Olli Juolevi is like having a first-round pick this year

Canucks fans bitch and moan that the team drafted defenceman Olli Juolevi fifth overall in 2016 instead of winger Matthew Tkachuk, who was taken with the very next pick by division rival Calgary and has been nothing less than a raging man monster for the Flames ever since. This is hardly fair to Juolevi, who was never supposed to be NHL-ready and has been set back by injuries for the past two years. It’s also not fair to Canucks GM Jim Benning, as the Juolevi pick made sense at the time and there’s simply no accounting for injuries. The Canucks have been cautious to a fault in managing Juolevi’s rehab, however, and with a full . . . well, actually now more than a full off-season of training, he should be fit to take the next step in the fall as part of the Canucks’ completed rebuild on defence.

Olli Juolevi

Luckily OJ is young enough to overcome these setbacks and go on to have a long and productive NHL career. Best of all, he’s still on his entry-level contract, which will pay him $863,333 next season if he plays in the NHL, while Tkachuk is already making $7 million a year. As such, Juolevi will help alleviate a slightly snug cap situation and make up for the first-round pick that was sent to Tampa Bay for J.T. Miller. I wouldn’t say that Juolevi has been like money in the bank for the Canucks. More like a savings bond you have to wait several years to cash in. But with any luck at all he is about to pay the Canucks back with interest for their patience. Despite the short-term setbacks, there is actually nothing to say that OJ can’t be just as good in the long term as Tkachuk, if not better. He will no doubt be less flashy, but he could end up being a very solid player indeed. 

Let’s deal first with the elephant in the room, which is that the Canucks blundered by not taking Tkachuk instead of Juolevi. That’s easy to say in hindsight, which is 20/20 even in 2020. You could say the same thing about Edmonton, which took Jesse Puljujarvi with the fourth pick, and even about Columbus, which took Pierre-Luc Dubois third. Foresight is instead what is required when drafting 17- and 18-year-olds, and there were good reasons for favoring Juolevi over Tkachuk. First, he was a higher-rated prospect by many scouts, although it was close and opinions were mixed. Second, Tkachuk had a couple of red flags that may have turned some teams off. Third, the skillset Juolevi offered (and still offers) may make him better suited for today’s faster NHL. Finally came the Canucks’ crying need to restock their defence and the higher value placed on the position by teams around the league recently. 

After Auston Matthews and Patrick Laine, most mock drafts that year had Puljujarvi going third to Columbus. The Canucks were widely rumored to be trading the fifth pick to Montreal for P.K. Subban if Dubois was still on the board. Edmonton probably felt fortunate to land Puljujarvi, who has instead been a massive bust. That left the Canucks with a choice of Juolevi, Tkachuk or Russian defenceman Mikhail Sergachev, who went ninth to Montreal. Tkachuk was seen as a one-way player by most scouts, and a step slow at that. While he was great from the face-off dots in and tough as nails, he was hardly a 200-foot player.

Juolevi, on the other hand, was seen as poised, smooth-skating and cerebral, with a toolbox to match his impressive skillset. He was tall but slender at only 170-odd pounds, and not a physical player like Tkachuk. He had steadily climbed the draft charts that year, however, with what turned out to be a draft season for the ages. He turned in a breakout performance at the World Junior Championships, in which he scored 9 points in 7 games as Finland won the gold medal at home. It ended with a Memorial Cup championship for a powerhouse London Knights team that also included Tkachuk and Mitch Marner, who had been the fourth pick the year before. McKeen’s well-respected draft guide rated Juolevi the best defensive defenceman in the draft, the fifth-best offensive defenceman, and saw him as having the best hockey sense of any available player that year. It predicted he would be picked fourth by Edmonton and, after some seasoning, would eventually turn into a top-pairing NHL d-man. His widely-quoted comparable was Nick Lidstrom.

“Juolevi is not going to jump out at you with his physical attributes,” said a scout. “He’s not going to put a guy through the boards or win a fastest skater contest. . . what he will do is make the smart defensive play 95 per cent of the time with his instincts, agility, poise and puck skills.”

The problems began the following season when Juolevi was held back in junior while his star teammates went pro. Canucks fans carped that his scoring plateaued that season, but it was actually amazing that he scored at the same rate because instead of three 100-point players, the team’s top scorer that year was Cliff Pu with 86 points. Plus a 16-year-old Evan Bouchard had joined London to add offence from the blueline, and he would go on to be a 10th overall pick by the Oilers. Still, Tkachuk was already playing for the Flames while Juolevi was still in junior, and Canucks fans are not known for their patience. Juolevi finally went pro in this D+2 season, but instead of in the AHL, where he was ineligible to play due to his age, it was back home in Finland. He racked up a respectable 19 points in 38 games as a teenager for a Turku team whose top two scorers were in their 40s. Perhaps most valuable that season was the tutelage Juolevi received from former Canucks great Sami Salo, a Turku assistant coach.

