Liam Ruck and Markus Ruck, two top WHL scorers who expect to go in the first two rounds of the upcoming NHL draft, will return to the WHL for the 2026-27 season. (Via NHL.com’s Mike Morreale) In doing so, they will bypass opportunities to spend the season playing college hockey. Many of the Ruck twins’ peers among the elite draft prospects in the CHL have elected to make college commitments over the past week. The Rucks have decided that remaining with the Medicine Hat Tigers for an additional campaign is the best path for their development en route to the NHL.
The Ruck twins enjoyed a rapid rise up draft boards over the course of the 2025-26 season as they tore up the WHL as leading scorers for the Medicine Hat Tigers. Both Rucks stand 6’0″, while Liam is a winger and Markus a center. Liam scored 45 goals and 104 points in 68 games last season, while Markus scored 21 goals and 108 points. Neither brother came close to the point-per-game mark the previous year, making 2025-26 quite the breakout season for each player. Of the two, Liam is considered by most public-facing scouts to be the superior prospect. In the poll of 10 NHL scouts conducted by Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects, Liam slotted in as the No. 24-ranked prospect, while Markus ranked No. 33.
Other notes from the NHL Draft Combine in Buffalo, NY:
- Ethan Belchetz, one of the draft’s top prospects from the OHL, appears to have recovered well from his season-ending injury, per Scott Wheeler of The Athletic. Belchetz’s season ended in March after he suffered a broken clavicle. Belchetz told Wheeler that he could play and feel “close to 100 percent” if there was a game tomorrow, and is participating in all of the fitness testing at the combine outside of the pullups and bench press. A Michigan State commit, Belchetz has a chance to be a top-10 pick. The 6’5″, 228-pound winger scored 34 goals and 59 points in 57 games for the Windsor Spitfires last season, and was ranked as the No. 9 prospect in the class by Elite Prospects.
- OHL prospect center Ryder Cali has generated some buzz recently, and Morreale reported from the combine that he is set to interview with 29 of the league’s 32 clubs. The 6’2″, 219-pound center is one of the draft’s youngest players (born September 6, 2008) and scored 16 goals and 36 points in 47 games for the North Bay Battalion as an OHL rookie. Cali recently committed to play NCAA hockey at Providence College and has a somewhat wide range of rankings by public-facing scouts. He generally sits somewhere on the bubble of the first-round, such as No. 33 (McKeen’s Hockey) or No. 37 (Wheeler), but as low as No. 68 (The Hockey News’ Tony Ferrari).