Jets pass on Caleb Malhotra meeting at NHL Combine, sparks questions on potential fall in draft
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Jets pass on Caleb Malhotra meeting at NHL Combine, sparks questions on potential fall in draft originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
It was a busy Saturday at the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo, with prospects wrapping up the final rounds of their fitness testing before transitioning into one of the more revealing portions of the pre-draft process with media scrums.
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As players filtered out of their workouts and became available to reporters, several intriguing storylines quickly began to take shape, ranging from the bizarre questions teams reportedly asked behind closed doors to the eyebrow-raising news of which organizations chose to meet with certain players and which did not.
Among the more noteworthy revelations of the day came courtesy of Caleb Malhotra, one of the most talked-about prospects in this year’s draft class. The 18-year-old center, speaking with The Sporting News following his workout, disclosed that he did not meet with the Winnipeg Jets during the combine’s interview phase.
It was a surprising tidbit that figures to generate significant conversation as the draft approaches. Malhotra is no ordinary prospect, as the son of former NHLer Manny Malhotra, who was recently named head coach of the Vancouver Canucks, Caleb is projected to go 11th overall in eliteprospects.com’s consolidated draft rankings.
Other scouting services have him ranked as high as the second-best player available in the entire class, which makes it all the more intriguing why Winnipeg, which is selecting at eighth overall, would choose not to speak with him.
Malhotra is coming off a dominant offensive season, posting 29 goals and 55 assists for 84 points in just 67 games, and is committed to join the Boston University Terriers in the NCAA next season. By virtually any measure, he is one of the premier offensive talents this draft has to offer.
The Jets finished the 2025-26 season with a 35-35-12 record, missing the playoffs entirely and finishing seventh in the Central Division. Offensively, they ranked 26th in the league last season. The Jets are a franchise that has historically prided itself on defensive structure, though that identity also showed cracks this past year, with the team finishing 22nd in goals allowed.
In short, Winnipeg is a team that could use precisely the kind of offensive talent Malhotra represents. With their draft position likely to fall somewhere in the range where he could realistically be available, the choice to bypass a sit-down raises real questions about how the Jets view him as a prospect.
One school of thought suggests Winnipeg simply believes Malhotra won’t make it to their pick and that he’ll be off the board well before they’re on the clock, making a formal interview a moot exercise. Another possibility is that the Jets are committed to addressing their blue line in this draft and have effectively ruled out forwards like Malhotra, regardless of value.
MORE: Maple Leafs met with Caleb Malhotra, who knows what's going to happen in the NHL Draft
A third, and perhaps the most intriguing theory, is that Winnipeg’s scouting staff has genuine reservations about Malhotra’s body of work and isn’t fully buying into the late-season surge he carried into the combine. If that skepticism exists in Winnipeg’s war room, the natural follow-up question becomes whether other front offices around the league feel the same way.
For a player some evaluators have placed as high as second overall in the class, slipping past the top ten would be a stunning turn of events and one that nobody in the draft community saw coming.
For now, the Jets quietly passing on a Malhotra meeting is little more than a small detail buried in a busy combine weekend. But these things have a way of snowballing, and as draft day closes in, what feels like a minor footnote today could very well become the story everyone is talking about when the picks start coming in on June 26.
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