Linus Karlsson’s path to the NHL was somewhat circuitous.

Karlsson spent four seasons in Sweden after he was drafted. He didn’t make his North American debut until he was on the cusp of 23 years old.

That slow development likely played a role in the San Jose Sharks trading him to the Vancouver Canucks in the first place. He was coming off a disappointing post-draft season at the time, where he put up just 18 points in 52 games in the HockeyAllsvenskan, Sweden’s second-tier men’s league.

That type of production at 19 rarely results in a player making the NHL, let alone scoring at a 22-goal pace and earning a two-year, $4.5 million contract.

The Sharks sent Karlsson to the Canucks for Jonathan Dahlen, who the Canucks previously acquired from the Ottawa Senators for Alex Burrows in one of the few moves that Jim Benning made that could be generously described as “rebuilding.”

The end result is that Karlsson, along with Guillaume Brisebois, is all the Canucks have left from the 2013-14 roster that Benning inherited. Every other trade tree resulting from that roster has been chopped down.

That long journey to the NHL was echoed by another long journey: that of the draft pick used to select him. The third-round pick used on Linus Karlsson in 2018 is the second-most traded draft pick in NHL history.

Sort of.

The third-round pick originally belonged to the Toronto Maple Leafs, but it changed hands five times before it was finally used on Karlsson, which ties with three other picks for the second-most-travelled pick. Six different teams held the pick over the course of three years.

It’s just that one of those teams didn’t trade the pick.

It started on July 23, 2015, when the Maple Leafs hired the legendary Lou Lamoriello as general manager away from the New Jersey Devils, where he had been the president, CEO, and general manager for 28 years, as well as occasionally the head coach.

Under an NHL policy that was only in effect that year, the Maple Leafs owed the Devils a third-round draft pick in 2016, 2017, or 2018 for hiring away Lamoriello.

It was a bizarre policy intended to reward teams for developing young executives, only to have them poached by rival organizations. Instead, it was mostly used for longtime NHL executives and coaches like Lamoriello.

That included the Canucks getting a second-round pick after the Columbus Blue Jackets hired John Tortorella, whom the Canucks had fired over a year earlier. That absurdity helped kill the policy for good.

Incidentally, the compensatory draft pick from the Blue Jackets was used to select Jonah Gadjovich, who turned out to be a legitimate NHL player, albeit not for the Canucks.

The Maple Leafs decided they wanted to hang onto their 2016 third-rounder — a pretty good decision, considering they used it on Joseph Woll, their current 1B goaltender — and also owed the Detroit Red Wings a third-round pick for Mike Babcock, so the pick that went to the Devils wasn’t until 2018.

The pick that would eventually be used on Karlsson was quite the hot potato over those three years. The Devils moved the pick, along with a second-round pick, to the Washington Capitals for Marcus Johansson on July 2, 2017.

Johansson’s tenure with the Devils didn’t last long. Thanks to injuries, he played just 77 games across two seasons with the Devils before being moved to the Boston Bruins as a trade deadline rental for a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick — a downgrade from the second and third used to acquire him.

The second-round pick that went with Karlsson’s third-round pick turned into Martin Fehervary, who’s turned into a decent player for the Capitals. The Capitals held onto the pick for about seven months before trading it straight up for Michal Kempny from the Chicago Blackhawks on February 19, 2018. The Capitals got good value for the Karlsson pick, as Kempny helped them win the 2018 Stanley Cup, and then he followed that up with a 25-point, plus-24 rating season before his career gradually fizzled out.

The pick then traded hands twice on the draft floor at the 2018 NHL Entry Draft in Dallas, Texas.

The Blackhawks packaged the Karlsson pick, which was 87th overall at that point, with a fifth-round pick to move up in the third round to 74th overall in a trade with the Arizona Coyotes. They selected Niklas Nordgren 74th overall, and he never left Finland after he was drafted. The Blackhawks would have been better off keeping the pick and selecting Karlsson.

But the Coyotes didn’t hang onto the pick either. They kept moving further down the draft, as they flipped the 87th overall pick to the San Jose Sharks for a fourth- and fifth-round pick: 114th and 145th overall.

That trade produced some fruit for the Coyotes, at least. Dennis Busby, picked 145th overall, is now playing hockey in England, but the 114th overall pick, Ivan Prosvetov, has played 24 NHL games. The goaltender is currently in the Calgary Flames organization with their AHL farm team.

The Sharks didn’t trade the pick, hanging onto it to select Linus Karlsson. The rest is history.

Just think about it: if the Maple Leafs had never hired Lou Lamoriello, the San Jose Sharks might never have picked Karlsson. That’s a weird little butterfly flapping its wings to cause a hurricane.

So, what’s the point of writing about the travels this lowly third-round pick took before being used on Karlsson?

It’s for exactly that reason: it was “lowly.”

As the NHL season passes its midpoint and moves closer to the trade deadline, you’ll see third- and fourth-round picks get moved without thinking much of them. The general managers trading them might not think much of them either, throwing them into a package for a player they want, like Marcus Johansson.

The Canucks might acquire a third-round pick or two for a veteran player, and it may not seem worth it.

But, every now and then, a third-round pick can dig up a gem like Karlsson, even if that gem takes several years to polish.

Then again, there’s the tale of the most-traded pick in NHL history: the Minnesota Wild’s 2019 fourth-round pick, which was traded six times.

That included an odd trade where the Pittsburgh Penguins sent the pick to the Dallas Stars for Jamie Oleksiak on December 19, 2017. A year later, the Penguins traded Oleksiak back to the Stars and received the exact same pick in exchange.

What was the end result of the most travelled draft pick in NHL history?

The Columbus Blue Jackets used the pick on Swedish defenceman Eric Hjorth, who gave the OHL a go in his post-draft season, then went right back to Europe. He currently plays in Germany. He’s probably having a lovely time.

But that’s the importance of acquiring more draft picks. Sometimes those mid-to-late-round picks turn into an Eric Hjorth; sometimes they turn into Linus Karlsson. Sometimes, if things really go your way, they turn into guys like Alex Edler, Kevin Bieksa, or Gustav Forsling.

Adding more picks increases the odds of finding those gems to polish.

So, don’t overlook those trades for third-round picks.