Willie Desjardins says Liam Ruck and Markus Ruck have a connection that goes beyond the usual sibling shorthand. The coach believes that if an NHL team drafts one of the identical twins, it may try to get the other too.
That idea matters now because Liam Ruck and Markus Ruck were projected to be late first-round picks on Friday, putting their futures on the clock at the same time. For a pair of 18-year-old twins from Osoyoos, B.C., the draft is no longer just about which team wants one of them. It is also about whether a club sees value in landing both.
Desjardins did not stop at theory. He pointed to one play from early in the Rucks in Medicine Hat, when the twins were still in their rookie season with the Medicine Hat Tigers. Liam was in front of the net as the right-handed shot, Markus had the puck at the wall near the blue line as a lefty, and the coach watched the move unfold from the bench. Markus sent the puck back door to Liam’s stick, a sequence Desjardins said showed how quickly they read one another.
Liam remembers that shift too. He said the play came during a home game against Regina, and he put his stick out behind his back, turned around and just missed the puck. Markus saw the signal and threw it across the crease, but it slipped by. The missed chance is almost beside the point. What Desjardins saw was a pair of players making the same read at the same moment, and Liam said that comes naturally after years of the same practices, the same games and the same habits.
Desjardins has a clean reason for comparing them to Daniel Sedin and Henrik Sedin, who fit the same mold of twin playmakers in the NHL. He coached the Rucks during three seasons near the end of the Sedins’ Hall-of-Fame careers, so the comparison is not casual. Still, he was even more direct about the draft consequences. In his view, if one team takes a twin, it may go hunting for the other somewhere down the line so it can have both.
Markus was open about the dream, but not about the odds. He said it would be very special for the family if a team could draft both brothers, then added that the chances are pretty low. That is the part that keeps the idea from becoming a neat draft story. Teams can like the chemistry, the scoring and the symmetry, but the draft still breaks up families and duos all the time.
The brothers have already shown how closely linked their paths can be. Desjardins got both Rucks in Medicine Hat by trading up in the 2023 WHL draft to take Markus 21st after choosing Liam ninth, a move that tied their careers together almost from the start. This spring, they finished atop the WHL in scoring, a result that only sharpened the questions around them. If an NHL club wants one brother, it will have to decide whether the other is part of the package. And if no team bites on that idea, the twins may be drafted into separate futures even after 18 years of doing nearly everything together.
