Chapter 1: What are the Vancouver Canucks' draft lottery prospects?
The NHL Draft Lottery is going to be happening coming up in this hour. We're going to find out very soon where the Vancouver Canucks are picking in this year's draft. And, of course, a lot of great festivities here at 180 West Georgia at the Shark Club. Fantastic drink specials, $5 cocktails, and more. The food items look absolutely fantastic. It's starting to fill in.
Still some open spots available if you want to drop by here to find out exactly where the Canucks pick. Or if you're coming afterwards... And to celebrate or commiserate, we're going to be here to hang out with you. There'll be playoff hockey on the big screens here as well. An incredible vibe and the best spot to watch a hockey game if you're not at the rink itself.
And it's going to be Canada House for the FIFA World Cup as well, which is going to be held in Vancouver as one of the host cities. So this is going to be a main hub for enjoying and watching sports. Obviously hoping for great things for the Canucks, but also when you're cheering on Team Canada. at the FIFA World Cup, this could be your hub as Canada House as well.
So fantastic vibes, great location, very central, easy to get to, and easy to go to a game wherever you want to hang out. So make sure to come by 180 West Georgia. We're here until 6 p.m., but you can stay and have as much fun as you want afterwards as well. And, you know, when you go to a place to watch a game, you're like, I wonder if the sound's going to be on.
You might be able to hear the sound of Ron McClain in the background. It's because you're coming to the lottery to watch here at the Shark Club. They got the sound on. So always a nice checkmark to see when a venue's got the making the vibes even better here. So you come on by. There's gift cards for Shark Club. You can enter. They're doing their own lottery draw as well here in-house as well.
So it is a lottery theme. for all of us here. Now that we're in the lottery hour.
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Chapter 2: How does Caleb Malhotra's rise impact the draft?
Yes. I feel like Red Zone, where it's the witching hour, where wins become losses and losses become wins. This is like where hope becomes a reality. Or reality becomes despair. I love it. Bic came prepared, man. What was the one you dropped earlier? I've already forgotten it. That was really good. What was it? It was...
Third overall is a small step for a rebuild, but first overall is a huge leap for hope. There we go. I love it. There we go. We're hoping for real hope and change you can believe in, actually, as we borrow slogans that have been uttered in the past by astronauts and politicians. Change you can believe in. All right, keep your thoughts coming into our Dunbar Lumber Taxi inbox.
Be the change you want to see in the world. 650-650. And this hour of Canuck Central is brought to you by your lower mainland, Boston Pizza. The playoffs are here, and BP is ready. So skip the couch, catch every hit, every goal, every save, every playoff beard. This is how you watch playoff hockey. All right. We're keeping a very close eye on the NHL draft lottery.
Right now, they're going through the whole process of it and the odds and what's going to be happening. They'll probably take a TV break. When they come back, that's when we'll get going with the lottery. So we'll keep you abreast on the situation fully.
Chapter 3: What happened during the NHL draft lottery live reaction?
And as soon as the lottery starts going, we will broadcast that live for you here on Sportsnet 650.
The big conversation is around the top player in the draft, and of course that's Gavin McKenna, who not only has really solidified himself as the top overall selection in this year's draft by whomever has the first overall pick, but there is real hope that whoever drafts him is going to get a real special hockey player as well, a guy that can really lead the franchise offensively.
And to your point, this team needs an offensive push in a big, big way, but I'd also say that they... are starving for a Canadian superstar talent. And what better option currently than getting the 18-year-old kid, Gavin McKenna, who could be that star for this organization. We got this text in earlier as we were talking about this franchise desperately needs offensive talent.
This franchise desperately needs game breakers. 650-650, do you guys think McKenna is going to be the game breaker we need? Offensively? I honestly don't have a lot of concerns. Puck on his stick, in the offensive zone. He looks fantastic. He can create for others. He can bury his chances. The comp gets made to Patrick Kane. And think the level of game breaker Patrick Kane is.
The red line forward, transporting the puck through the neutral zone, coming into the offensive zone with speed. The creativity, the dynamism that he does showcase. That part of his game looks to be very, very solid, and you know it's going to grow as he gets to the NHL level. figures this league out, you're going to see that offensive pop. There are, again, some questions.
Okay, what is it going to look like in the defensive end? But right now, this franchise needs to figure out how are we going to put the puck in long term? And you can deal with anything that happens in the defensive end to cover up if you get this super dynamic player.
And if you're putting in 90 points a season from the wing, maybe even the 100-point seasons, you can figure a lot out when you know you're getting 100 goals throughout the course of a year, 100 points leading to the goals throughout a year from your number one pick. No, absolutely.
