Ranking the 2026 NHL Draft's top forwards in six different categories
Much of the forward talent in a given draft is concentrated at the very top, often in the top ten. That’s what history tells us. Targeting the right player can be challenging, however, especially in a class like 2026, which varies in its profiles.
On our board, six players battled for top spots, as risers collided with fallers and performances evolved over the course of the season.
To separate these prospects, we broke down their projectable tools, hockey sense, offensive and defensive upside, floor, and development runway, giving us a good measure of their value.
Here, we’ll re-rank them in all of these categories, shining a light on our process and how we ended up with our final ranking.
Hockey sense is what matters most in a forward’s projection. The smarter players are, the more adaptable they become, and the easier it is for them to drive the play.
To us, hockey sense is more than decision-making and learned habits. This definition clashes with the commonly accepted ones, which state that players who make the most correct decisions have the highest hockey-sense potential.
We do value players who make good decisions and avoid turnovers, but more than this, we favour players who show potential to understand the NHL game, keep track of it, anticipate it, and impact it by breaking the opposition’s attack and their defensive coverage. The more players anticipate and manipulate opponents’ movements, both offensively and defensively, the higher their hockey sense grade. While not synonymous, our hockey sense grade is more of an indication of a player’s future play-driving capabilities than of their puck and system management.
Seeing hockey as a chess match, McKenna anticipates the reactions of teammates and defenders alike. He controls them with his pathing, passing, and posture. Those are the highest expressions of hockey sense and the main reasons why we made him our number one overall.
On Head of Scouting Mitchell Brown’s tracking data, he accumulated some of the very best playmaking results, while managing the puck reasonably well against strong NCAA competition.
Capable of anticipation and manipulation, Stenberg also possesses similar capabilities, but not to the same level.
Our team debated Björck’s hockey sense grade all season long. Some believe in his ability to control the game in a similar way to Stenberg and McKenna, but the majority of our scouts saw him more as a talented puck-manager who makes the right plays, takes the right routes, and supports teammates in timely ways.
These qualities separated him from Malhotra and Cullen, higher-event, more mistake-prone attackers.
Away from the puck, Malhotra showed similar strengths to Björck. With it, just like Cullen, Malhotra experimented a lot more, sometimes trying plays well outside his capabilities, but also showing higher-end talent for feinting and influencing defenders than Björck did.
In the end, these three players received a similar high-end hockey sense grade. Björck edged them out in this particular exercise due to his better overall decision-making and some of our scouts’ beliefs in his playmaking skills.
While Belchetz displayed similar skills for positioning, anticipating passes and connecting them, his hockey sense received a grade half a level below. He acted more as a supporter of plays than a true play-driver for most of the season. That’s also the style of player he will likely be at the NHL level.
Stature, skating, stickhandling, shooting, passing, and physical skills. Those are some of the main elements we evaluate in each prospect. Their sum helps determine a player’s potential and how hard his NHL transition will be.
A player with above-average to high-end tools will create more space advantages for himself in the league, making processing and influencing the game easier. One who has holes in his skill set or all-around average tools may have to make more of his plays under heavier pressure and have to rely on his hockey sense more to thrive.
Despite lacking physical skills, McKenna earned the top spot in this ranking due to his elite stickhandling and passing, and his potential as a skater and shooter. A close second, Stenberg has significantly better battle skills and, in turn, a more diverse skill set. His statistical profile, based on Director of European Scouting Lassi Alanen’s data, reflects his all-around effectiveness across all facets of the game. Combining top-end playmaking results with a high rate of puck recovery and transition success, he should have an easy time translating his game to the NHL.
The remaining players all have holes in their projections.
Malhotra and Belchetz dominated the walls in the OHL. Brown’s tracking data painted Malhotra as an exceptional creator in those areas, with a high rate of boards-to-middle plays, establishing body positioning on pucks, and battles won.
Malhotra’s better passing and handling pushed him ahead of Belchetz, too, but they both will need to develop their skating to translate their skills to the NHL.
