There’s a distinct possibility that two Malhotras will join the Vancouver Canucks organization in the space of one month.

On Monday, the Canucks named Manny Malhotra their head coach, Ryan Johnson’s first hire as general manager. In a few weeks, Johnson could make Manny’s son, Caleb Malhotra, his first draft pick.

To be clear, that’s far from a sure thing. The Canucks’ final draft list could change after the NHL Combine, and who the Canucks pick third overall could depend heavily on what the Toronto Maple Leafs and San Jose Sharks do with the first- and second-overall picks.

But the scuttlebutt around the Canucks is that they are very high on Caleb Malhotra, to the point that it needed to be a topic of conversation when Johnson was interviewing his father.

“I wanted to make sure we weren’t sitting there June 20, and Manny was saying, ‘I wish I’d really known that there was more clarity and that this was a scenario,’” said Johnson about the possibility of drafting Caleb. “I wanted to make sure he had time to talk with his wife and his family, understanding that this would be a possible scenario.”

The elder Malhotra took a balanced approach to the question of coaching his son.

“It was a part of the conversations that we had prior to the hiring process,” said Manny. “I fully understand the story there, and I understand the positives and negatives of it. But with so many things, I’ve learned it’s a bit of a fool’s errand to plan out things that haven’t quite happened yet. If that situation were to happen, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

“But we’ve had a very clear understanding in my household that first and foremost, I am Dad, who also happens to be a professional hockey coach. So, when we are talking about hockey, there’s a decision by my kids if they want to talk to Dad or Coach. So, we will continue to have that rule in my house, and it’s served us well as a family.”

Manny added that when Caleb wants to talk hockey with him, he almost always wants to talk to Coach.

Caleb, for his part, noted that he hasn’t had his father as a coach since he was 12 years old in minor hockey on a spring team, but he seemed reservedly enthusiastic about the possibility.

“We’d be pretty professional about it,” said Caleb. “It would be obviously cool and very special — not a lot of people get to say that.”

The truth is, a few people do get to say that. If Caleb ends up playing for Manny, it won’t be the first time a son has played for his father in the NHL.

The first father to coach his sons in the NHL has a Canucks connection.

The legendary Lester Patrick co-founded the Pacific Coast Hockey Association with his brother, Frank, and father, Joe. While he managed and played for the Victoria Aristocrats in that league rather than the Vancouver Millionaires, he eventually made his way to Vancouver and served as GM and head coach of the pre-NHL Canucks for two years in the twenties and four seasons in the fifties.

In between, Patrick was the GM of the New York Rangers from 1928 to 1946, also serving as head coach from 1928 to 1939. Heck, he even served as goaltender once, stepping off the bench and into the net during Game 2 of the 1928 Stanley Cup Final at the age of 44 when starting goaltender Lorne Chabot suffered an eye injury and the team had no backup. Patrick made 18 saves on 19 shots to secure the overtime win, and the Rangers went on to win their first-ever Stanley Cup.

Patrick had two sons: Lynn Patrick and Murray “Muzz” Patrick. Both played in the NHL, and both played for the Rangers while their father was head coach. Lynn played five seasons for his father, while Muzz played one before his father stepped down as head coach in 1939, ceding the bench to Frank Boucher while remaining GM and assistant coach.

It was evidently the right choice, as the Patricks and the Rangers went on to win the 1940 Stanley Cup.

Punch Imlach was nearly the Canucks’ first-ever GM. Imlach owned shares in the WHL Canucks and was good friends with Joe Crozier, who was then the head coach and GM of the Canucks. Crozier was anticipating continuing in at least one of those roles when the Canucks joined the NHL, and it was thought Imlach would join him.

In fact, Crozier had secretly already hired Imlach as a scout and personnel consultant. More than that, he had already registered Imlach with the NHL as authorized to make deals and transfers for the Canucks without telling anyone else in the Canucks’ organization.

When Imlach was instead named the head coach and GM of the Canucks’ expansion cousins, the Buffalo Sabres, the NHL notified the Canucks’ new owners, Medicor, of Imlach’s secret role. This went over poorly, and Crozier was soon out as well.

But before all that, Imlach was GM and head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1958 to 1969. And, in that time, Punch’s son, Brent Imlach, played his only three games in the NHL, all with the Leafs, with himself as his son’s head coach.

