Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Back in on Canuck Central. This hour brought to you by your Lower Mainland Boston Pizza. Every Vancouver hockey game gets $6 pints or $7 Boston pints of Molson Canadian or Coors Light all season long at your local Lower Mainland Boston Pizza. Sat and Bic coming to you live from the Kintec studio on location at Rogers Arena. the final home game of the 2025-2026 NHL season for the Canucks.
Fan appreciation night here at Rogers Arena. And as always, get your thoughts in to our Dunbar Lumber text inbox, 650-650. We are going to be joined by Scott Wheeler in a couple minutes here, and when he joins us, he'll be on the Able Auctions hotline.
We'll talk to Scott, obviously, about the 2026 NHL Entry Draft and its top prospects, and also his list of the top 100 prospects that have already been drafted in the National Hockey League. And a few Canuck players have also made the list here as well.
And, of course, the Canucks don't have anybody in that very high end of that list because, you know, they haven't picked at the very top of the draft. And hopefully that changes this year, and we'll see how that goes. Let's welcome in our friend Scott Wheeler. national reporting covering the draft and prospects for the Athletics. Scott, it's always a pleasure getting you on the show here.
Thanks for your time. And I really enjoyed reading your top 100 prospects list. And if the Canucks were to be lucky enough to get one of the top two picks, would it be fair to say they've fallen to Tier 1 or Tier 2 for you?
Tier 1, yeah. That Tier 1 was obviously just two players right now, Porter Martone and Michael Misa. I would expect that I'm adding at least two more players to that tier when I do my summer list. So I do this top 100 drafted prospects ranking twice a year, obviously.
So there will be another one immediately following the draft kind of in early July there after free, after we get through the draft and free agency, it typically drops. And I would expect that you're seeing Gavin McKenna and Ivar Stenberg joining that, that pair of Michael Misa and Porter Martone at the top somewhere.
I wanted to ask you, like, you've done these lists, these team reports and everything like that, and you've had Zeev William graduated. Is there a reason for that?
Yeah, just because he hasn't played at the AHL level since turning pro out of college last year, it just feels like he's had that sort of extended time now playing in the NHL. I didn't graduate Sam Dickinson, who's obviously played exclusively in the NHL this year. But Sam feels like more of a development case, if you will, than at the NHL level than Ziv has been.
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Chapter 2: What are the top prospects for the 2026 NHL Entry Draft?
When you look at those four players, plus Ziv Buyum, and we've heard management here talk about how they feel like the rebuild started a while ago because they have a few of these guys to build around. And that's been a contentious topic here in the market. But in terms of a starting point, what do you make of having those four or five individuals that cannot be in that top 100 range?
It's an okay place to be. It's not a great place to be. The two teams with the most prospects, just to sort of set the context for what a really high-end pool looks like, the two teams with the most prospects in the top 100 were the Nashville Predators with nine and the Chicago Blackhawks with eight.
Uh, each of those teams also had players high, although the, I believe the highest player from the Preds pool was 19. So you're not quite talking about as the volume level player in terms of Brady Martin there. Um, but nine players is a lot different than four or five players. And that's what they're missing.
So they're missing not only the high end piece, although I'll be at leave is the high end piece. Um, certainly they're missing a high end forward piece. So maybe I should preface it that way, but they're missing that. And then they're also missing the depth. Like there were five or six teams that had seven, seven prospects. Uh, and then obviously two with eight and nine there.
Um, so there, there's a little bit of quantity missing and a little bit of let that sort of star quality missing. I do think that Boyan's going to become that I'm very, very high on Ziv. Ziv was fourth on my draft list, uh, when he was selected, um, Obviously by the Minnesota Wild at 12 or whatever it was, 11 or 12. So very, very high on Ziv. I think he's going to figure it out.
The challenge that Ziv has had at the NHL level is that what made him so successful both at the end, towards the end at the NTDP, he wasn't actually a star at the NTDP early on, but towards the end of the NTDP, when you could start to see what was going to come for him in Denver.
And then obviously in his two seasons at Denver, what made him so successful and at the world juniors and on and on was that he swallowed guys up. So he played really tight gaps. He was on opposing players, his hips through neutralized. He challenged them with his feet and,
and used his footwork and his mobility to stick with them and play really, really challenging gaps, like step up, set an early gap, and then match and sort of angle. And that was kind of his game defensively. He always had the shakes and the shimmies and the ability to walk the line, and that defined him offensively.
But defensively, he was also a lockdown player who shut down Boston College and Will Smith and Gabe Perreault and Ryan Leonard and the best players in the country again and again and again over those two seasons.
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Chapter 3: Who are the tier 1 prospects for the Canucks in the draft?
So I think that's been a bit of the challenge for him. He's never going to be a great player. net front box out guy. He's very competitive, but that's never going to be a hallmark of his game. And it's not the hallmark of Klinghues' game or Kael McCarr's game or you go down the list. But he needs to defend the rush at a really, really high level, which is what he did at lower levels.
And I think once that sort of comes and he figures that out, the offense will also come back the other way and he'll start playing with more confidence and being more assertive, both offensively and defensively. And then I think you've got a potential star defenseman on your hands.
And just to clear it up, your list at this time last year, Ziv was the top of your tier two, at number two behind only Demidov. So just to illustrate for people, because we have been getting that question of like, how come he's leaving Ziv William out there? Like, that's the standing you had him at this time last year.
But I wanted to ask you about the year-to-year carryover when you do this process, because we all get excited about prospects, right? You hear the Canucks sitting there with the best lottery odds, and people are hoping they draft first, and you think, all right, here comes the next rush of talent.
