007-08 between the AHL and NHL.  Tragically, he was killed the following offseason after his motorcycle collided with a tractor trailer.

With the tenth pick of the 2005 NHL Draft, who should the Vancouver Canucks select? Cast your vote below!

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