The 2026 NHL Draft is an absolutely critical one for the Vancouver Canucks.
Mired at the start of what looks like a full tear-it-down rebuild and under new management, the Canucks own the third pick at the 2026 draft. That’s a higher pick than the franchise has owned since the 1999 NHL Draft, when Vancouver selected Henrik Sedin.
Vancouver’s bounty of draft capital doesn’t end there, however. Barring any trades, the Canucks will make three more selections before the second round is halfway done and have 10 picks overall.
The Sedin twins and new general manager Ryan Johnson probably won’t have the opportunity to completely alter the trajectory of this franchise in just one class, but this draft represents a new day and a new direction for the team.
If the Canucks can find a couple of significant contributors at the draft table in late June, then Vancouver’s new management team can provide this rebuild with the jolt of young talent and asset wealth that it so sorely requires.
As we gear up to cover the draft over the course of the next month, we wanted to conduct a Canucks-specific mock draft exercise. Utilizing the mock draft simulator at Upside Hockey, we simulated the first two rounds and asked The Athletic’s NHL prospect writer Scott Wheeler to make the picks on Vancouver’s behalf.
Wheeler made the picks based on what he thought the Canucks would do, not what he’d do himself. So there is a fair bit of actual reported intel contained within this piece.
3. Caleb Malhotra, C, Brantford (OHL)
PickPositionPlayer
1
LW
Gavin McKenna
2
LW/RW
Ivar Stenberg
3
C
Caleb Malhotra
Drance: All right, Scott, so the board has unfolded the way we’d expect.
Wheeler: Even if it’s not Gavin McKenna first and Ivar Stenberg second, even if it is McKenna first and, let’s say, the San Jose Sharks at No. 2 take Chase Reid because they need that cornerstone defenceman, and they aren’t convinced that Sam Dickinson is that for them.
In that scenario, even if Stenberg is available, I still expect the Canucks to take Caleb Malhotra third.
Now, one wrench in the wheel is the recent changes to upper management. I heard that the Sedin twins were very involved in amateur scouting meetings last week, and there’s an additional wrinkle here, given the possibility that the Canucks could end up promoting Caleb’s dad, Manny Malhotra, to head coach. It’s something to consider, and I do think my viewpoint has softened a bit from Vancouver being a pretty firm Malhotra team under Patrik Allvin, to being a team that may lean toward Stenberg (if he’s available at No. 3) or even Reid.
It’ll be fascinating to watch, because I think they really admire Malhotra’s game. I had scouts texting me earlier in the year that every time they were in Brantford, some combination of Allvin or Vancouver’s scouting hierarchy was there. I know they were there a lot this year.
And I don’t think Vancouver’s regard for Caleb as a prospect has anything to do with Manny whatsoever.
I think they love the player and what he represents. I think they like the idea of building around a winning two-way centre with skill and high-end hockey IQ, and all of the elements that you look for in a franchise centre.
Drance: Do you think that assessment is justified because of how Stenberg concluded his season, and the rocket ship trajectory that Malhotra was on in the playoffs and toward the end of his season?
Wheeler: I do think it’s justified. Am I higher on Stenberg? Yes.
Is Malhotra at No. 3 a defensible pick? Also, yes.
This isn’t Barrett Hayton or Lawson Crouse or Jesperi Kotkaniemi or a reach for a two-way type that everybody drools over who doesn’t have the skill or the playmaking to justify that selection.
Malhotra played on a team with Jake O’Brien, who was one of the most gifted players in junior this year, and Malhotra was their best player virtually all year.
He started the year as a third-line centre, but basically from day one of the regular season, he played like he was their first-line centre. He was their go-to guy on the power play and on the penalty kill. Even after they made trades and added guys who would typically play on a PP1 in the OHL, they kept him in that spot.
He was unquestionably Brantford’s best player in the playoffs. If Caleb Desnoyers could go fourth to the Utah Mammoth a year ago, Malhotra can go third in this draft class. In fact, I think Malhotra is a better prospect than Desnoyers was.
I really don’t want people to enter into this draft process thinking Malhotra is the centre that everybody’s going to pick as a default. Or just because he is labelled as a “two-way centre,” that he doesn’t have offence. Malhotra is a playmaker, and he has legit skill.
24. Wyatt Cullen, C, U.S. NTDP (USHL)
PickPositionPlayer
20
LW
Adam Novotný
21
RW
Liam Ruck
22
LHD
Xavier Villeneuve
23
LHD
Malte Gustafsson
24
LW
Wyatt Cullen
Drance: Wow, Ryan Lin falls to 24 in this mock.
Wheeler: First of all, I don’t think Lin will be available here.
I do know that the Canucks have never taken Vancouver Giants players; it’s just a thing they haven’t done. I also wonder with Zeev Buium being there, if they’re more reluctant to add another Buium-type defender.
Drance: And also, Tom Willander isn’t that big. How many roughly 6-foot defencemen is Vancouver going to be comfortable pegging the future of its blue line to?
Wheeler: I think if they’ve taken Malhotra, and these are the available players, they’ll probably just take the best player still available. On my board, that’s either Lin or Wyatt Cullen. I don’t know that Lin is a perfect fit for them, and I’m not sure if he would be their guy.
That said, I don’t know that you have to double down on centres and consider Ilia Morozov or Jack Hextall, especially when you already have Braeden Cootes, who’s a middle-six centre type.
