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If you don’t, best stay away.

So will this be any different? Will this be the moment the faithful look back at 10 years from now and say, “This is where it all changed”?

You know the answer to that. But there’s also that one infinitesimal chance, the Lloyd Christmas, one-in-a-million shot, that the Canucks drafted that guy in Elias Pettersson on Friday. That’s the fascination of the draft and that’s what keeps the faithful coming back.

Something, lord knows, must.

“I think there’s a huge North American bias when it comes to the draft,” team president Trevor Linden said shortly after the Canucks’ selected Pettersson, the slight Swedish centreman with the draft’s fifth overall pick. “We rely on our (scouts) to work through the process and project who’ll be the best players in two or three years.

“I think there’s a lot of factors that tipped it for Elias. His performance in men’s league (the Swedish second division), he’s a puck distributor, a great scorer, he has vision. There’s a lot to like there.”

And look at it this way. You can’t accuse the Canucks of taking the easy popular choice.

For all the intrigue and breathless speculation which preceded Friday’s events, the top part of that draft played out pretty much according to form before the Canucks’ pick.

To the surprise of no one, centres Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick went one-two. Dallas somehow resisted the urge to trade for Canucks’ defenceman Chris Tanev and took Finnish blue-liner Miro Heiskanen. When Colorado followed by taking Cale Makar, the stage was set for the Canucks to fill a positional need while capturing the imagination of their fan base.