Chapter 1: What is the main focus of the Canucks' upcoming draft?
Thursday edition of Canuck Central coming to you live from the Kintec studio. Step strong with orthotics and footwear from Kintec. It's Satyar Shah and Bik Nizar. 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 in a big game coming up tonight. Game one between the Montreal Canadiens and Carolina Hurricanes. That gets going here at five o'clock. We'll join that in progress at six when our show comes to an end.
We are going to be chatting with Sam Constantino coming up at 430 to talk about the 2026 NHL entry draft and what the Canucks may be looking to do third overall in his latest rankings on Sportsnet.ca. Plus, we'll chat with Landon Ferraro. That's coming up. at five o'clock. And we always want to hear from you on Canuck Central.
So get your thoughts in to our Dunbar Lumber text inbox, 650-650, trusted by contractors and DIY champions across Metro Vancouver, four generations. Find them at three convenient locations or visit Dunbar Lumber online today. What's happening, Vic? Fired up. Big day. Yeah, man. Chat to Sammy Kotz, man. Yeah, excited to talk to Sammy.
Excited to watch game one between the Carolina Hurricanes and Montreal Canadiens. The lone Canadian team, the Habs, remaining in the hunt. Yeah, and...
A first blow by the Vegas Golden Knights last night.
I know. That was a good hockey game. Vegas got off to a big lead early. Colorado made it a bit of a game, but still a 4-2 win by the Vegas Golden Knights. And no Kael McCarr, obviously, in Game 1. We'll see what his status is moving forward. But maybe the first bit of adversity the Avs have faced so far in the playoffs.
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Chapter 2: What potential risks are associated with drafting players?
They've only dropped one game. Now the second game, obviously... in their opening game loss against Vegas. We'll chat with Landon about that as well to see what he thinks about Vegas and can they do the unthinkable? And like Bick said, I mean, he sees the Western Conference final being the cup final and feels very confident that whoever wins that series is going to win and hoist the Stanley Cup.
Yeah, man. Interesting. It's the trend this year. Yeah. No, it's not wrong. Last night, OKC beat San Antonio. And so you're like, all right. 1-1. That was a good basketball game. That series, I mean. It's going to be awesome. But like, great. That's the NBA Finals. Yeah.
It is, in many ways. Super Bowl? I will say, I do think if the Knicks get there, that might be interesting, but I know people don't want to hear too much about basketball right now. Basketball Phil wants to hear about it, and maybe we'll talk some about it. Big shout out to Basketball Phil. There you go. 14 seconds. Actually, 24 seconds. We got it in under the shot clock.
24 good seconds of basketball talk on Canuck Central so far today. Yeah, it's Sat and Vic producers Josh and Lena. Arash is still hanging around here. He hasn't left yet. He just likes to hang around. Hanging around. Hanging around. That's what Arash does here.
He's complaining about computers back there. He's like, I don't know. There's got to be something to do with computers.
Yeah.
You guys can't make a rounders reference when I'm here, okay? You can't do it. That's why I hang around. Yeah, you just got to hang around. Let's get to the open. Brought to you by FiberTech, your exclusive dealer of house of roll luxury plumbing fixtures. Visit their state-of-the-art showrooms and experience centers in Surrey, Vancouver, and Coquitlam, or check out FiberTechBC.ca.
We're still awaiting word on who the next head coach of the Canucks is going to be or rather if and when Manny Malhotra is going to become the next Canucks head coach. As of so far today, obviously nothing has come down. We'll see if that comes down by news dump Friday or perhaps sometime next week. So have some fun with that.
Obviously, it's good news.
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Chapter 3: Who are the top prospects being compared in this episode?
Ooh. Am I getting PLD and all the... everything that comes with PLD? Because that's a no. You know, I don't want to deal with all that, right? But just like the... But yeah, I think that's the... The career output, yeah. Yeah, that's kind of the way I would view it.
And I mean, to that point, I know both from Burnham and others bring this point up because we mentioned how Caleb was one of the youngest players in this year's draft. And that could be a huge benefit to him because like we saw with Beckett Seneca last year in that second half, he took off and he kind of... He just...
Chapter 4: How does Caleb Malhotra rank among other top centers?
grew into being this high-end prospect and he ends up going in the top three and it's very justified for him to go in that spot and you saw that okay they caught him on the upswing and hit and that ascension is still continues Can a similar argument be made for Caleb that he's younger, he figured it out as the season went on, and he's on that ascension?
