2026 NHL Draft’s Keaton Verhoeff makes strong impression in World Junior debut 

World Juniors are in full swing, and this year’s tournament provides an exciting opportunity for fans to get an early look at many of the top prospects available in the 2026 NHL Draft.

That certainly includes Keaton Verhoeff, the consensus top-ranked defenseman in the class who was added to Team Canada’s roster at the World Junior Championship in time to make his tournament debut in Canada’s 9-1 win over Denmark on Monday.

The mobile blue liner picked up an assist and skated to a plus-2 rating in his 14:58 of ice time as he helped Canada remain undefeated in the group stage.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by Daily Faceoff prospect analyst Steven Ellis to discuss Verhoeff’s much-anticipated World Junior Championship debut.

Carter Hutton: Last night we got to see a little bit of Canada’s depth with Keaton Verhoeff getting in there. What did you think of his game and where he’s at?

Steven Ellis: I thought Verhoeff looked really good actually. I think with him it’s difficult to spend well over a week not playing any game action. He’s actually kind of used to that in college, where you’ll take four or five days off and then you play a couple games in the weekend and that’s it. For him, I thought he looked really good. He was a little bit more shaky at the start of that game as he was trying to find his feet, but by the middle part of that game he was arguably Canada’s best defenseman. He played a lot more than we saw out of some of their other guys that are playing more depth roles in this tournament. It’ll be interesting to see how they decide to keep him around right now.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…