Two years ago, the Calgary Flames used the ninth-overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft to add an immensely talented blue-line prospect, Zayne Parekh. Earlier this week, the club acquired one more young, talented defenceman via trade: 2022 second-overall pick Simon Nemec.
On Friday night, at the 2026 NHL Draft, Calgary added yet another blue-chip talent to their promising defence corps, using their sixth-overall pick to select Carson Carels from the WHL’s Prince George Cougars.
The Western Canada standout is coming off an exceptional season in B.C., and is headed to the University of North Dakota next season to suit up alongside fellow top prospect Keaton Verhoeff (who heard his name called three picks later, by San Jose).
Here’s everything you need to know about the Flames’ newest blue-line gem:
Sixth Overall: Carson Carels
2025-26 Team: Prince George Cougars, WHL
Stat Line: 20G-53A-73PTS in 58 games
Carels was a workhorse in Prince George. He averaged over 25 minutes per game of ice time while being used in all situations. His skating and agility stand out but he also pushes back physically and contributed 20G-53A in the regular season. Carels didn’t test at the combine in Buffalo. He’s rehabbing an upper-body injury that occurred at the end of the year in Prince George. I’m positive teams will ask for his medical information before they step up to draft Carels, but he’s a high-end prospect and potential top-pairing NHL defenceman in time. Carels is committed to North Dakota starting next fall.
NHL Projection: Top pairing defenceman
What you need to know about the player:
Growing up in Cypress River, Man., Carels first made waves at the Pilot Mound Hockey Academy, 45 minutes south of his hometown.
The smooth-skating defender made quick work of putting his talent on display and dominating all corners of the sheet in Pilot Mound. His former coach at the academy, Rick McConnell, said he and his coaching staff were in awe the first time they saw the young defenceman fly around the ice.
By the time Carels was leaving Pilot Mound to join the WHL’s Prince George Cougars, he’d collected 103 points over 75 games, and established himself as a rare talent on the sheet.
“He was exceptional,” McConnell said earlier this month. “I just remember on the power play, always telling my forwards to keep their sticks on the ice, because you never knew when Carson would find players — he would see things that nobody else did, and put that puck through seams. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it.
“He had a knack for reading plays before they happened — Gretzky-like, to be very honest.”
That elite vision led to an exceptional run through the junior hockey ranks, too. The 18-year-old enters the Flames organization fresh off a 20-goal, 73-point campaign in Prince George, and moves on from the WHL having collected 111 points through 125 games from the blue line overall.
Next up: a chance to test his skill against quicker, stronger opposition in the NCAA, alongside another sterling defensive talent.
Rather than taking the stage in Buffalo like his fellow top prospects, Carels decided to stay true to his roots and take in the Draft from his family’s farm, a few minutes outside Cypress River.
At the Scouting Combine two weeks ago, the young defender opened up about the lessons he learned from life on the farm, how it gave him not just his unceasing work ethic, but some crucial perspective, too.
“It shaped me and who I am — there’s a lot of losses in farming,” Carels said in Buffalo earlier this month. “I think, just, you do everything you can for an animal and sometimes you still end up losing it. That taught me a lot. To just forget about the bad shifts and forget about all that, because there’s bigger things in life that happen.”