It wasn’t easy.

“I didn’t want to play because everybody was going to think the only reason I was on the team was because of my dad,” said Brent. “Even I wondered if I was there as a spy. It bothered me. But I wasn’t going to let my dad down when they called me up. You might have wished for different circumstances. But now, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Brent very nearly played for his dad again. In 1970, he rejected a contract offer from the Leafs that he felt didn’t pay enough, and his signing rights were traded to Punch’s Buffalo Sabres. But Brent never played another game in the NHL. Instead, he did what his dad never did: he became the GM of Vancouver.

No, not the Canucks; Brent Imlach was GM of the Vancouver Canadians from 1989 to 1997. In 1993, he was named the Pacific Coast League Executive of the Year.

Sid Abel is one of the all-time greatest players in NHL history. He was a force for the Detroit Red Wings with Ted Lindsay and Gordie Howe — the famed Production Line.

Abel won three Stanley Cups with the Red Wings, was twice a first-team All-Star, twice a second-team All-Star, and won the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player in 1949.

That’s a tough legacy for any son to live up to. Gerry Abel didn’t stand a chance.

Still, Gerry made it to the NHL, even if it was just for one game on March 8, 1967. That one game happened to be with the Red Wings under his father, who coached the Red Wings from 1957 to 1968.

When his dad, who also became the GM of the Red Wings in 1962, signed him to his first NHL contract, Gerry reportedly said, “If I could be half as good as my dad, I’d be happy.”

Making it even more surreal, Gerry Abel played his one game on a line with his dad’s old linemate, Gordie Howe.

While Sid Abel retired after 612 games in the NHL and moved on to coaching, Howe kept on playing, finishing with 1,767 games in the NHL and 419 in the WHA. Sid was his head coach in Detroit for 12 seasons and his linemate for six seasons before that, giving him 18 seasons with the senior Abel; he played just one game with the younger.

Howe never coached his sons in the NHL, but he did play with them. He spent several seasons with his sons, Mark and Marty Howe, on the Houston Aeros of the WHA, then one more season in the NHL with them on the Hartford Whalers in 1979-80, though Marty played just six NHL games that season.

Yet another Hall-of-Famer got the chance to coach his son in the NHL.

While Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion may not have invented the slap shot, he certainly popularized it in the NHL, and his booming shot gave him his nickname. He followed in the footsteps of his teammate Maurice Richard and became the second player in NHL history to score 50 goals.

He won six Stanley Cups, the Calder as the league’s top rookie, two Art Ross Trophies, and one Hart Trophy before he retired and transitioned to coaching.

Stomach ulcers ended his first NHL coaching stint with the New York Rangers, limiting him to just 43 games before he resigned. He was then the first head coach of the expansion Atlanta Flames for two and a half seasons before health forced him to step down.

What he wanted most of all, however, was to coach the Montreal Canadiens. He got his chance in 1979, but he lasted just 30 games before he was once again forced to step away from the bench due to his health.

Those games happened to overlap with 19 of the 32 games his son, Danny Geoffrion, played for the Canadiens that season.

One can only imagine the pressure of playing not only for a legendary franchise in the Canadiens, but as the son of a legendary Canadien, while said legend was standing behind the bench. To add to the pressure, Danny Geoffrion was a high draft pick, selected eighth overall by the Canadiens in the 1978 draft.

It didn’t pan out for the younger Geoffrion. He didn’t tally a single goal in his 32 games with Montreal, and Geoffrion was released by Les Habitants and picked up by the Quebec Nordiques, with whom he had played one season in the WHA. They traded Geoffrion to the Winnipeg Jets, where he had a decent year, scoring 20 goals and 46 points in 78 games in the 1980-81 season.

But Geoffrion played just one more game for the Jets after that, then he was out of the NHL.

Geoffrion later co-wrote a book about four generations of his family who played for the Canadiens: his grandfather, Howie Morenz; his father; himself; and his son, Blake Geoffrion.

Bill Dineen is the first of these father-coaches who didn’t end up in the Hockey Hall of Fame, though he was inducted into the World Hockey Association Hall of Fame for his work as a coach.

Before that, Bill Dineen had a long career as a player, albeit mostly in the minor leagues. He spent five seasons in the NHL before many years in the AHL and WHL, facing off against the WHL Canucks while with the Seattle Totems and Denver Spurs.

