Caleb Malhotra is sitting in the stands at the TD Civic Centre shortly after a morning skate. In the far end of the rink, Brantford Bulldogs director of player development Laura Fortino is running a development skate for the team’s injured players and scratches. Malhotra’s eyes are on the near end, though, following little Audax, the youngest son of his head coach, Jay McKee.
“I was one of those kids,” he says, gesturing at Audax.
The memories are getting fainter now, but they’re still fond. Malhotra was 8 when his dad, Manny, retired from his 16-season NHL career just nine games shy of 1,000. He remembers his dad’s final goal. He remembers going out before practice early in the morning in Vancouver, Carolina and Montreal to skate with him and his teammates. The strongest memories are from after his dad stopped playing and started coaching with the Toronto Maple Leafs as an assistant, though. By then, he was serious about hockey and chasing his dad around the ice had turned into skills sessions and skating work before school.
Now 17, Malhotra is one of the early stories — and risers — of the 2026 NHL Draft. After making the move from the BCHL’s Chilliwack Chiefs to the OHL with the Bulldogs once the NCAA opened up eligibility to major junior players (he’s committed to Boston University for next season), he has taken off.
After registering 26 points in 44 games at the Jr. A level, Malhotra was viewed as a mid-round prospect.
This season, however, the 6-foot-1, 182-pound center, who won’t turn 18 until June, has registered 29 points through his first 23 OHL games. On a loaded Bulldogs team chasing an OHL title, he has become an integral middle-six center at five-on-five and has slotted onto the first power-play and penalty-killing units (including as one of the lone forwards they use when down five-on-three).
That play has earned him an “A” rating from NHL Central Scouting, which indicates a first-round candidate.
Some of his dad — widely respected for his two-way play during his career and now as the head coach of the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks — has rubbed off on him, too.
“I took how he sees the game. It’s not just one end of the ice; it’s everything. Details. How you use your stick. Little defensive checking habits,” Malhotra said of what his dad has handed down to him. “What I hope people would say is that I’m a 200-foot player. That’s how I was raised, it’s how I’ve been taught. And I try to make plays. I’m a playmaker, I think. I try to put my teammates in good spots, push the pace offensively and use my skating abilities and passing.”
His athletic lineage comes from both sides of the family, though. His mom, Joann, was a soccer star at the University of Victoria, and her brother and Caleb’s uncle is two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash.
The one thing he’s still got to work on to match his dad is the faceoff circle, where the Bulldogs use him a lot; he leads the team in draws taken, but he’s under 50 percent on the year.
“I’ve tried to take his tips in the faceoff circle. He’d still probably rinse me, though, which is pretty embarrassing,” Malhotra said. “But it’s one thing I really take pride in and want to continue to improve on. It’s one thing I’ll never stop practicing and trying to improve on.”
It’s a long way off, but he says he’d like to coach like his dad someday, too.
Caleb Malhotra has registered 29 points through his first 23 OHL games. (Brandon Taylor / OHL)
McKee, Bulldogs associate coach Vince Laise, his skills coach Leland de Langley and Bulldogs general manager Spencer Hyman each talk about Malhotra as someone they see as “an NHL captain one day.”
“The character of the person and the coachability and the joy for his teammates and his leadership, you can just see the workings of a National Hockey League leadership group-type person. And that’s pretty unique to be around,” Laise said. “And having Manny as your father is definitely showing.”
Hyman talks about him as a pleasure to be around and as “hardworking as can be.” Even as a rookie, he said he has set a standard that others have followed with the Bulldogs.
McKee describes Malhotra as a mature, engaging and positive person. He points out that Malhotra is the first junior player he’s coached who asks the linesmen for their names before every game so that he can engage with them.
“I’ve been blown away at how he carries himself off the ice for a 17-year-old,” McKee said.
McKee has been surprised by just how good he is, too.
“His talents are more than I was expecting,” he said. “The IQ, the playmaking ability, his compete is high, he’s really a really good all-around player. He’s got good size to him, speed. I think the potential is through the roof.”