But when you do these lists, and you see year-to-year, and for someone that I kind of looked at this year was David Juracek, for instance. And you had him much lower on your list this year, because last year he was sitting there at, I think, 20. And... Just that moment to kind of look at it and say, oh, wow, the guys slip real fast in this whole process.
Yeah, there can be some pretty significant changes. You'll, by and large, see most of the same names in those first two or three tiers year over year, and you'll maybe see movement within the tiers, but the tiers change. pretty rarely change in terms of a guy dropping two, three tiers like David Yuracek has for me over the last year. You can see the signs all along.
I was a little bit lower on Yuracek in his draft year. He was sort of around 10 on my list when he went six overall. And then it just sort of unraveled for him. His footwork never got better. His decision-making didn't. at times became an issue, but really the boots and the pivots against the rush became a major, major problem for David. And he just hasn't been able to improve it.
And I think as a result, you're looking now at a third pair PP two guy rather than a second pair PP one guy. And that's a big difference, right? So that's the difference between a three, $4 million defenseman and a seven, $8 million defenseman. So there are guys who sort of hit walls, just don't get better. struggle with the skating is often a big issue.
Like if it just doesn't come for guys where it's a bit of an issue at an early age, sometimes you give them a little bit of grace early on at 16, 17 years old, especially as they're growing into their body. Your check went through a knee surgery. So you were wondering how much of the skating has to do with the knee surgery.
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Chapter 4: What factors influence a player's ranking in prospect lists?
it gets harder and harder to give them that benefit of the doubt based off of what you were seeing two or three years ago. Lindstrom obviously had a pretty poor year at Michigan State for a fourth overall pick. Even coming off of the injuries, he's still dealing with the back injury.
So there are cases like Lindstrom and like Juracek where you'll see them go from top 20, top 30, top 40 on the list to the 80s or 90s on the list in a matter of a year.
We're talking to Scott Wheeler, a national reporter covering the draft and prospects for the Athletic here on Canuck Central and shifting our gears to the 2026 NHL entry draft. And, you know, we've discussed McKenna and Stenberg quite a bit, and they are the top two prospects, at least on most lists right now.
The big debate, especially in this market, Scott, as you can imagine, Canuck fans are skeptical they will win the lottery finishing first or second. So they're kind of already looking at the third pick and Let's say the Canucks have the third selection. We'd run a draft lottery simulator, and today it landed on third, unfortunately. But let's just live in that world for a moment.
And there's been lots of discussion recently about Chase Reed, of course. Vera Hoff's been in that discussion. Carson Carls is beginning some love. And most recently, Caleb Malhotra seems to be gaining momentum as one of the top guys. How big do you think that tier is in terms of players involved for number three?
And do you have somebody that you think is a surefire number three prospect in this year's draft?
I do not have a surefire number three prospect. I currently, I'll have another list after U18, after I get back from Slovakia for U18 Worlds in about three weeks. I leave next Tuesday and the tournament's about 12 days. And after that, I'll have a new ranking. And currently, I was actually sort of just making some tweaks to my spreadsheet today for my list.
And currently, I do have Chase Reid third after the two wingers. But the group there is real. And I like Carson Carls. I like Albert Smith, who you didn't mention. I'm a little lower on Keaton Verhoff than at least the public sphere seems to have been over the course of the last two years. I started raising some flags about Keaton all the way back to Sarnia earlier.
at U-17s almost two years ago now. And I just caught back from the Frozen Four in Vegas and thought he really, really struggled in the semifinal there and in a couple of important games down the stretch at North Dakota. And I wonder a little bit about his boots and his
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Chapter 5: How does the Canucks' prospect pool compare to other teams?
I think some of these kids are capable of doing that. I do think Smith's probably feels like the surest thing in terms of like just going to play a ton of minutes in the NHL and be a stud. And he kind of, I think he fits the sort of Moritz Seider projection and Moritz Seider is now in that
He wasn't always in that 15 or 20, but he now has emerged in that 15 or 20 sort of top defenseman in the league category. But I think those are kind of the tiers that we're talking about.
Like when you go back through draft history and you look at recent first overall picks, I don't think we're talking about a Matthew Schaefer or a Kael McCarr or a Miro Heiskanen tier for some of these guys or Quinn Hughes. I think we're maybe looking at the Moritz Seider, Owen Power, Aaron Ekblad, Simon Edvinson, like those caliber of players.
Jake Sanderson's probably maybe between those two tiers. I think we might get like a Jake Sanderson or a Moritz Seider out of this class, maybe two of them. And those are obviously Jake's the first pair, like Jake is the number one. But I don't think we're getting that transcendent talent either.
Scott, listen, man, we always appreciate your time. Fantastic insight as always. We look forward to talking to you again very soon. And keep up the great work, man. I can't wait to read your latest on The Athletic.
Cheers, fellas. Looking forward to it.
That is Scott Wheeler, courtesy of The Athletic. And if you missed his article on The Athletic about the top 100 prospects currently in the league... A number of Canucks made the list, and he mentioned why Zeve William didn't make the list, because he has graduated, but very high on the player, and a lot of good thoughts on the prospects themselves.
And, you know, we haven't talked about Albert Smits a lot recently, but that's somebody that Scott is very, very high on and has in a very similar class to all the other D-men that we've talked about.
Yeah, he had some shine there through November and December, and it was like the Smits drumbeat was starting, and then he gets the opportunity in the Olympics. So he's... A very interesting player as well. Now with the other guys being righties, maybe they've kind of taken the shine too. Just saying, okay, Verhoff, Reed, Lynn, also just kind of stepping up as well.
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