VANCOUVER – A two-day entry draft just isn’t long enough for Jim Benning.

The 2014 National Hockey League draft hadn’t even commenced when the new Vancouver Canucks general manager got started on the 2015 lottery by spending this week’s third-round pick to acquire Derek Dorsett from the New York Rangers last June. In March, Benning gave his 2015 second pick to the Calgary Flames for Sven Baertschi.

The exuberant GM even got a head start on the 2016 draft by sending a future third-round pick to the New York Islanders in November for prospect Andrey Pedan.

Dorsett provided the Canucks grit and 25 points last season, while Baertschi, 22, and Pedan, 21, helped Benning fill a generational gap — like the Grand Canyon is a gap — in the prospect pool caused by previous manager Mike Gillis sacrificing eight picks in the top four rounds over a five-year period when Vancouver was trying to win a Stanley Cup.

Benning did what he felt he had to do to refill the Canucks’ pipeline.

But for a GM who views draft picks as sacred, there must be some guilt about going to this weekend’s draft in south Florida with only five picks in seven rounds and, as it stood Tuesday, none in the second and third.

“In a perfect world, I would have liked to have kept the picks and make the picks,” Benning said before travelling to Las Vegas for NHL meetings and Wednesday night’s awards show. “The reality is, players that you pick outside of the top eight or 10 (in the first round) take time to develop. Usually it’s another year or two in junior, then a year or two in the American (Hockey) League and then they make your team. But they’re still not impact players for a couple of years. So that’s like a four- to six-year process.

“I’m trying to walk the fine line of doing everything I can do to make the team as good as it can be, but with an eye to the future, too. We needed to fill in our prospect pool.”

He is also trying to collect additional draft picks for this weekend.

Benning has said he expects to acquire at least a second-round pick before the first round begins Friday in Sunrise, Fla. It sounded like he had the framework for a deal in place, possibly involving backup goalie Eddie Lack. But the Canucks also need to move a veteran defenceman to make room next season for minor-leaguers Frankie Corrado and Adam Clendening, who become subject to waivers in the fall.

Benning said several times, if needed, he would ask a veteran defenceman to waive his no-trade clause. Right-sided 34-year-old Kevin Bieksa is the obvious choice, although Benning wouldn’t confirm if that conversation had taken place.

But the Canucks’ boss could leave Las Vegas with an additional draft pick or two.

“I’m looking at options either to try to get players to make our team better or to recover a second-round draft pick,” he said. “I’m looking at those options.

“I get real excited two days of the year: draft day and trade deadline day, because it’s an opportunity to try to add impact players to the group. Even with our fourth pick, our two fifths and our sixth, I’m excited to have those picks this year because I feel like we’ve done our homework. We know the draft and I think we can get good players with those picks.”

Benning inherited an additional fifth-round pick from Gillis’s trade of Rafael Diaz to the New York Rangers 15 months ago, but doesn’t have a seventh-round pick, which was sent to the Tampa Bay Lightning last June in the Jason Garrison deal. The second-round pick acquired in that trade was used by Benning to acquire Linden Vey, 23, from the Los Angeles Kings.

Benning said he spent most of the AHL playoffs following the Utica Comets on their run to the Calder Cup final and is convinced his farm team’s excellent spring is proof the Canucks are on course in their renewed commitment to player development and getting younger and faster at the NHL level.

Most of their top prospects are forwards, four of them — Bo Horvat, Hunter Shinkaruk, Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann — first-rounders from the last two drafts. The Canucks haven’t drafted a defenceman in the first round since Luc Bourdon was selected by Dave Nonis in 2005. Bourdon was killed in a motorcycle crash three years later.

The Canucks pick 23rd in the first round on Friday.

“We have to take the best player, the player with the most upside, because towards the end of the first round, a lot of times those players don’t play (in the NHL),” Benning said. “So we have to draft the player we feel has the best chance to play on our team someday and make an impact, and if that’s a forward and not a defenceman, we’ll take the forward and look at other avenues to improve our defence.

“We tried to add to our defensive depth this past year, trading for Adam Clendening and Andrey Pedan and signing (draft pick) Ben Hutton out of college.”

Benning said there is depth to this draft class but a drop-off after the top 15 prospects. He has explored trading up from 23rd but finds the cost — an elite prospect — prohibitive.

“It’s real hard to move up,” he said. “The reality is, to get inside the top 15, those teams are pretty dug in and you have to offer a good prospect to try to move up and I don’t think we’re at that stage now. We’ve added some depth to our prospect pool and we don’t want to start (subtracting) prospects. We’ll take our chances at No. 23 and I’m pretty sure there will be a player there that we like.”

It’s the draft. There’s always a player you like.

imacintyre@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/imacvansun