BUFFALO, N.Y. — One of the most common questions prospects face at the NHL Scouting Combine is: “Who do you model your game after?”
And while it’s a pretty standard ask, there’s a reason young men sometimes squirm and hesitate a little before surfacing a name: Nobody wants to sound like he’s saying, “I’m just like that guy who has established himself as a star player in the world’s best league.”
As such, you often hear prospects say they watch a handful of guys and try to take different things from their games.
Once in a while, though, somebody like Viggo Björck just comes right out with it.
“I’ve always looked up to Sidney Crosby,” Björck said after he finished the fitness testing at LECOM Harborcenter in Buffalo on Saturday. “It’s hard to [hold] anyone to his standard.”
As the second part of his answer suggests, Björck is in no way positioning himself as a No. 87 in waiting. Further, the Stockholm native laughed out loud when told by a reporter that Victor Eklund — a 2025 New York Islanders first-rounder who won world junior championship gold alongside Björck with Sweden in January — compared his good buddy to Macklin Celebrini.
“I don’t think I’m like Celebrini,” Björck said while still shaking his head. “He’s one of a kind.”
Björck would know, because he faced both Celebrini and Crosby at the 2026 World Championship in May, basically six weeks after his 18th birthday. And the way Björck showed there — to say nothing of a strong WJC as a draft-eligible player and impressive season with Djurgårdens in Sweden’s top league — has garnered the young man all kinds of attention heading into the NHL Draft. Björck was long viewed as a good prospect, but he’s pushed firmly inside the top-10 conversation, with Sportsnet’s Jason Bukala slotting the centre No. 4 in his final pre-draft ranking. If you want to know why, listen to what Björck admires about Crosby, then consider the same — relatively speaking — could be said about his own game.
“Of course, he’s super skilled, but I [like] his two-way game as well,” said Björck, who was thrilled to get a stick from the Canadian legend at the worlds. “Good on both sides of the puck.”
Even with all he can do on the ice, the fact that Björck — whose older brother, Wilson, was a fifth-round choice of the Vancouver Canucks last June — is listed at five-foot-nine and 177 pounds might give pause to some. Perhaps those people aren’t watching five-foot-eight, 173-pound Logan Stankoven — a right-shot pivot, just like Björck — thrive in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“Maybe [I’m] not the tallest guy, but I feel like I’m a compact individual,” Björck said. “I try to use my body [as an advantage with] a low centre of gravity.”
While Björck has been a riser during the second half of the year, those who’ve shared a sheet with him have known for a long time what his potential is. Adam Andersson, a big Swedish forward who has played with and against Björck since they were both about 11 years old, is one of those people.
“He’s always been very skilled, always had his hockey IQ,” said Andersson, a potential second-round pick himself. “Very humble guy. Has a good work ethic and will be a star in the NHL. Always 100 per cent work ethic on the ice.”
While Björck’s stock has been ticking up for months, Chase Reid — from a big-picture perspective — has made the most significant jump of anybody in the 2026 class. At the start of the 2024-25 season, the American defenceman was toiling in the North American Hockey League after a stinging cut from the Waterloo Warriors of the United States Hockey League. Today, it’s conceivable the 2007-born American could be selected as high as No. 2 by the San Jose Sharks after a dazzling season-and-a-half with the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds.
“It’s definitely a huge honour [to be highly rated], but I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the coaches and teammates who helped me along the way,” Reid said at the combine. “I think I’ve overcome a lot of adversity in my career. I think coaches can throw me out in any situation. I think my skating separates me in a tremendous way to be able to play big roles in big minutes.”
Like Björck citing Crosby, Reid was very direct when asked who he models his game after.
“Zach Werenski,” he said of the Columbus Blue Jackets defender and 2026 Norris Trophy recipient. “We have a lot in common, both able to run a power play, both being able to take control of a game and be go-to guys on the ice.”
Interestingly, what they don’t share is also something that works in favour of Reid. While Werenski is a lefty, Reid — who stands almost six-foot-three and weighs 195 pounds — brings the always-valued right-shot profile to the blueline. In fact, there could be a run of righty defencemen going in the top 10, with Reid, Keaton Verhoeff and Daxon Rudolph all in the mix. Two years ago, three righties went in the top 10 when Artyom Levshunov was chosen second by Chicago, Ottawa grabbed Carter Yakemchuk seventh and Calgary selected Zayne Parekh ninth. Before that, you’ve got to go back to 2008 — when Drew Doughty, Zach Bogosian, Alex Pietrangelo and Luke Schenn went 2-3-4-5 — to find three right-shot blue-liners inside the top 10 of the draft.
Rudolph — also nearly six-foot-three and a tick over 200 pounds —acknowledged his handedness was a topic of conversation in meetings with teams. “I think it’s definitely a bonus,” he said of being a righty.
Rudolph and Reid are both rearguards who push the play by nature. And while Verhoeff can certainly bring offence to the table, his focus was really on the defensive side of things in the second half of the season. Where Rudoph and Reid both played major junior last season (and are jumping the NCAA next year), Verhoeff — the biggest of the three at nearly six-foot-four and 212 pounds — already has an NCAA campaign under his belt with North Dakota.
“It’s a different game,” he said. “You expect it to be tough — like I thought it was going to be tough — [but] it takes another jump. Just the way games close up and the way guys find sticks and take passing lanes away, it’s a different style of hockey. Every single guy there is developed, can skate, can hit. Obviously details get tighter as the levels go up.
“My game developed a lot different in the second half. I became a more well-rounded, more mature defenceman who can help a team win 1-0 games; not just be a guy who is going to go put up a bunch of points, but be someone who can be relied on by his teammates and coaches to take that step and be someone out there in the important moments of games.”
Throw in that coveted right-shot handedness, and it’s easy to see why Verhoeff — along with Reid and Rudolph — won’t be on the board for long.