Earlier this season, before five-year Bulldogs veteran and overager Lucas Moore was traded to the Oshawa Generals, The Athletic asked him which of his young teammates had made an impression on him.
He answered quickly.
“Malhotra,” he said. “He’s a really, really good player for 17.”
Laise said he “does things probably two years in advance” and looks more like a 19-year-old in the OHL than a 17-year-old rookie. He sees it in the way he digs in, his stick-on-puck details, how he plays through hands and his hockey sense. But he also sees it in how he’s “already gathering groups of people together” in the locker room.
“You can just see that people gravitate to this young man,” Laise said.
Hyman insisted last year should be in the rear-view mirror for evaluators, pointing to Malhotra being 16 and it being his first year living away from his parents. He grew up in Vancouver but moved to Toronto when he was 12, and his mom and siblings have stayed there after Manny left the Maple Leafs.
“It takes time to transition as a person, which is going to allow you to play well on the ice. But I also think the OHL is a better style for him because you get both ends and you play with more skill,” said Hyman.
Malhotra said part of his decision to go to the OHL for his draft year was to be closer to his mom and siblings. He’s glad he did, and has been helped by billet brother and team captain Jake O’Brien (former linemate Aiden O’Donnell, who was also traded to Oshawa, lived with them to start as well) and their billets, who he calls “very good people.” In his downtime, he’s working to finish his last few credits of high school with Ms. Vance, a teacher from the Brantford Collegiate Institute who works with the Bulldogs players.
Caleb Malhotra is committed to Boston University for next season. (Brandon Taylor / OHL)
He didn’t expect to get off to the start that he did, but he did feel he could be “really good in this league right away.”
On Monday, as players practiced for the first time together ahead of the CHL USA Prospects Challenge, that play landed him center stage ahead of the two-game series. Everything else made him the team’s captain.
De Langley, who is in his fourth year working with Malhotra, isn’t surprised by his quick ascension over the last few months.
He said he always felt Malhotra had it in him to become a first-rounder. He liked his decision to go to the BCHL and commit to BU before the rules changed, and thought it showed maturity for him to play the long game in his development, knowing with his work ethic, focus and habits that he could piece it all together. In their sessions, Malhotra will come up to him after a few reps, wanting to see himself on video and asking, “How did that look? What do you see? Could I get a little bit lower in my stance?” He pays attention to the details and elevates practices. Others follow him.
De Langley said Malhotra has developed “phenomenal” touch and “great ability to control pucks in tight without losing.” He calls his best attribute — “what separates him and why he’s going to have a long career” — his hockey IQ and the way it allows him to use his technique in pressure situations to make good reads. He lauds his puck protection down low and his work in puck battles as something Malhotra has always had. He’s fundamentally sound, de Langley said, describing him as like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nico Hischier that way, but also with “a little more bite to his game” and the pace, aggression and relentlessness of Sam Bennett, another of his clients.
“He’s just such a great, overall, two-way forward. He just does not cheat the game. I’m excited because I think he can become one of those really great two-way centers,” de Langley said. “The sky’s the limit. There’s only going to be one Caleb Malhotra.”
Malhotra is still rangy and long, according to de Langley, and he has continued work to do with his strength coach Andy O’Brien at Junxion Performance. That work will help him add some needed pop to his shot. It’ll also help him add another gear; de Langley doesn’t consider him a burner, though he said his lateral movement on zone entries getting to middle ice is “truly high level” and that his skating is “super, super effective on the ice.”
But just as de Langley isn’t surprised by his draft-year breakout, he also believes all of those things are going to come for Malhotra because he’s going to put in the necessary work.
“He’s a testament to the work he has put in,” de Langley said.
Hyman, de Langley, McKee and Laise all think he’s not even done climbing, either.
“Caleb’s going to skyrocket,” Hyman said. “The hockey is important, obviously, and you have to have the skill level, but when teams meet him, they’re going to fall in love with him. You meet this kid, and you’re like, ‘Hey, where do I sign up?’”
— Reported from Brantford, Ontario, and Calgary, Alberta
