Chapter 1: Who is Caleb Malhotra and why is he a top prospect for the Canucks?
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Chapter 2: What are the main differences between Caleb Malhotra and Ivar Stenberg?
Guests on Sportsnet 650. Call in on the Able Auctions hotline. Email sales at ableauctions.ca to get your business assets sold and your building cleared and now joining us on the Able Auctions hotline from The Athletic covering the NHL draft. He is Scott Wheeler. Scott, thanks for doing this. How are you?
I'm doing well. You're catching me watching Evan Jardine film of the Youngstown Phantoms in the USHL. So that's what I'm up to. Let's go.
Very appropriate. All right.
Chapter 3: How important is talent stockpiling for the Canucks' future?
So you and Drance did a Canucks-centric mock draft. Of course, they have four of the first 41 picks in this draft. It's a great piece. I encourage everyone to go check it out at The Athletic. And The interesting decisions start right at the top of the draft for the Vancouver Canucks. Of course, they're picking third overall.
And in your mock draft, it goes McKenna, then Stenberg, then Caleb Malhotra. But there's been a lot of speculation that even if there is some change to that, right, and maybe the Sharks take a defender like Chase Reed, that the Canucks still might lean Caleb Malhotra over Ivar Stenberg. How do you see that debate between Malhotra or Stenberg if he is available at three?
Well, I'll just start with that is what I was hearing all year was that the Canucks were very, very high on Caleb. They were in Brantford constantly, including members of upper management.
Chapter 4: Should the Canucks consider drafting both Ruck twins?
I was getting texts from Canucks. rival scouts saying they're here again they're here again they're here again they're here all the time um i think they love caleb like i i had someone text me if it's not mckenna one that
caleb's their guy and i do wonder now whether manny changes that if manny's the guy whether manny changes that it sounds like he doesn't uh really want to coach caleb if he can avoid it um and i completely understand why that is so then things start to change you've now got new upper management so maybe where they were at uh in the winter and into the spring and into the playoffs here has has maybe shifted in the last few weeks
Obviously the Sedins have been involved in amateur and pro meetings recently. All of that is, is sort of makes it a more dynamic conversation than maybe I thought it was a couple of months ago where everything I had been hearing was that it was going to be Caleb for the Canucks if they didn't win the lottery. So we'll see how things play out. We still got the combine interviews, all of that.
They're going to finalize their list. They're going to come to a decision and, They're going to have to see what the Sharks do at number two. I would expect that the Leafs will take the player at number one that everybody expects will go number one, and that's Gavin McKenna.
As far as the distinguishing between taking the Canucks out of it and distinguishing between the two players, they're very different players.
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Chapter 5: What impact did Aatu Räty's performance at Worlds have on his draft stock?
Ivar is a very direct, talented, strong on pucks winger who wants to make plays to the interior, can play on the perimeter, but likes to attack and and challenge. And Caleb is a very smart, diligent two way center with high hockey IQ, all of the little attention to detail elements that you look for in a, in a center. You hear things like future captain thrown around with Caleb.
And I think that part of it has sort of left the public. That description of a two-way center typically leaves the public a little sour on the player relative to where NHL clubs are at. And I don't want two-way center to be confused for no offense. Caleb was...
a driver of offense all year for the Brantford Bulldogs, one of the deepest teams at forward, arguably the deepest team at forward in the entirety of the CHL. He was their very best player on a roster that had a top 10 pick from a year ago in Jake O'Brien, their very best player in the playoffs. He was the very best player at the CHL USA Prospects Challenge in November with all of his peers.
So there's some meat, there's some juice to Caleb.
Chapter 6: What major NHL team-building lessons can we learn from this year's playoffs?
Like he's, this isn't just a future sort of second line center. I think that the projection for Caleb for most people is sort of somewhere between high end 2C and low end 1C. I've heard names like Nico Heischer sort of thrown around with Caleb. Heischer is obviously a captain in the NHL and sort of checks some of the boxes that you hear about Caleb. Caleb's 6'2 and can skate and make plays.
There's a lot to like about Caleb. I have settled higher on Ivar all year. Ivar has been higher on every single one of my lists. He will be higher on my final list. I've kind of had... Ivar too, and Caleb in the four to 10 range. He's currently four, five, six in that conversation for my final top 100 here in a couple of weeks.
Chapter 7: Why shouldn't teams overvalue size in player selection?
But Ivar's been two and at times even one on my list over the course of this process. And I'm a big believer that he's going to be a Scott, yeah.
my concern is and just to lay the biases out scott and i are both charter founding members of the zach benson fan club us against the world in 2023 scott it's been a it's been a fun few chapter meetings uh we'll always have that we will always have that and one thing i've been critical of
In discussing Canucks amateur scouting, because obviously a fair bit of their underperformance in the six seasons or the six drafts since Judd Brackett left has been that they've only made 35 draft picks, right? Despite being a regular non-playoff team, it's 26th in the NHL. So that's a big part of the story. But one thing I've still been critical of, even accounting for that context, has been
The prioritization of traits and positional value ahead of drafting good hockey players, Klimovic over Stankoven, Yermo over Sortov, Belander over Benson. Is Malhotra over Stenberg the same mistake?
I don't think even if it is a mistake, I don't think you'll feel it to the same degree that you feel it with some of the contrasts that you just highlighted, if only because Caleb is going to become like some of those mistakes. You're not getting an NHL player.
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Chapter 8: How can the Canucks build a competitive team moving forward?
Caleb, you're getting a very, very, very good NHL player and a player that likely impacts winning in the playoffs and plays down the middle of the ice for you and potentially even wears the sea for you someday. So the law, the quote unquote loss in Caleb is still an excellent player.
Now at the, on the flip side of that, what you're giving up in at top of the draft in potentially not taking any of our Stenberg, for example, uh, is also a higher quality player than even probably prime Zach Benson is, right?
So you're looking at, like, when I sort of fielded comparables from people when I did my feature on him earlier this year and spoke to upper management and the coaching staff with Verlunda and people with the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation about him, They tossed around names like Marcus Naslund and Henrik Zetterberg and Tim Stutzla and some big, big names, obviously.
So that's the calculation is sort of the value of the two-way intangibles with legit offense center versus the... like top of the league winger, if all goes well. Like, I think that's what we're talking about with Stenberg. I don't think we've done a good enough job of framing just how good Stenberg is. And I think we typically don't with wingers, frankly.
But this is a kid who had one of the all-time great seasons in the history of the SHL, the second most productive draft eligible season in SHL history in terms of points per game. And the third most productive season, In terms of total points behind only the Sedins who got to play with each other.
So, yeah, we're talking about like he's in a kind of in terms of the year he had in the conversation with all time greats with. the Forsbergs and the Maglins and the city. And that's the kind of season he had this year.
I'm not saying that that's the kind of player sort of hall of fame career that he'll go on to have, but it's not completely out of the realm of, of possible outcomes for here for him here. And I don't think that's the kind of career at his ceiling that Caleb Malhotra will be reaching for.
Politically. Okay.
Yeah.
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