The least physically mature of the bunch, Cullen’s development requires more projection and faith than most. He has grown a few inches in the last two years, and his skating lacks power as a result. In time, we anticipate that he will become significantly more elusive than his competition, even at the NHL level. Extra strength could also transform his board play, a weakness at the moment.
The most competitive forward, Björck may struggle to fully translate his board play to the NHL due to his 5-foot-9 stature and above-average, but not high-end, escapability. We also have some doubts about his finishing ability. That said, his physical skills grade as significantly above average for a player of that stature. He also flashed higher-end stickhandling and playmaking skills in moments last season.
As everything in McKenna’s game is geared toward offence, it's easy to envision him racking up points in the NHL, especially on the power play. If the Toronto Maple Leafs do end up drafting him, giving him time with their stars, his production will shoot up. In his prime, he could score 100 points in the league.
Stenberg’s five-on-five impact should be greater, especially at first, considering his more well-rounded skill set and professional experience. He could end up outproducing McKenna in his first couple of seasons, en route to multiple point-per-game seasons.
One of the best playmakers in the class, Cullen accumulated strong results in Brown’s tracking data, especially in transition. He carried and passed pucks from the defensive end to the offensive one all season long, exploiting defenders with shifty and deceptive skating and stickhandling. He could ascend to a similar top-line and power-play one spot, matching McKenna and Stenberg’s impact in some facets of the game. A lot more has to break right for him to earn those duties, however.
For Malhotra to produce at a high level, his game will also have to undergo significant changes. Lacking skating fluidity, he wasn’t able to execute all of his ideas at the OHL level this season. Some technical refinement could push his upside, turning him into not just a two-way centre, but a productive one. 70-point seasons don’t seem out of reach.
It’s harder to predict Björck's and Belchetz’s scoring. Acting mostly as supporters in their draft season, they didn’t show as many higher-end offensive flashes as the players named above.
Their impact may depend on their roles and teammates more than for the players above them. These two did show top-six-calibre skills in moments — at the J20 level for Björck and when Belchetz was tasked with driving his own line, separated from Liam Greentree. These performances give us hope that they could become top-end scorers inside their team, too.
It’s hard to separate defence and play-driving. The more you control the puck, the less your opponents have it, and the better your defensive score. But here, we’re mostly accounting for shutdown skills, and those could develop into a shutdown NHL game.
McKenna and Cullen may end up boosting their defensive metrics if they can become good enough possession players. It’s more likely, however, that their expected goals against mark will suffer from their creative playstyle. They both look to create scoring chances as often as possible, attempting plays that most wouldn’t dare. Their defensive skills also lag behind those of other top forwards.
Cullen flashed more battling abilities and a better motor in his draft year. With a greater range than McKenna and greater potential to develop strength, he will hopefully become a more useful defensive player as he matures.
Stenberg also leans toward offence, but his SHL experience should help him understand the demands of the NHL system quicker. Forcing fewer plays and rotating more precisely, his two-way impact should eclipse Cullen and McKenna’s, especially early on.
Malhotra, Belchetz, and Björck all have an equally solid defensive foundation, the positioning, stick work, anticipation, and ability to engage opponents needed to boost their off-puck results at the NHL level.
The first two will have an easier time translating their puck-winning abilities to the NHL, considering their size advantage.
One of the best defenders in Brown’s data set, Belchetz’s shutdown skills should help him win a top-six spot in the NHL, giving coaches another argument to use him as a complementary piece on those lines.
Björck should also win his share of battles by leveraging his motor and battling techniques. He already did in the SHL, but his lack of range, good-but-not-elite skating, and frame will still put him at a disadvantage defensively in the NHL.
As plug-and-play as you can find at the NHL level, Stenberg could fit in a team’s top-six, produce and drive the play as soon as next season. His SHL habits should translate immediately. Not only that, but his diverse skill set should make him at ease in the NHL game, capable of making plays off the walls and the rush.
