Which Canucks mid-to-late-round pick is most likely to succeed?

The most important part of a rebuild is nailing your top-end draft picks, particularly those in the top ten.

Vancouver Canucks fans are all too aware of how that can go wrong, as the team’s previous attempt at a rebuild was hindered by a couple of high-profile missteps.

It is, of course, also nice to get a couple of hits with late first-round picks and second-round picks. Where would the Montreal Canadiens’ rebuild be without second-round pick Lane Hutson, for instance?

The Canucks can be relatively optimistic that they’ve succeeded on those two fronts in their most recent draft. Caleb Malhotra should be a foundational piece for the rebuild, and at least one of Adam Novotny, Brooks Rogowski, and Niklas Aaram-Olsen ought to be an impact player.

Combine that with the likes of Braeden Cootes, Zeev Buium, and Tom Willander, and the Canucks are off to a pretty decent start to their rebuild.

But what would kickstart their rebuild significantly is getting a hit or two outside of the first two rounds. Consider the aforementioned Canadiens: as important as Hutson and first-round picks Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky have been, where would the Canadiens have been last season without fifth-round pick Jakub Dobes stepping up as their number-one goaltender?

Or, think of whether the Canucks’ dominant 2010-11 season ever would have happened without third-round pick Alex Edler and fifth-round pick Kevin Bieksa anchoring the blue line?

So, which of the Canucks’ recent mid-to-late-round picks has the potential to be a difference-maker along those lines?

Let’s take a look at a few possibilities.

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