The 2026 NHL Draft is just one week away. That also means, presumably, that Vancouver Canucks development is just over a week away.

Though the club hasn’t yet confirmed plans for development camp, history would suggest that on-ice sessions for Canucks dev camp will begin a couple of days after the draft has concluded. We always have a great time providing wall-to-wall coverage of development camp for Canucks fans here at CanucksArmy, and this should be one of the most impressive crops of prospects we’ve seen at a Canucks development camp in years.

With that, here are three — okay, more like six — Canucks prospects we’re going to be keeping the closest eye on at development camp.

This one is a no-brainer, so let’s get it out of the way early.

Whoever the Canucks select at third overall will be the player who garners the most attention from fans and spectators in attendance alike. He’ll be among the first players requested for media availability, and everyone will be looking forward to getting to know him. Will that player be Caleb Malhotra? Chase Reid? Someone else? We will find out in a week!

As one of our resident goaltending enthusiasts around here, I am very intrigued to see Aleksei Medvedev at development camp. And personally, I’m almost more interested to hear what he has to say off the ice than I am with what he does on the ice out at UBC. I made it abundantly clear right away that I thought the Canucks had hit a home run when they selected Medvedev in the second round of the 2025 NHL Draft. He was just days away from being eligible for the 2026 draft class instead of 2025, impressed in a limited role with London of the OHL, and my expectations were very high for him.

After getting off to a scorching hot start to his OHL season as “the guy” with the Knights, Medvedev cooled off considerably, and downright struggled at times down the stretch. He finished his season with an .891 save percentage and lost his crease to 20-year-old undrafted netminder Sebastian Gatto, who made two more starts than Medvedev this past season. In the grand scheme of things, his struggles in his D+1 season likely won’t matter much at all, but I am certainly curious to hear what Medvedev has to say about his season. And of course, on the ice, we’ll be watching to see how sharp his movements look and how well he’s stopping the puck. Also, could another goaltender be joining him after the draft? We think so. More on that here. 

I suppose this is another no-brainer, but yes, we are all very intrigued to see the Canucks’ top prospect return for his second development camp. Cootes stood out at last year’s dev camp, then pivoted that into a strong first NHL training camp, where he shocked everyone and earned a spot on the Canucks’ opening night roster. He appeared in three NHL games before returning to junior, and put together a solid D+1 season that included a trade to the Prince Albert Raiders from the Seattle Thunderbirds. After arriving in Prince Albert, Cootes managed to put up 40 points in 28 regular-season games before adding 23 more in 20 playoff games. Obviously, we’ll be watching to see if Cootes looks a step above the competition at development camp, but we’ll also be interested to see whether he has filled out his frame since the last time we saw him play live.

Okay, technically this means the headline should say 4 or 6 instead of 3, but we’ll just do what we want since we don’t know who the actual player is yet. In normal years, any newly drafted Canucks first or second round pick would be garnering plenty of attention from fans and local media. This year, most of the attention will be on third overall, and that makes sense, but let’s not forget that the Canucks have two first round picks and two second round picks in this year’s draft. That should realistically mean four high-quality prospects added to the system. After Cootes and Medvedev, the Canucks’ prospect pool doesn’t feature any other players taken in the first two rounds of the draft currently. Adding four to that is a big deal, and could drastically change our most recent rankings of the Canucks’ top 15 prospects, which we’ll update later this offseason.

Who are you most excited to watch at development camp