Our team criticized McKenna’s engagement, motor, and physical skills this season, as he mostly looked like a junior player playing against men. That’s likely how we will appear next season. That being said, his team will be able to take advantage of his skill, and he should create his share of impressive plays, too. In his current form, McKenna is already an elite power-play quarterback and a capable rush creator. He should shine in these two facets of the game as soon as next season.
Similarly to Stenberg, Björck already plays a professional-style game, motoring up and down the ice, winning battles, driving inside, and caring about the defensive side of the game. What had him slide third on this list, behind McKenna, is the question of his early scoring potential. Much more focused on playing the game the right way rather than pushing for offensive advantages, Björck may accumulate some good underlying results early, but may not create as much for his team as McKenna and Stenberg do.
Malhotra and Belchetz’s defensive engagement, playmaking approach, and physical skills give them a high-floor, but in their current form, these two project more as supportive pieces with some flaws in their game. They will have to develop their skating to make the rest of their skills shine at the NHL level.
In college, Malhotra will also have to refine his decision-making, push his abilities, and learn to play more within his limits. And Belchetz will have to become more of a lead creator rather than a supporter.
A boom-or-bust profile, Cullen will have to build his frame over the next couple of seasons, developing his speed and refining his decision-making before aspiring to an NHL role. If he can’t add the weight and learn to play a more well-rounded game, his career in the top league could be in peril.
Multiple factors influence the perception of a prospect’s development runway, some of which are not known to our team, like work ethic, self-awareness, and willingness to change. They’re the qualities that NHL teams look for when interviewing players and surveying their entourage.
While we’re not interviewing players, other factors make us believe more or less in a player’s ability to improve, such as potential for further physical growth, younger age, and a prospect’s development path. A less physically mature prospect, having shown many flashes of NHL-projectable abilities, who developed consistently already will be perceived as having more development runway — especially if he’s about to integrate or is in an environment favourable to his development.
A prospect’s risk tolerance, hockey sense, the strength of competition they faced in their draft year, and their program’s reputation also affect their perceived development potential. Environments that encourage prospects to experiment with their assets and develop those tend to lead to more development.
In other words, the above ranking reflects how much we believe these prospects will change over the next couple of years, becoming better or different versions of themselves.
Having already integrated and excelled in a tough professional league, Stenberg and Björck have probably shown the kind of players they will become at the NHL level: two-way play drivers, with Stenberg leaning more toward the offensive side and Björck playing more conservatively.
This season in Windsor, Belchetz also likely played his future NHL role, a supportive, power-playmaker who can score in and around the slot. Better skating and greater aggressiveness could significantly increase his impact.
Experimenting all season long and pushing his offensive skills, Malhotra looks like a player in the middle of an offensive breakout. He could become a much more developed playmaker by the end of his college season. Further honing his skating and stickhandling skills would enable him to execute more of his high-end ideas.
Elite talents like McKenna tend to find ways to continue adding to their game. His NHL Combine results also suggest a stronger athletic base than we previously thought. Adding some weight to his frame could transform his game, making the back-and-forth of the NHL easier and giving him more playmaking possibilities off the walls.
We almost thought of Cullen as a draft-minus-one player this season. His significant growth spurt completely changed his game, weakening him but giving him new tools to experiment with. We anticipate that he will develop a much better contact game as he builds strength. That the extra power should transform him from a high-end puck rusher and quarterback into an elite one.
If you assign points to players for all of the above rankings and order them based on those, you end up with our final ranking of these prospects.
As we’re not drafting for a team, we don’t have specific needs or a value system. When making our rankings, we try to remain neutral and consider the potential strengths and weaknesses of prospects, valuing different types of forwards.
An NHL team could have a more specific process. They could need to add size to their top-six and push Belchetz further up their board, or they could need top-six centres and target Malhotra.
The goal of this list is not only to shed light on our process, but also to help you understand some of the choices your team may make.
