Canucks book interesting prospect for Thursday dinner at NHL Combine
The Vancouver Canucks are sitting down with Chase Reid this week, and Rick Dhaliwal says the dinner is locked in for Thursday night in Buffalo.
That's a heavy signal from a club holding the third overall pick after a 25-49-8 season that bottomed out at 32nd in the NHL standings.
Dhaliwal dropped the report Tuesday afternoon on X, naming Reid as a target as the defenseman runs his interview circuit at the NHL Combine.
It also lands the same week Manny Malhotra took over as head coach. The new bench boss inherits a roster that just gave up 316 goals.
A combine dinner is never just dinner. It's the final character read before a franchise commits to a name that'll follow Malhotra's rebuild for the next decade.
Vancouver coughed up 3.9 goals against per game and finished 9-27-5 at home. You don't post those numbers and then sit down with a forward at pick three by accident.
Why Malhotra's first big call points to the blue line
Filip Hronek finished a -23 across all 82 games on the top pair. Marcus Pettersson, brought in to stabilize the back end, landed at -19.
Tom Willander, the 21-year-old rookie, posted a -23 over 70 games. The deployment data is screaming for help, and Malhotra inherits every bit of that mess.
Reid won't patch that overnight. Few 18-year-olds do. But the scouting staff has been leaning defenseman for weeks, and Thursday's sit-down pushes that whisper into the open.
There's a wrinkle. Teams host players at the combine all the time to muddy the board for rivals picking behind them. Smoke gets blown on purpose in Buffalo.
You don't burn a Thursday-night dinner on a prospect you're not seriously vetting. Not when you're picking third and the entire league is watching the chair.
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Malhotra's first public move as head coach won't be a line combo or a system tweak. It'll be the kid on stage in Los Angeles holding up a jersey with his name on the back.
The Canucks went 4-6-0 over their final 10 games and never found their footing. That's the climate the new staff walks into, with one shot at three to bend the curve.
What happens if Vancouver passes on the centers at the top of the board and grabs a defender? Every Malhotra decision after that gets framed against this dinner.
Forty-eight more hours of combine interviews will tell you which way the table is actually leaning.
![Feb 20, 2025; Boston, MA, USA; [Imagn Images direct customers only] Team Canada forward Sydney Crosby (87) lifts the trophy after defeating the United States during the 4 Nations Face-Off ice hockey championship game at TD Garden.](https://i.marqueur.com/habsetlnh/medium/669393.webp "Feb 20, 2025; Boston, MA, USA; [Imagn Images direct customers only] Team Canada forward Sydney Crosby (87) lifts the trophy after defeating the United States during the 4 Nations Face-Off ice hockey championship game at TD Garden.")
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YESTERDAY
MAY 29, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Taylor Hall | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Logan Stankoven | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Jackson Blake | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Seth Jarvis | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Cole Caufield | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Lane Hutson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Alexander Nikishin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Josh Anderson | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | - | - | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | - | - | |
| Kirby Dach | - | - | - | |
| Phillip Danault | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||