Former Vancouver Canucks GM Jim Benning's Mistake During 2019 NHL Entry Draft Continues to be Exposed

Throughout his time as General Manager of the Vancouver Canucks, Jim Benning had some ups and downs, some good decisions and some pretty bad ones, as any NHL executive does during their career.

Benning made some pretty notable trades, especially in the latter stages of his time at the helm in Vancouver, some of which include getting J.T. Miller from the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tyler Toffoli from the Los Angeles Kings.

On the other side of the spectrum, Benning had his fair share of bad deals too including trading prospect Gustav Forsling to Chicago, who has now blossomed into a solid top-four defeseman for the Florida Panthers.

In 2019, the Vancouver Canucks selected tenth overall at the NHL's Entry Draft - the fourth year in a row that they were in the top-ten.

After plenty of debating between the scouts and management staff, the Vancouver Canucks ultimately chose Russian forward Vasily Podkolzin.

Podkolzin's time with the Vancouver Canucks can be described as rocky, to say the least as after his rookie season, the Moscow native bounced up and down between the NHL and AHL, having a hard time sticking with the big club.

The Canucks parted ways with Vasily Podkolzin in August, trading him to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for a fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft.

Podkolzin has since gone on to put up eight points for the Oilers this season, while appearing in all 24 of their games, some of which he's been on a line with Leon Draisaitl and/or Connor McDavid.

Looking beyond Vasily Podkolzin at the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, Jim Benning had many other options he could've gone with, including Matthew Boldy, who's turning into a real star with the Minnesota Wild, or even Cole Caufield, who went 15th overall to the Montreal Canadiens.

When selecting a player, scouts always try to see what their ceiling could be, which is never an easy thing to predict, with the 2019 NHL Entry Draft being no different.

There was plenty of hype surrounding Podkolzin during the 2018-19 season leading up to the draft and at the time, it seemed like a solid pick, but as the years go by and players like Boldy and Caufield are turning into stars, it shows that this may go down as Jim Benning's biggest mistake during his tenure in Vancouver.