The pick is in.<\/p>\n
With the No. 3 pick at the 2026 NHL Draft in Buffalo on Friday evening, the Vancouver Canucks selected Brantford Bulldogs center Caleb Malhotra.<\/p>\n
Malhotra, 18, is the son of Canucks head coach Manny Malhotra. While that introduces some potential for awkwardness, incoming Canucks general manager Ryan Johnson had consistently stated that he was unwilling to \u201csacrifice\u201d on selecting the best player available on draft day simply because Caleb\u2019s father was his first pick to be Vancouver\u2019s head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had one conversation before I hired him,\u201d Johnson said of discussing the draft with Manny in a pre-draft media briefing on Thursday, while discussing the unprecedented situation. \u201c(We) agreed that if it were going to be an issue that (Manny and the team) should both go our separate ways. And we decided it wasn\u2019t an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malhotra wasn\u2019t on the radar as a top draft prospect entering this season, but authored a significant offensive breakout while jumping from the BCHL to the OHL and had emerged as the consensus top center in the class. Standing 6-foot-2, Malhotra is a long, athletic and physically assertive center whose offensive game is mostly built around his creativity as a playmaker. While Malhotra wasn\u2019t a face-off ace in the OHL this past season \u2013 a reality which may take some time for fans to wrap their head around, given what we remember of how his dad played \u2013 he is a diligent, hard-working defensive presence with the tools and reach to be a disruptive two-way presence at the professional level.<\/p>\n
NHL scouts are high on Malhotra, not just because of what he can do on the ice, but because of what he represents as a person off of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cCaleb Malhotra\u2019s greatest asset, as good as his hockey sense and his speed and size is, is his character,\u201d an anonymous NHL scout told The Athletic of Malhotra\u2019s game in May<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s got elite character. I could see him captaining an NHL team someday, and you\u2019re seeing it, his production in big games has gone to another level. He\u2019s been dynamite in the playoffs, and if there was any question with Caleb, it was would he be the same as his dad and not be able to produce numbers at the NHL level. I don\u2019t think that will be a concern.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s also an element to which NHL teams heavily weigh how significantly Malhotra improved over the course of his draft year, and that\u2019s a big part of what the Canucks are betting on. Malhotra has never been a top offensive producer as a teenager, until the past six months. That rocket-ship trajectory, however, is baked into the bet that Vancouver has placed on Friday.<\/p>\n