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Chapter 1: What are the main themes of this year's NHL draft?
Back in on Canuck Central, it's Satyar Shah and Josh Elliott-Wolf. And this hour of the program 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 as we broadcast live from the Kintec studio.
And keep your thoughts coming into our Dunbar Lumber text inbox, 650-650. Mailbag Friday is coming up just after 5 o'clock. No Yannick today, but Tony Ferrari is going to be joining us here in a moment to talk about the 2026 NHL Entry Draft. The Combine is going on right now. The Canucks hold the third overall selection.
Chapter 2: How does the NHL combine influence draft decisions?
And I think... one of the things that we're obviously keeping a very close eye on here is ultimately what's going to be happening with the Canucks third overall, but also the idea. Do we see some movement this year in the draft? Let's go to the able auctions hotline and welcome in our next guest. It is Tony Ferrari covers the NHL draft and prospects for the hockey knees.
Tony, thanks for making some time for us today. How are you doing, man?
Not too bad. It's closer to the NHL draft, which means closer for me to disappear and never talk to the hockey world again for at least a month or two.
Yeah, I hear you.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of teams trading up or down in the draft?
I know it gets all crazy right now. Are you at the point now where you have your final list finalized or are you still putting those pieces together?
It's kind of just finishing touches at this point of the year. It's not anything too crazy. If you're really out on a guy or you're super different from consensus, you take maybe an extra look or two at a player. But for the most part, list is done. I'm just writing the last little bit of everything.
It's combine week. Does the combine play into it at all? Or is that more for the teams to do all their interviews and all that?
Chapter 4: Why is there so much variance in player rankings this year?
I think it's mostly just teams doing interviews and taking guys out to dinner, and everyone likes to get the reports that San Jose took this player out or Vancouver took that player out or the Leafs snubbed somebody, even though they're picking first overall. It's fun, it's buzzy, but it's not too, too important in the evaluation process.
Most of my interviews are done way earlier in the year, so I get a sense of these kids and who they are back starting in October.
So I'm not too, too worried about it at this point. So we were talking before we brought you on about the potential of teams trading down. And Ryan Johnson was on a podcast and he was talking about, hey, like they could expect the unexpected at the top of the draft this year.
Do you see teams this year after it's been, I mean, 18 years since a team traded out of the top five being more willing to move down or up in the draft?
I think we could see it this year. I think there's a number of different options. If the Canucks feel they can get ā if their guy is Caleb Malhotra and they feel like they can get him at 6'7", then maybe they trade back and go for that and something like that.
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Chapter 5: Which players are considered top prospects in this draft?
Who knows? Maybe the Leafs and Sundin are super, super engaged with Ivar Stenberg and they go, you know, the Canucks really want that first overall pick. Maybe they work something out that way and they help the Canucks get the superstar that they've been wanting for the last two years, basically. And the Leafs still get their guy, and they get another asset as well.
There's a number of scenarios that actually make sense this year. Does San Jose move? Because San Jose's been drafting at the top of the draft forever, it seems like that. So do they look at maybe trading that second overall pick for... I pick a little bit further back, but they get an NHL piece with it as well.
Chapter 6: How do player sizes affect their draft stock?
So there's a number of options. Do I think any of it's going to happen? Probably not. I certainly hope it does because it's great content for me.
It's for us as well. I mean, we've talked about it quite a bit, the idea of trading down hypothetically. And we do hear often from fans.
fans and I don't dispute it when they're like well why even bother talking about this because this almost never happens and we got to go back to 2008 when the Luke Shen trade happened when they went from what five to seven or five to eight when Nashville and they made that trade but usually this does not happen very often but if there was going to be a draft it probably is a draft like this where
consensus seems really hard to come by. And it's different when you look at industry consensus and, you know, us outside the actual National Hockey League and how we kind of view things.
Chapter 7: What is the potential impact of the Ruck Twins on the draft?
But is it fair to say that the consensus this year would be more varied than usual?
Yeah, I think so, especially because I think most years, at least the top five, top 10 is fairly well worked out with the teams. But the one thing I've learned over the years is that talking to NHL teams is one team may have a guy at 15, another team may have that same guy at 70. And it's just kind of what their preference is, what their stylistic goal is going forward.
This year, instead of those players being at 5 and 70,
or 15 and 70 it feels like they're more at like three four five and 15 20 so you are getting a lot more consensus higher up in the draft whereas i think most years the top 10 is kind of well known and they're kind of consensus top 10 maybe top 15 but this year it's it's kind of all over the place you have a group at the top i think of three four guys maybe and then you have
everything everywhere else. And there's going to be guys that I think some people will have ranked at four that end up going 21. So it's going to be a really interesting year for that.
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Chapter 8: How might the Canucks approach their picks in the draft?
If you were the Canucks sitting at three, is there a spot in the top 10 that you're not comfortable trading down past? Like where's your bar for if you were to trade down, this is where I start to get a little uneasy about it.
probably five or six to be honest with, with the Canucks. I think if I'm the Canucks, I'm, I'm looking to move up to that least pick or that San Jose pick if they really want to go for, for Gavin McKenna. But outside of that, I probably wouldn't want to move too far beyond that because there's some really high end guys at the top of the strap.
Unless the Canucks are sitting there and they're like, Viggo Bjork is our guy. I love him so much. And he's going to fall to nine or 10 because he's five foot eight and no one likes a five foot eight center, despite the fact that he's probably the most purely talented center. Possibly if he was closer to six feet, he might even be first overall pick this year. Um,
then maybe you can trade back a little bit further. But for what the Canucks want, I think it's going to be either sit where you're at or maybe a pick or two.
It's really interesting on Viggo, right? Because when you look at the size profile, generally guys like that don't go very high.
But given that this year is a bit of a stranger year and how Viggo really showed himself at the World Championship and he looked dynamite, he looked like he was dynamite against even Sidney Crosby and some of the best players in that tournament who are professional National Hockey League stars. And we know that sometimes small samples can fool people and small samples can get you in trouble.
But I do wonder if Vigo does have some momentum this year and maybe we do see a bit of a wrinkle compared to other years where a more diminutive player does go higher than expected. I'd love that because he fits.
There's some boxes you need to check with smaller guys. I think they need to be guys that work harder. They need to be guys that are highly skilled. They need to be guys that understand the nuances of how to win a battle along the boards. Viggo Bjork has all that. At the end of the day, we talk about the world championships and how good he was there alongside Stenberg and Lucas Raymond.
but this is also a kid that was the number one center for your garden towards the end of the season, because he earned that spot. He started on the third and fourth line by the end of the year. He was the number one center in the playoffs playing with friend L playing with Victor Eklund and playing with their best players in the power play.
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