Canucks select RoughRiders forward Connor Davis with 129th pick

Connor Davis gave Cedar Rapids another NHL draft marker Saturday when the Vancouver Canucks took the RoughRiders forward 129th overall, the first pick of the fifth round, in Buffalo, New York. The selection made Davis the second RoughRider chosen in the 2026 NHL Draft and gave Vancouver a prospect whose value rested on more than the scoreboard.

Davis finished the 2025-26 USHL regular season with 26 goals, 29 assists and 55 points in 59 games, along with a plus-20 rating. That combination told the story of a junior forward who produced at a steady clip and stayed useful away from the puck, the kind of profile that can push a player up a board even without top-round buzz. Vancouver used nine picks in the draft, and Davis arrived as a middle-round bet on a player whose game already translated in more ways than one.

His strongest stretch came when the games tilted into the postseason and the pressure tightened. Davis scored two goals in two Clark Cup playoff games, and the USHL later highlighted draft-eligible players who boosted their stock in the playoffs after Davis showed he could keep contributing when opponents had already had a full season to study him. Earlier in the spring, the league named him Forward of the Week on March 30, 2026, after he delivered eight points in a three-game burst. Cedar Rapids said those eight points came on four goals and four assists, all in RoughRiders wins against Des Moines and Waterloo, a run that included three consecutive multi-point games.

The next step sends Davis to the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, where he is set to continue both his academic and hockey career after verbally committing on April 22, 2026. That commitment changed course from Northeastern, adding another layer to a spring that moved quickly for one of Cedar Rapids’ most productive forwards.

For the RoughRiders, Davis is another example of the program feeding NHL interest with players who can score, handle responsibility and hold up over a long junior season. For Vancouver, he is the kind of fifth-round pick that makes a draft class look sharper a year or two later, especially when a player has already shown he can finish, defend and rise in big moments. In a draft where the Canucks kept adding to a system that runs through Abbotsford and the NHL-AHL pipeline, Davis stood out as a Cedar Rapids forward with a case built on repeated production rather than a single hot streak.