And I think when you go beyond Gavin McKenna, I think the question kind of comes down to who's the next player that should be in the conversation. And this is where the draft is looking like it's taken some bit of a, I want to say a massive turn, but it's created a lot more intrigue. There used to be
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Toronto winning the draft lottery?
a fork in the road for the top pick. It was Gavin McKenna or going to Ivar Stenberg. That fork in the road has become one route right now towards Gavin McKenna. Where it's kind of splitting is now, who's the second overall pick?
Now, I'd still look at it and say for most teams, it probably is Ivar Stenberg, but there's been enough, I think, movement by other players and intrigue by some of the defensemen in this year's draft that we could see this push up as well, potentially. So I do think it's one of those things where
As much as we're focused on Stenberg and McKenna 1-2, there's no guarantee that Stenberg is the guy that goes second overall either. And that's what could end up creating a lot more intrigue when it comes to who ends up going second overall in this year's draft. Yeah, we've talked about Stenberg.
Obviously, we began the season or the year talking about Verhoff being someone who's going to be very high up the draft boards. Chase Reed's name has come on a lot after January. There looks to be a huge offensive profile there from the back end as well for Chase Reed. And then February onwards, Caleb Maholtra's name has popped up.
Now, all the guys we talked about, Wings and D-Man, very important, of course. Not centers. They're not down the middle. Caleb Maholja feels like he's emerging as the number one center in this draft, and that's going to push him up the boards even more. But as we've talked about, it's his play that's doing the pushing up the boards.
This isn't the post-draft process, and you go to the combine, you do the interviews, and teams start looking at it and say, you know what? We need the center like we saw Barrett Hayton, Jesperi Kokaniemi make pushes but that came late right before the draft. This has been in earnest with the work that he's been doing in the OHL and just looking fantastic.
Caleb Malhotra starting to rise through the process. Yeah and I think that with Malhotra here is where it becomes really fascinating. We've seen players move up the draft in the past. Centers always get pushed up in the draft. We've seen it
be a mistake as well when we saw Barrett Hayden for instance in 2018 get moved up into the top five of the draft and what that did was push a guy like Quinn Hughes down and ultimately that was not the right decision in terms of moving a center up above other players that may be more talented.
You can look at it cynically and say that Caleb Malhotra is following a similar path in terms of him being elevated simply because there aren't enough centers of high caliber in this year's draft class. But his play has improved month to month, and he's gotten better as time has gone on, and the numbers are very impressive as well.
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Chapter 5: How does San Jose's second overall pick affect the Canucks?
maybe the level of play at the CHL this year and the OHL specifically is not as high as it's been in the past because a lot of players are going to the NCAA, and a lot of players who are 20-year-olds, they're going to the NCAA as well. That's something that we talked to a number of draft analysts about, and they're questioning the level of... the quality of competition at those levels.
So maybe those numbers that we're seeing be so eye-popping for Caleb Malhotra and other players in his draft class have to be taken with some level of grain of salt. You have to adjust for the era being a little bit worse this year. So that's where the question is always going to be. Is he truly a difference maker offensively?
Yeah, and I think that's a fair thing, and I think the tough part of it is we only have a year of sample size for the idea of, okay, where is the strength of competition right now for the CHL? How is that going to change as we move forward?
I've been wondering as well here is are we getting to get to a stage where Caleb Malhotra is the guy that grows the most between now and next year when we go through this process? All right, well, for a moment, let's go to the NHL draft lottery process. Here's Gary Bettman going through the draft lottery balls being hosted by John Bucciagross and NHL Network. Two.
So while we load the rest of the balls into the machine, we'll take a quick timeout. You'll be able to see the rest of this process unfold live during the break. The 2026 NHL Draft Lottery begins in 90 short seconds. All right, so you heard it there. It's coming up in 90 seconds. Just want to make sure everybody knows they're loading the draft lottery balls. Gary Bettman is there.
They're showing it to be transparent. So we're seeing all the lottery balls being put in place. So unless there is some funny business we don't know about, we're not expecting this to be made up. But their nerves are building because now we're less than two minutes away from us finding out where the draft selection is going to be falling for the 2026 NHL Entry Draft. Yep. Loving it.
Like we're in a spot right now where they're genuinely like Gary Bettman's counting out numbers as they're loading up the draft lottery balls. As we know the process, they will draft four numbers. That will be the four digit combination. And we can then review the big chart and who's coming out.
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Chapter 6: What does Jim Rutherford say about the Canucks' future?
And you'll be able to hear all this in real time. as well of if they draft one, what does that do for the percentages? If they draft seven, what does that do for the percentages for the Canucks? They're going to go up and down throughout this entire process. It's all happening in real time. And it's a fascinating experience.
But yeah, we're minutes away from now from figuring out if the Canucks will draft first, second, or third. Yeah, we're going to find out very soon. And just to make sure that the process is fully transparent, during the TV commercials, there's a split screen, a smaller screen, showing the draft lottery balls being loaded into the draft lottery machine as well.