Cullen, like Malhotra, is one of the risers of this draft. He’s a highly skilled winger, and I have him at 12th on my list. He was 5-foot-5 and 120 pounds when he first arrived at the U.S. National Team Development Program, and now he’s 6-foot-1 and 176 pounds, but he still has all of those little guy elements to his game. Just a very dynamic skater, has the puck on a string.
He loves to play one-on-one, maybe a little bit too much, but from a pure skill standpoint, he’s the most talented guy still on the board. NHL scouts really fell in love with his game this year. He’s the rare skill guy that everyone seems to be in love with, which isn’t the case for most skilled guys.
For what it’s worth, I think there’s a near-zero percent chance that he’s available with the 24th pick, but you’d have to strongly consider him in this scenario. They just absolutely have to swing on skill.
33. Simas Ignatavicius, LW, Genève-Servette (Switzerland)
PickPositionPlayer
29
C
Ilia Morozov
30
C
Maddox Dagenais
31
LW
Nikita Klepov
32
C
Egor Shilov
33
LW
Simas Ignatavicius
Wheeler: OK, this is where the draft starts to get dicey.
Marcus Nordmark is still available. He’s one of the 15 most talented players in this draft, but he’s also a 6-foot-1 winger who has no intention of competing on pucks, or playing hard, and he takes bad penalties, and he makes bad decisions on the puck.
As a result, this unquestionably elite, skilled winger with size is going to last into the late first- or early second-round. I think this starts to be the range where even if you’re skeptical about Nordmark, and you worry about the attitude and character, the gap between him and the other players left on the board begins to be significant enough that why not?
Coming away from this draft with both Nordmark and Cullen would be a coup. You’d be bringing in two highly skilled wingers with the potential to be future power-play guys, and really key your offensive attack. The other names available don’t offer that sort of upside, except maybe Ryan Roobroeck, but you’ve got some of the same questions.
Roobroeck is highly skilled, but he’s sort of lazy, he’s 6-foot-4, but his motor doesn’t really run hot. He can rip the puck, but there are questions about his fitness level, and he’s not the power forward that everyone wants a player of his size to be.
Drance: Given that the Canucks have taken a pair of high-character players and seem to be making this push to prioritize culture in the wake of what’s happened in Vancouver across the past few years, might they be more reluctant to take Nordmark or Roobroeck than your average team would be?
Wheeler: It’s a fair question, so maybe we should look at a player like Simas Ignatavicius.
He’s a big, heavy, powerful, hardworking future role player. That’s the calculus that players always have to make in the second round. Do you want a player like Ignatavicius, who’s going to play in your middle six? Or do you want to take a risk on a higher upside piece, with a far lower floor?
Mathis Preston is still on the board in this mock draft, too. I know the history, but I will say, the Canucks were around the Giants this year.
Let’s go with Ignatavicius. He’s got the character, the professional experience, the size. He’s an interesting story too, as a Lithuanian player, and that sales pitch point is always good in a rebuild.
Drance: I think if they come out of this draft telling a story that we brought in a lot of high-character players and people, with size and grit, that represents who we want to be as an organization moving forward, they’d probably be pretty excited about that.
Wheeler: He’s a really good prospect, even if he doesn’t quite have the ceiling of Nordmark, Roobroeck or Preston. It’s another good value for Vancouver, too, because I expect Ignatavicius to go in the first round.
41. Brooks Rogowski, C, Oshawa (OHL)
PickPositionPlayer
37
C
Tomas Chrenko
38
LW
Ryan Roobroeck
39
LW
Victor Plante
40
C
Jack Hextall
41
C
Brooks Rogowski
Drance: What do you think about Jaxon Cover here?
Wheeler: Cover is magic beans, right? I’ll have a feature story on him soon, but he’s still learning how to play hockey.
Cover is a guy who grew up playing roller hockey and didn’t play ice hockey until he was a teenager. The skill is real, the shot and hands are very real. He’s still very much learning how to play, though. What do you think about Rogowski?
Drance: I know he’s enormous and has a decent scoring profile, adjusted for his size.
Wheeler: He’s interesting. He’s 6-foot-7, but he doesn’t play the way that coaches imagine a guy that size to play. He’s not the bruiser or the net-front guy. That said, he’s not really Dean Letourneau or Tage Thompson from a finesse standpoint.
Everybody now looks at the Kieron Walton, Aliaksei and Ilya Protas types, and there is a value play in taking the toolsy, 6-foot-6 forward.
Through two rounds, I should note, I think this would be a really strong class.
Drance: For sure, although I worry that they’re getting there through volume in the scenario we’ve laid out. I think they’ve stepped on some land mines here. If they’re passing on guys like Stenberg — even if that didn’t happen in this scenario — and Lin, I think that’s going to concern me when I’m writing up my post-draft analysis.
Wheeler: Yeah, although if they come away with Cullen at 24, that’s an absolute coup. Probably the steal of the draft.
Drance: I think it’s worth noting for Canucks fans, too, that in this mock draft scenario, Liam Ruck went well before they were on the board at 24th, and Markus Ruck went almost immediately after they picked Cullen.
Wheeler: Yeah, which is interesting. I think the Ruck twins would fit into the skill and culture profile that we ended up targeting, and I don’t see them going off the board as high at the draft as they did in this exercise.