If that continues, you're talking about a young player figuring it out, and next year takes another big step. Whereas Stenberg, like Bo and others are mentioning, he's only a couple weeks away from having been in last year's draft. He's one of the older players in this year's draft class.
Does that perhaps diminish some of the upside potential for Stenberg and also increase the upside potential for Malhotra to some extent where you would be more justified in making that decision to bet on the upside that Caleb has versus the... upside that Stenberg has because he is slightly older. Now, we're splitting hairs, but this is kind of where the conversation comes.
This is how you try to figure out who to take second.
There's only one decision to make, and you've got to factor in all the tiebreakers. I've said this before. I'll keep saying it. I think if we did a redraft in a year's time, like Melhotra and Verhoff are the two guys everyone's going to say, like, oh, man, I really kind of wish we could have had these guys a bit higher. And I think Caleb's now really pushing it.
We'll see where Verhoff lands, because maybe it slides to seven or eight for Verhoff. But that growth that's going to happen over a year, it's the risk in taking these guys, drafting at 17, 18-year-olds, is they are very young. And there's going to be a lot of change for them over this next four or five years.
Yeah, and Duncan the chef says, with the possibility of the Neil Yakupovs or Patrick Stephans of the world, I would take a Jordan stall 100 times any day, right?
And ultimately, what you end up seeing by organizations is the certainty, even if the certainty isn't quite as high as some other players, teams will oftentimes lean towards a certainty with a slightly lower upside if they feel better about the floor.
Wasn't Patrick Stephans a center, though? Yeah. Like, he switched to wing, I think, at some point.
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Chapter 5: What factors influence the decision between Malhotra and Stenberg?
And... There is this real desire by a lot of fans to go for a big Canadian player and add that Canadian player to the list. I think that argument about Stenberg is just completely misrepresenting what Stenberg is as a player, though. He's not a non-physical, diminutive, playmaking winger. There's a lot more to his game than that. But I can totally understand why...
there is this desire for a lot of Canuck fans to draft a big center who grew up a Canucks fan and is a Canadian player. Canucks fans want more Canadian players. They've been starving for more Canadian talent. So I totally understand where the argument comes from. And to me, we're having this discussion. I think it's fun and spirited. But I'm not at a point where I'm like...
well, if the Canucks take Caleb Malhotra, it's a bad pig. I can't believe this. I throw my hands in the air and say they're messing this up because I don't view him the same way we viewed the Kokaniemis and Barrett Haytons. I think he is a better prospect than those guys were.
Yeah. Those guys just felt like... It felt like cringe in the moment. It's like, I hope Arizona doesn't do it, even though it was very beneficial to Vancouver. It's like, Montreal, you sure you want to do this? Even though it worked out for them with the offer sheet. But those were like, hey, buyer beware. I don't think there's any buyer beware on the Caleb hype right now.
Yeah, it's and I know it's like because it's hype. It's like, oh, you don't see the pitfalls, but it has been well learned. And, you know, we got a text earlier. Is this just smokescreen season? It's like the smokescreen season doesn't even start till June traditionally. And that's when like the Hayton coaching Emmy hype really started was post combine.
And I don't view it like in that scenario right now. This has been since January. We've been talking about this where, hey, like, be mindful. This Caleb hype is going to start. And here we are now.
Yeah. And it has been fascinating to watch how that's all gone.
Oh, sorry. I was saying we should go to the third wheel.
Yeah. I thought you had something to say.
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Chapter 6: What are the intangibles that teams look for in draft picks?
But nevertheless.
All right. There we go. Ivar Stenberg with the Vancouver Canucks. So yesterday was Gavin McKenna.
Yeah, we've done this six times. All right. So that is twice for Stenberg, twice for Chase Reed, once for Carl's, and once for McKenna. Maholtra, who's got the biggest share of the pie, yet to... You know what's going to happen?
He's going to... He's going to get on a heater.
He's going to get on a real heater.
Yeah.
All right. Keep your thoughts coming into our Dunbar Lumber text inbox. Love the takes. Love the passion. We'll try to hit a lot of it as the show goes on. We'll talk more draft. Sam Constantino is going to join us from Sportsnet on the other side. This segment was brought to you by Jam Pro. If your workplace cleaning is inconsistent, it's time for a better standard.
Trust Jam Pro for more reliable cleaning. Start clean, stay clean. JamPro.ca. Sammy Kha is next on Canuck Central.
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