Canucks make history: the carnival wheel that cost them Gilbert Perreault

The Vancouver Canucks had to make their own luck at the NHL Entry Draft.

Whether it’s exploiting secret knowledge to select Pavel Bure in the sixth round in 1989, executing an elaborate series of trades to acquire both Sedins in 1999, or stealing Alex Edler from under the noses of the Detroit Red Wings in the third round in 2004, it’s taken some Loki-caliber cheating for the Canucks to find star players in the draft.

If it feels like the Canucks are cursed by the draft, maybe they are. Their very first version from 1970 certainly brought bad luck, but it wasn’t all bad luck. First, the Canucks had to raise hopes that they would get a future Hall-of-Famer before they could be sent to the top. ground.

While Canucks fans may be familiar with the story of the Canucks losing Gilbert Perreault thanks to a wheel spin, they may not be familiar with all the details.

The prototypical draft lottery of 1970

The infamous spin took place on June 9, 1970 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where the NHL Amateur Draft was held every year at the time. The design was still relatively new. The first draft was in 1963, and the 1970 draft was only the second draft since the abolition of the sponsorship system that gave NHL teams exclusive rights to prospects for junior teams they sponsored.

That meant that instead of belonging to the Montreal Canadiens who sponsored his junior team, Gilbert Perreault could be selected by any team in the 1970 draft. Billed as the next Jean Beliveau, the talented center was certain to go first overall and two expansion teams had a shot at that pick: the Vancouver Canucks and the Buffalo Sabers.

The NHL decided that the best way to determine which of the two teams would be picked first was a prototypical draft lottery: instead of picking lottery balls from a machine, they would spin a carnival prize wheel and whoever won the spin would get the pick get and Therefore Gilbert Perreault.

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Here’s a not-so-fun fact for Canucks fans: that wheelspin was the third chance the Canucks lost that day.

First there was a coin flip to determine which of the two teams got off the waiver wire first. The Sabers won the flip and picked up their backup goalie, Joe Daley. They then spun the wheel to determine who would get the first pick in the expansion draft. The Sabers won that too and took winger Tom Webster with that pick, then traded him to the Detroit Red Wings for Roger Crozier, who served as their starting goaltender.

But the biggest twist was for the amateur draft.

“It went from elation to shock.”

The Sabers had the numbers above seven, while the Canucks had the numbers below seven on the wheel. There were six large red sevens evenly spaced around the wheel; spinning any of them would force a re-spin.

NHL President Clarence Campbell took the wheel, gave it a big spin and then announced, “The number is one!”

The Canucks’ table, led by the team’s first general manager, Bud Poile, jumped up in celebration. They had won the spin, which gave them the first overall pick in the draft and a franchise forward in Gilbert Perreault to lay the foundation for their young team.

The celebration was short-lived, however, when an astute observer from the Sabers table pointed out Campbell’s mistake. It happened to be a former Canuck from their WHL days: Al Millar, the backup goaltender for the Canucks from 1968-69. He was now a scout for the Sabers and his eyesight was sharp enough to notice the mistake.

“Name calling!” shouted Millar. “That’s not number one, but number 11!”

Sure enough, the wheel had landed on 11, not one. Campbell acknowledged his mistake and now it was the Sabers’ turn to celebrate their good fortune, while the Canucks lamented their bad luck.

“It was shocking,” said David Poile, who sat at the Canucks’ tap table with his father, Bud. “It went from elation to shock.”

The impossibility of turning one

Here’s the kicker: there were no numbers on the steering wheel at all.

There were 36 partitions on the wheel, enough to make each number from 1-12 appear three times. But with six big red lucky sevens on the wheel, there wasn’t enough room for number one. Instead, there were three each of the numbers 2-6, giving the Canucks 15 numbers around the wheel, and three each of the numbers 8-12, which also gave the Sabers 15 numbers.

When Campbell said, “The number is one!” everyone should have known right away that something was wrong. Landing the wheel on one was impossible.

But because the two-digit numbers were stacked on top of each other instead of written next to each other, Campbell just looked at the top number of the “11” and saw the one.

The confusion caused by Campbell was some extra salt in the wound for Bud Poile and the Canucks. They lost Perreault and had to settle for second place in the overall standings. Dale Tallon was a talented defender – and sometimes striker, but that’s another story – but he was no Gilbert Perreault.

After losing a coin and two wheelspins, Poile was desolate.

“I’ll tell you this,” he said. ‘I’m not going to call home tonight. The way things are going, my wife will probably tell me the house burned down.”