But just as OJ was about to attempt a jump to the NHL, the injuries began. He hurt his back in mid-2018 and required minor surgery that shelved him for two months. He nonetheless started the season playing big minutes in Utica, including on the power play, and led all rookie AHL d-men with 11 points in his first 14 games. Then he hurt his knee, which eventually required season-ending surgery and a long rehab. The Canucks managed his minutes closely last season, even recalling him to Vancouver for medical attention when some hip soreness flared up. Juolevi recorded 25 points in 45 games despite losing his power play spot to 24-year-old rookie phenom Brogan Rafferty. Instead he honed his special-teams skills on the penalty kill. It is likely he would have earned a late-season call-up to the Canucks had the season not ended abruptly. He should serve as a Black Ace in the pending post-season.   

Now packing about 200 pounds on his 6-3 frame, Juolevi has a good shot to finally make The Show next season, whenever it might begin. After all, his play for the Comets this year drew rave reviews. “During Juolevi’s first run of games, he logged the most blocks of any Comets penalty killer, and it wasn’t even close,” noted Cody Severtson on the erstwhile Daily Hive. “Juolevi was frequently the first player to sacrifice his body for the sake of the team. . . . this reckless abandon, coupled with the workload thrust upon him, might have contributed to the hip-soreness issues that would take him out of action for the following three weeks.” Juolevi’s scoring may have gone down after his return, noted Severtson, but that was only due to losing his spot on the power play. His scoring at even strength actually skyrocketed. “After picking up just a single point at 5v5 through his first 14 games played, he then went on to pick up an additional 11 across his next 34 starts.”

One of Juolevi’s primary assets that has contributed to his impressive points-production is his elite passing and vision. From the start of the 2019-20 season, Juolevi has displayed the same patient and crisp tape-to-tape passing that featured as one of the lone bright spots during his otherwise tragic 2018-19 campaign. Juolevi’s teammate awareness has led to some gorgeous goals for the Comets.

Getting offence from a shutdown defenceman is always an added bonus. “Juolevi’s ability to find teammates with a glance has allowed the Comets to be strong in transition,” added Severtson. “Along with his passing, Juolevi has a bomb of a shot and some of Juolevi’s best-looking offensive contributions have come from him moving in from the neutral zone to step into a one-timer.”

All of this was accomplished with a weakened skating stride resulting from knee surgery, as observers noted a definite hitch in his giddyap. “His weak pivoting, and inability to accelerate has made him susceptible to getting ‘walked’ by opponents,” admitted Severtson. Cam Robinson over at Dobber Prospects actually sees Juolevi as a possible bust. “The main concern for Juolevi – outside of staying healthy, is his mobility,” wrote the Walking Bird’s Nest in his latest update of Juolevi’s file. “The knee injury appears to have limited his ability to turn and keep up to speedy oncoming forwards.” Comets play-by-play man observer Cory Hergott has had a chance to monitor Juolevi’s progress first  second hand, and he noted a definite tentativeness in his play this season. “I saw a player who looked uncomfortable at times, although, to his credit, he tried to play through the discomfort.”

I started to wonder if it was possible that Juolevi was physically capable of playing the game, but not physically capable of doing the things that he needed to do to 100% of his ability due to a lack of strength in areas where an elite skater needs to be strong. . . . I see a player who has the hockey sense to make plays, but sometimes doesn’t have the mobility to do the things that he’s asking his body to do.

Overall, concluded Hergott, Juolevi did “an admirable job” this season despite not being fully fit physically. Most players, he noted, don’t return to top form until a full year after rehabbing a major knee injury. If OJ can come back all the way, added Hergott, he could yet be an NHL regular. “I see a steady, two-way defender who could be working the Canucks blue-line for many, many years to come.”

This is fortunate since the Canucks could be looking to turn over about half their defence for the second straight season. Juolevi and Rafferty might actually make a nice third pairing while playing sheltered minutes to begin their NHL careers, while BFG Nikita Tryamkin is a possibility to return from Russia. The Canucks have three free agents on the back end this season – Tanev, Stecher, and Phantomberg – and they may re-sign none. Tanev is a UFA and is likely to get stupid money thrown at him by Toronto, which has coveted his services for years as a partner for Morgan Rielly, with whom he has been paired in international play.

Tiny Stecher is likely to command more in arbitration as an RFA than the Canucks are willing to pay, based mostly on his play in 2018-19, when he was pressed into second-pairing minutes. It’s a situation similar to that last summer with Ben Hutton, who had also earned arbitration rights. Rather than risk an award that was beyond what they were prepared to pay, the Canucks simply declined to tender a qualifying offer to Hutton, making him a UFA. He eventually signed a one-year deal with L.A. for $1.5 million, which was less than half what he might have got in arbitration. The Canucks might be willing to pay Troy from Richmond a similar amount to play the Alex Biega role as a press box reserve, but it is just as likely the team has decided it doesn’t want two 5-10 defencemen. The less said the better about Phantomberg, who was signed to a one-year deal for only $850k as a UFA last summer. We hardly knew ya.

So assuming he is fully recovered, OJ has a chance to join the Canucks defence in an entry level position and possibly even get some time on the penalty kill. When Alex Edler is finally ready to hang ’em up in a few years and take his rightful place in the team’s Ring of Honour, the Canucks will have a ready-made replacement for him in the Top 4. It’s called a succession plan. It’s the way it was supposed to work all along. There were just a few bumps along the way, as there often are. But don’t be surprised if Juolevi joins Edler in that Ring of Honour in about 15 years. Yes, he’s that good.