It’s been a pretty hectic spring so far for several of Canada’s National Hockey League clubs.

The Vancouver Canucks have a new management team and are hiring a new coaching staff after a horrible season, as are the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Edmonton Oilers disappointed in the playoffs and are also hiring a new coaching staff. And the Montreal Canadiens are licking their wounds after making it to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Meanwhile, it’s been pretty quiet for the Calgary Flames in terms of news, but there’s a lot of action going on in terms of preparations for the upcoming 2026 NHL Draft at the end of June.

The Flames will start their drafting with the sixth overall selection – unless their attempts to move up are successful – and they currently own 11 selections in the draft, including eight in the first three rounds alone. For a team that accelerated their youth movement in 2025-26 via the trades of Rasmus Andersson, MacKenzie Weegar and Nazem Kadri, it’s a pretty crucial draft that could set the tone for the next few years of the franchise.

So how should they kick their draft off?

The Flames have had a few productive drafts under general manager Craig Conroy, so they head into the 2026 draft with few big holes in their prospect depth chart. They’ve added several defencemen and centres to their cupboards in particular, so they’re not in a position where they need to focus on any particular area.

That said, they’ve loaded up on left-shot centres and right-shot defencemen, so their Platonic ideal would be either a right-shot forward or a left-shot defenceman. With those needs and recently-published draft rankings in mind, here are the four players that would best suit the Flames’ needs, in no particular order.

We won’t mince words: Carels may be the best fit for the Flames at sixth overall. He’s a left shot defender from the Western Hockey League’s Prince George Cougars. This Manitoba farm boy has drawn rave reviews. Daily Faceoff prospect guru Steven Ellis had this gem of a line in his recent top 100 rankings: “When you combine his elite defensive awareness, seamless two-way game, punishing physique, and off-the-charts hockey IQ, you get a truly premium defensive prospect.” He sure sounds like he could be a superb compliment to the Flames’ slew of right-shot puck-moving defenders, doesn’t he?

Bjorck is another exciting commodity at sixth spot. We will acknowledge that he’s not huge, being listed at just over 5’8″ by his club team, Djurgardens IF, and reportedly having grown to just shy of 5’10”. But size has yet to be an issue for this right shot forward, who plays both centre and the wing. He’s impressed scouts with his late-season performances in the Swedish junior playoffs and the World Championships. His dynamism and versatility could add a lot to the Flames’ prospect base.

We’ll acknowledge that Verhoeff is a right-shot defender, and he would join an organization that has several of them among its top prospects. That might be where his flaws end. Verhoeff didn’t dominate college hockey as a 17-year-old, but he was a key piece on a very good North Dakota team, and his familiarity with Flames prospects Abram Wiebe, Cade Littler and Cole Reschny could be a huge plus.

The big question with Smits, a talented Latvian lefty defenceman, is whether he’s close to his developmental ceiling or not. Smits has had an awesome year, appearing at the Olympics and playing pro hockey in two highly-regarded leagues in Finland and Germany. But as a December birthday he’s one of the older first-time-eligible prospects in this draft, and the challenge for scouts will be sussing out how much development is left in his already-mature game.

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