The disappointment stemming from the repeated and harsh cruelty of the NHL’s draft lottery balls has begun to subside for Vancouver Canucks fans. And with the NHL Draft Combine opening next week, the brighter reality that the third pick in the 2026 draft will still deliver the Canucks an elite prospect has begun to crystallize.
The importance of this pick for a rebuilding team like the Canucks cannot be understated. This will be the highest Vancouver has selected at the draft since the franchise took the Sedin twins in 1999.
As we pivot to begin exploring the Canucks’ options at the apex of the 2026 draft, let’s start a series spotlighting the top prospects Vancouver will consider selecting third, beginning with Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg.
The basics
Stenberg is widely regarded as the most NHL-ready player in this draft class. The 18-year-old two-way winger has high-end skill and produced at a borderline historic rate for Frölunda in the SHL this season. He also dominated at the World Juniors, where he led Sweden to a gold medal, and showed very well at the World Championships.
A pedigree prospect all the way up, Stenberg has represented Sweden internationally at the U16, U17, U18 and U20 level, regularly dominating his age group. He’s also generally played as an overager in the Frölunda system — playing J20 as a 16-year-old, and professional SHL games by the time he was 17 — which is generally an indicator that a hockey prospect is on a prodigy-level development path.
What stands out most about Stenberg’s game is his smoothness. Though he’s not generally viewed as lightning quick, he’s a high-end skater with some deceptiveness as a skater and puck-handler, but his first instinct is to attack in straight lines. Though he’s not quite 6 feet, Stenberg is wide-bodied, assertive physically and diligent in his two-way habits. He’s stylistically complete and well-rounded, and he’s completely obliterated his age group in head-to-head competition since he was about 15.
Among NHL talent evaluators, there’s very little debate that he’s the most NHL-ready of the prospects at the top of the draft — including consensus No. 1 pick Gavin McKenna — with the questions that surround Stenberg connected mostly to his height and the positional value of selecting a winger in the top five.
Stenberg’s projected NHL readiness stems from both his physical maturity and ability to play through contact, and the high-end details and defensive attentiveness that he exhibited in a very difficult professional league as an 18-year-old.
It’s also been on display again at the World Championships. It’s impressive that Stenberg made Sweden’s national men’s senior team at all in his draft year, but he’s also played major minutes in all situations and has so far managed seven points in six games.
The production profile
What really sets Stenberg apart from the other prospects in this class, arguably including McKenna, is the extent to which his age-adjusted production was nothing short of historic. If not for a relatively slow conclusion to his SHL and Champions League season, too — Stenberg managed just 11 points in his final 24 games — he might’ve been the most productive 18-year-old in SHL history.
Even with the slower conclusion to Stenberg’s club season, his draft year age-adjusted scoring profile grades out among some of the best Swedish players in recent NHL history. Here’s how Stenberg’s per-game scoring statistics compare with the best 18-year-old SHL scorers since 1990, who appeared in at least 20 games.
Stenberg’s production profile suggests that he’s a very safe bet — probably the safest in this class — to be a top-of-the-lineup NHL player as he ages into his prime. The vast majority of players who have been this productive at this stage of their careers in the same league have gone on to NHL stardom or superstardom. And those players that failed to become stars — like Samuel Fagemo and Magnus Pääjärvi — were significantly less productive than Stenberg was this season.
Meanwhile, even players with far more pedestrian age-18 SHL scoring profiles than Stenberg — like Leo Carlsson (0.568 points per game), Nicklas Backstrom (0.565) and Lucas Raymond (0.529) — have gone on to be high-end NHL contributors.
What NHL scouts are saying
“I think the conversation now is less about Gavin McKenna versus Stenberg (for No. 1), and more about whether or not anybody else has played themselves up as high as the No. 2 overall pick in competition with Stenberg,” said an NHL amateur scout granted anonymity to openly discuss player evaluations from the 2026 NHL Draft class.
“I do think the way he ended the season, not quite as strong as he started, plays a role in his evaluation. Part of that is, I mean, I don’t know how tired he got as the year went along, and those SHL games are a grind. They are a meat grinder, and it’s sometimes like watching soccer. There just isn’t that much offence going on.
“From what I could see, Stenberg was doing his best to create offence, but there wasn’t a lot getting done. It wasn’t for a lack of effort, but you still have to account for how there wasn’t a lot getting done.”
“There’s a combination of factors that make Stenberg special,” said a different NHL amateur scout, similarly granted anonymity. “One of them is that he’s always been an elite scorer for his age group. The second part is that there’s no real holes that you can poke in his game, except for maybe the lack of a special, high-end, game-breaking element in his game that could lead to him being a franchise-level forward in a best-case scenario outcome.
“He’s a really good skater, he’s a really good puck handler, and he plays through contact well. He can make plays off the rush, and he can make plays off of the cycle. He’s really well-rounded and quite good at everything.
“With just about everyone else in this class, like all of the defenders, there’s a couple of things you can point at and say, ‘I don’t know about that, I don’t know how that’s going to play at the next level.’ And with Stenberg, there’s just nothing like that.”
Closing argument
Stenberg is one of two prospects in the draft class with a bona fide elite profile, and of those two players, Stenberg is the more physically ready to play in the NHL and has the more complete defensive game.
He’s the cleanest bet that a rebuilding team like Vancouver could make to be a star contributor down the road. If the San Jose Sharks make a tremendous error and select a defender with the second pick, then deciding to pass on Stenberg for reasons pertaining to positional value or size concerns would probably be overthinking it.
His production and accomplishments at a precocious stage of his career suggest that Stenberg is overwhelmingly likely to be an impact NHL player in his prime, with a real chance of developing into a superstar.
