Hlinka Gretzky Cup 2026: Canada Is 2-0 and Landon DuPont Is Everything

Two games, two routs, one obvious best player

The 2026 Hlinka Gretzky Cup is halfway through its preliminary round in Edmonton and Canada has not been tested. The hosts opened with a 7-3 win over Switzerland on August 3, then handled Slovakia 6-1 on August 4, with captain Landon DuPont opening the scoring and Kayden Stroeder adding a pair. Canada closes the round robin against Sweden on August 5, with medal games on August 8 at Rogers Place.

For Maple Leafs fans, the 2026 Hlinka Gretzky Cup is the first serious look at the 2027 draft class — the group Toronto will be scouting all season and, on current form, will very likely be watching another team select from near the top. That is the awkward subtext of this tournament from a Toronto perspective, and it is worth sitting with rather than skipping past.

Landon DuPont is the reason to watch

DuPont is the projected first-overall pick for 2027 and he is captaining Canada as a returning player, which tells you how far ahead of his age group he has been. He spent last season with the Everett Silvertips in the WHL and is headed to the University of Michigan for 2026-27, a route that is quickly becoming the default for elite defencemen now that NCAA eligibility rules have opened up for CHL players.

What stands out on tape is not the point production — it is how early he makes decisions. DuPont retrieves pucks with his head already up, and the first pass is out of the zone before the forecheck arrives. Defencemen who project as No. 1 picks usually do so on skating and offence. DuPont's separator is processing speed, which is the attribute that translates most reliably to the NHL and the hardest one to teach.

Opening the scoring against Slovakia is a box score line. The more useful detail is that Canada's staff has him on the ice in every situation two games into a tournament where the coaching staff has 22 players to distribute minutes among.

How Canada is built this year

Hockey Canada named 22 players for the tournament: two goaltenders, seven defencemen and 13 forwards, with the CHL supplying the overwhelming majority of the group, including eight players from the OHL. That distribution matters for Leafs watchers because OHL players are the ones Toronto's amateur staff sees most often and most cheaply, and because the club's recent drafting has leaned hard on the Ontario league.

Stroeder's two-goal game against Slovakia is the sort of performance that moves a player up a preliminary ranking board in August and gets forgotten by December. Treat it accordingly. The Hlinka is a five-day summer tournament played before most of these players have had a full training camp, and its predictive value has always been better for identifying the top handful than for sorting picks 15 through 40.

The Toronto problem: this is not their draft

Here is the part nobody enjoys. Toronto does not control its own 2027 first-round pick. It went to Philadelphia in March 2025 alongside Nikita Grebenkin in the Scott Laughton trade, with top-10 protection attached. After Toronto won the 2026 lottery and used the No. 1 selection on Gavin McKenna, the conditions were restructured.

The current shape, as we laid out when the league clarified the terms: if Toronto's 2027 first falls outside the top 10, Philadelphia gets it and Boston receives Toronto's unprotected 2028 first. If it lands inside the top 10, Toronto chooses which of the two clubs receives it, and the other takes the unprotected 2028 pick.

Put plainly: for the Maple Leafs to be picking anywhere near Landon DuPont in June 2027, they would have to be one of the ten worst teams in the league this season — and even then they would only be choosing which rival gets a premium asset. There is no scenario in which watching DuPont this week is scouting for Toronto's own benefit at the top of the first round.

So why should a Leafs fan care at all?

Three reasons, and none of them are consolation prizes.

First, Toronto still drafts. The club held 10 selections in 2026 and has been rebuilding its pipeline through volume in the middle rounds. The Hlinka is where scouts start separating the second and third tiers of a class, and that is exactly the range where Toronto will be operating in 2027.

Second, this tournament is a trade-value calendar. If DuPont holds his position as the consensus 2027 first-overall pick and the class is regarded as strong, the 2027 first Toronto owes Philadelphia becomes a more expensive obligation — which raises the price of every deadline deal where Toronto might otherwise attach a future pick.

Third, the Hlinka is a genuinely good watch. Canada's under-18 summer team plays a fast, loose, high-event game because nobody has installed a defensive system yet. Six goals against Slovakia is not an accident of talent alone.

The 2027 class already looks different from 2026

Every draft year gets typed early, and our read on 2027 is that it will be typed as a defence year. A blueliner sitting alone atop a class is rare enough on its own, and it matters to a Toronto club whose organizational weakness on the back end has been the defining structural problem of the last three seasons. Nothing about that early framing is settled in August, but it is the shape the class currently has.

It also reshapes the value of the obligation. Draft picks are priced by expected class strength as much as by projected slot, and a 2027 first in a year regarded as deep is a more painful thing to owe than a 2027 first in a year scouts shrug at. Toronto's front office cannot change that now. It can only make sure the pick lands as late as possible, which is another way of saying the incentive to win in 2026-27 is even sharper than the standings suggest.

For the Leafs' amateur staff, the practical work this week is at the back of the roster, not the front. Everyone in the building already knows who DuPont is. The value in Edmonton is in the fourth-line forwards and third-pair defencemen who look a level quicker than their listed ranking — the players who end up available in the second and third rounds where Toronto will actually be picking.

What we are actually tracking

Beyond DuPont, the useful exercise is watching how Canada's staff distributes special-teams minutes over the final round-robin game. Power-play quarterback assignments in a tournament this short are the closest thing available to a public ranking of who the coaches trust. The same goes for whichever goaltender gets the medal-round start on August 8 — that decision has historically been a decent tell for how the goaltending tier in a draft class is regarded.

We will also be watching Sweden. The August 5 game is the only one on Canada's schedule against an opponent with comparable high-end talent, and it is the first evidence of the tournament that is worth anything predictively.

What's next

Canada plays Sweden on August 5 to close the preliminary round, with the medal games at Rogers Place on August 8. A full 2027 board will not be worth publishing until the CHL and NCAA seasons are a month old, but the top of it is already taking shape, and DuPont sits at the head of it.

Our running coverage of Toronto's draft position and pick obligations is on the draft page, the prospect depth chart is on the players page, and the pick-swap conditions tie back to our tournament preview from earlier this week. Tournament results and rosters are published by Hockey Canada.