Dineen spent seven years as a head coach in the WHA, then another seven years as a head coach in the AHL before he got his first shot at coaching in the NHL.

Three of Dineen’s five sons went on to play in the NHL: Gord, Peter, and Kevin. Kevin was the best of the three, putting up 355 goals and 760 points in 1,188 career games in the NHL.

On November 13, 1991, the Philadelphia Flyers traded future-Canuck Murray Craven and a fourth-round pick to the Hartford Whalers for Kevin Dineen. About a month later, the Flyers fired their head coach, Paul Holmgren, and hired Kevin’s dad, Bill Dineen, making the 59-year-old the oldest rookie head coach in NHL history at the time, a record that has since been broken and is now held by Bob Murray.

Bill coached Kevin that season and just one more after. Bill was fired after the 1992-93 season, while Kevin played parts of three more seasons with the Flyers.

Kevin Dineen went on to a coaching career himself, including three seasons as head coach of the Florida Panthers. He has yet to coach his own son, Will Dineen, in the NHL, but there’s still time: Will is just 25 and playing in the AHL.

Dave Lowry was a sixth-round pick of the Canucks in the 1983 NHL Draft after putting up just 27 points in 42 games for the London Knights in his draft year. He made the Canucks look like geniuses when he broke out in a big way the next two seasons, culminating in 60 goals and 120 points in 61 games in his draft+2 year.

The scoring didn’t translate immediately to the NHL, unfortunately. Lowry lasted three seasons with the Canucks, with the third season mostly spent in the AHL, after which the Canucks traded him to the St. Louis Blues for Ernie Vargas.

Lowry found his game in St. Louis, leading to a 1,084-game career in the NHL. Vargas never played a single NHL game.

After retiring, Lowry stepped behind the bench, primarily as an assistant coach at the NHL level. In 2020, he joined Paul Maurice’s staff with the Winnipeg Jets, where his son, Adam Lowry, had already been playing for six seasons.

“It’s nice coming to the rink knowing that he’s there, knowing that we get to work together, and we get to chase the Stanley Cup,” said Adam about playing for his dad.

Dave Lowry was just meant to be an assistant, but when Paul Maurice suddenly resigned as head coach partway through the 2021-22 season, Lowry was called upon to be the interim head coach. So far, it’s Lowry’s only experience as a head coach in the NHL, and it was all with his son on the team.

With the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Final, it’s fitting that they’re the home of the final father/son duo on this list.

Rod Brind’Amour has a case to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He put up 452 goals and 1,184 points in 1,484 career games in the NHL, won the Stanley Cup in 2006, and twice won the Selke Award as the NHL’s best defensive forward.

He’s added to his accolades as a head coach, winning the Jack Adams Award in 2021, and now he’s looking for his first Stanley Cup as a coach after eight seasons behind the bench with the Hurricanes.

Rod’s son, Skyler Brind’Amour, has a bit of a B.C. connection, as he played two seasons in the BCHL with the Chilliwack Chiefs before heading to the NCAA. Eventually, after four years with Quinnipiac University, he was signed to an AHL deal by the Charlotte Checkers, where he caught the eye of Hurricanes’ GM Eric Tulsky.

Was there perhaps some nepotism involved? Who’s to say? But Skyler Brind’Amour has earned his call-ups to the NHL with solid two-way play, and the 26-year-old forward has played six NHL games so far with his father, Rod, as head coach.

With all of the many Sutters who have played in the NHL, it’s actually somewhat surprising that no Sutter sons were coached by their fathers.

The closest was when Brett Sutter played for his uncle, Brent Sutter, for 14 games with the Calgary Flames. It was a real family affair, as Brett’s dad, Darryl Sutter, was the GM of the Flames at the time.

It’s fair to say that Brett didn’t get any special treatment: Darryl traded his son to the Carolina Hurricanes about a month into the 2010-11 season.

Brett was nearly reunited with his dad several seasons later, when he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in 2016. Darryl was the head coach of the Kings at the time, but Brett never got the call-up from the AHL, where he spent the rest of his career.

Brett Sutter wound up playing 1,090 AHL games to go with his 60 NHL games, one of just a handful of players to reach over 1,000 career AHL games.