So we're going to find out when we come back as this process goes. But the NHL is doing everything it can, at least from a visual standpoint, to show that it's a transparent process that's happening right now. So we shouldn't assume that it's being rigged. I know people think it's going to be rigged, regardless of how it's going to be.
And also, just to clarify, it's not necessarily the numbers and the order in which they come. It's just the... If they draw the number one as a third ball, that's still a good outcome for the Canucks. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing.
The Canucks may not win the draft lottery, but as long as the teams that win can't get the first overall pick, that would mean the Canucks get the first overall pick. So we'll go through that process again. There's an 18.5% chance the Canucks win the lottery, but still 25.5% chance of them picking first overall. So that's how this unfolds. Let's go to the draft lottery.
and please start the machine.
And so again, we have two drawings tonight. The first one for the first overall pick, and then we'll do it again for the second overall pick. Thomas, please start the clock. So 15 seconds to zero, the balls will mix around into the machine. And again, as each ball is drawn, you'll see the odds change next to each team. Number seven.
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Chapter 7: What are the top draft prospects for the Canucks this year?
Ball number one is a lucky number seven. No one has been eliminated, as you can see. Vancouver actually ticks up a bit to 19.9. Thomas, start the clock, please. Don't forget, the teams under the red line, New Jersey, New York, Columbus, St. Louis, Washington, cannot get to number one overall. But they can move up 10 big spots, which they would love to do. Dropped. Number two. A seven and a two.
We're halfway there. What happens now? Two teams eliminated. St. Louis out. Washington out. Good move for the Rangers. Look at Seattle. They haven't had a number one pick. They're up to 18% now. Thomas, start the clock. So here comes big ball number three. Drop. 11. 11. Now what happens? Whoa. So you see the teams in gray. They are out.
Vancouver has shot back up to 27.3% to win the draw and retain the number one overall pick.
Chapter 8: What are the next steps for the Canucks after the draft?
The Rangers make a nice move. Chicago drops back again. So this is the situation now. There's eight teams remaining. These... Eight teams are the ones, perhaps palms getting a bit sweaty, stomachs a bit nervous. And here's the numbers they're rooting for. Vancouver has three numbers to root for. One, five, and 13. The Rangers are in it. Nine or 14, the Rangers get the first pick.
Chicago, Calgary, Toronto hanging on. Seattle, Winnipeg, and San Jose still has a chance. We'll let the drama build for a moment. After a very short break, we'll find out who gets the first pick in the 2026 draft. All right, we're back here on Canucks Central. And as you heard, the Canucks, they're in the mix. They're very much in the mix. Not a big chance. You got to see the...
The collection of crone right now across the market. They went to break on the final lottery poll. I don't know if you heard Jamie Dodd in the background go, what? Do not. People are on pins and needles, man. So Bick has his spreadsheets wide open here. So what are the numbers the Canucks need here to win the draft lottery? Again, so they pulled 2, 7, and 11. Yes. Right?
So they got a 27.3% chance now. 13 is a very positive number. 1 is a very positive number. And 15? 5. 5, okay. Yeah. All right. That's what we're hoping for. Still very much in the mix here for the Vancouver Canucks to pick first overall. I'm getting nervous, man. Everybody here is super nervous. I can see people shaking. Does your tummy hurt, Sat? I don't want to say it, but I'm sorry.
Not quite. Great callback. That's a good one. Elite callback. No, but definitely some nervousness happening right now. But this is, again, you're sitting here with 27% chance, and you've got three numbers that you need to see go your way. So this has been a very positive outcome. You came in at 18.5%, now you're sitting here at 27%. It is pretty strong.
It's coming down to the wire, it looks like, for the Vancouver Canucks. But yeah, I knew there was going to be a commercial break. They were going to create some level of anticipation here before the final stretch comes out. They Ryan Seacrested it. 100%. We'll be back on the other side with the reveal. Alif says, mom's spaghetti. All right. All right. Let's rejoin the NHL Draft Lottery.
Five draft lotteries. The team with the number one position entering held on to that spot. So those are the numbers now needed for your team to win the draft lottery and get the number one overall pick. Again, Vancouver, three chances, the Rangers with two, the rest with one, Mr. Commissioner. Thomas, start the clock. Again, you see the numbers on your screen.
Those are the numbers that they want to see pop up through this chute. It comes down to one bouncing ball. Who gets the first pick of the draft? Draw. 12. Wow. The number 12. The number 12, the Toronto Maple Leafs, have won the NHL Draft Lottery, and Matt Sundin is smiling ear to ear.
One day after the official announcement, it appears, but now to make it official, Pam Kallerher and Deputy Commissioner Bill Daley.
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