Malhotra at a crossroads as he chases NHL dream
OHL CUP
One of the things Caleb Malhotra likes most about math and science, subjects in which he carries about a 90 per cent average in Grade 10, is that there is no ambiguity. The answer is either right or wrong. Not surprisingly, the 15-year-old centre for the Vaughan Kings under-16 team looks at his hockey career with the same definitive attitude.
“I’m going to play in the NHL one day,” he says, “and I’m going to make sure that happens.”
Malhotra need not look far for a template if he wants to achieve his dreams. A glance across the dinner table will do the trick. The son of former NHLer and current Maple Leafs assistant coach Manny Malhotra has been around high-level hockey all his life. And his athletic bloodlines run very deep.
His mother, Joann, was a star soccer player at the University of Victoria and is the younger sister of NBA Hall of Famer Steve Nash, the greatest basketball player Canada has produced. The younger Malhotra will undoubtedly go higher in the Ontario Hockey League draft than his father — Manny Malhotra was chosen 17th by the Guelph Storm in 1996 — if he decides to play in the league.
It’s a vexing decision for the young man, one he and a remarkable number of teammates on the Kings, the No. 1-ranked under-16 team in Ontario, will have to make leading up to the OHL draft April12.
The Kings enter this week’s OHL Cup as one of the favourites after winning the Greater Toronto Hockey League’s under-16 playoff title Wednesday night, and they boast six players who would be surefire first-round picks if they decided to go the major junior route. But that’s very much undecided at the moment, as Malhotra and several of his teammates are mulling other options, which include playing in the British Columbia Junior Hockey League or the United States Hockey League, which would allow them to develop and leave the option of pursuing a scholarship at a U.S. university.
The days of the OHL automatically getting the best young players in Ontario are no more. The top four defencemen for this year’s OHL draft have already committed to other programs, and Malhotra may join them. School is important to him and the verbal offers from U.S. schools have been plentiful.
And though his father played major junior hockey before being drafted in the first round of the 1998 NHL draft, Manny Malhotra was the OHL’s scholastic player of the year in 1997-98.
“I can see the positives and negatives for both,” Caleb says. “The draft is coming up, so I have to make a decision. My father and I have been learning about it together. He’s been relearning.”
Malhotra is an intriguing and tantalizing prospect. Despite missing time due to shoulder problems and a lacerated quadriceps muscle early in the season, he has developed into a top prospect, in part because he has grown seven inches in the past year. He is now six-foot-one and looks bigger. “But that might have changed in the past week or so,” his father says. “It’s happened that fast, it seems.”
Malhotra was born in Victoria when his father was playing for the Vancouver Canucks and he played most of his minor hockey there, joining the Kings under-14 team when his father got a job as a Leafs assistant in the 2020-21 season. He has grown into his body quite well, seemingly skipping that gangly stage that many teenagers experience when their body changes so quickly.
“I don’t think he’s filled into his body yet or stopped growing,” says Daniel Sisca, Malhotra’s coach with the Kings. “He’s had some injuries this season, but now he’s starting to catch his wind and be the Caleb Malhotra we had all last year.”
Along with Malhotra, the Kings also have defencemen Zachary Nyman and Michael D’Alessio and forwards Alessandro Di Iorio, Alexander Hage and Ben Bowen who all merit first-round consideration in the OHL. Nyman has committed to the Penticton Vees of the BCHL, while Hage has been tendered and signed by the Chicago Steel of the USHL.
The Kings won the prestigious Silver Stick Tournament in November and are looking to complete their season with an OHL Cup championship, which features the top 20 under-16 teams in Ontario. They should face a stiff challenge from the Barrie Colts, who have flipflopped all season with the Kings for No. 1 in the province and won the Ontario Minor Hockey Association under-16 championship.
“When we’re on our game, I think we can dominate any team,” Malhotra said. “If we play the way we’re capable of playing, we can win the OHL Cup, for sure.”
Whether it’s eventually playing in the NHL, assessing his team’s prospects of winning the OHL Cup or solving a math problem, Caleb Malhotra is clearly never one to waffle.