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Skeletons.

Every National Hockey League club has them hanging in the draft closet. You can almost hear the rattling of bones when whispers of missteps magnify into great debates of what went wrong.

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The Vancouver Canucks have their share of hits and misses, and because you never really recover from first-round flops, it’s difficult to pass them off as managerial mulligans. It’s also easy to give a golf clap for great late picks.

As the Canucks prepare to step to the podium Friday in Chicago to announce their fifth-overall selection — or be preceded by commissioner Gary Bettman announcing a trade — they can take some solace from recent drafts. Thatcher Demko was a solid second-round pick in 2014, but the jury is still out on first-rounders Jake Virtanen and the traded Jared McCann.

However, it’s the vision to land promising players in the later rounds that really tests a scouting staff’s mettle.