Canucks Draft Brooks Rogowski 33rd Overall

With the 33rd pick in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft, the Vancouver Canucks have selected Brooks Rogowski from the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL).

About Brooks Rogowski

Brooks Rogowski entered the 2026 NHL Entry Draft as one of the biggest forwards in the class and one of its bigger projection bets. The 6-foot-6, 231-pound right-shot center skates well for his size, protects pucks with his frame and reach, and gets to the net front, the raw material of a modern power forward. The questions are about consistency and how hard he plays, not about the tools.

Rogowski spent 2025-26 with the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), recording 15 goals and 42 points in 46 games while taking on a larger role and nearly doubling his shot volume from the year before. His path is unusual: a Michigan high school player at Detroit Catholic Central who reached the OHL through the 2024 Priority Selection and a late convert to hockey from a baseball family. He won gold with the United States at the 2025 Hlinka Gretzky Cup and skated in the 2026 OHL Top Prospects Game.

Rogowski has committed to Michigan State for 2026-27, so whoever drafts him is buying a long development runway. Opinions on his stock vary widely, from the middle of the second round to the back of the first, and most evaluators frame him as a project whose payoff depends on adding pace and playing with more bite. NHL Central Scouting had him 14th among North American skaters at midseason. The upside is a middle-six power forward who chips in secondary scoring.

THW Prospect Profile Excerpt

Rogowski is very hard to miss when he is on the ice with his size (6-foot-6), and he has the game to keep eyes on him throughout his shift. When he is on the ice, one of the first things you notice is how well he skates for a player his size. He is a smooth skater and can maneuver well with the puck on his stick, but at his size, he will need to work on first-step quickness to help him get going a bit better at the next level.

When Rogowski is fully engaged on the ice, he has the ability to be a game changer, whether it is in the offensive or defensive end. Offensively, he uses his size and reach to shield off opponents and work himself into better positions. He does this very well in transition, which helps him get a shot off, and he has no issue firing the puck. With his size, he is unsurprisingly a strong net-front presence in the offensive zone and has no problem parking out in front of the net to be either a screen or driving for a rebound opportunity.

Rogowski’s overall offensive game is strong and simplistic, but still in the developmental stages. He shows plenty of flashes of being a player who can mix goal-scoring and playmaking ability on top of a power-forward style of play. He has plenty of upside and potential in his game for NHL organizations to like a lot.

Continue reading the full player profile here.

How This Affects the Canucks’ Plans

Vancouver is in a full rebuild, and Rogowski fits the patient, traits-first approach its new front office has laid out. After finishing last in the league, the Canucks overhauled hockey operations: Ryan Johnson took over as general manager, Henrik and Daniel Sedin came in as co-presidents, and Manny Malhotra was promoted to head coach after he and Johnson built a Calder Cup winner in the American Hockey League. Spending the first pick of the second round on a raw, 6-foot-6 center is the kind of long-view swing that fits. This is a team that traded captain Quinn Hughes in December and tore the roster down to a core of Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, and Thatcher Demko. Rogowski’s Michigan State runway lines up with a timeline that is in no hurry, and patient development is exactly what this group was hired to do.