VANCOUVER — Only eight times in National Hockey League history has a father coached his son, but this will not be the first time Manny Malhotra coaches his oldest boy, Caleb.

Joann Malhotra, wife and mother, remembers the first time.

“When Caleb was quite young, they’d come home nattering and they’d be mad at each other,” Joann recalled in a phone call Friday night. “Caleb must have been 10-ish. And Manny would come home and say, ‘He’s not listening.’ And Caleb would be, ‘Dad this or that.’ It was actually me that said, ‘No more of this, you’re not coaching him any more, I’m not dealing with this.’ But other parents would want Manny to coach. So we just openly talked about it. Manny had to draw the line; he’s the adult. And Caleb had to take responsibility and realize, ‘Hey, taking criticism is going to be a big part of your journey and you can do it gracefully and learn, or you can pout.’

“Once they acknowledged those two things openly, Manny would literally say: ‘Do you want dad or do you want coach?’ And Caleb would give him an answer and we’d go from there. To be honest, that worked really well.”

Apparently so because on Friday, four weeks after naming Manny Malhotra their head coach, the Vancouver Canucks selected Caleb Malhotra third in the National Hockey League draft with the team’s highest pick in 27 years.

The first of the Malhotras’ four children, Caleb was born in Vancouver and the family has plenty of B.C. roots. Joann is from Victoria, the younger sister of basketball Hall-of-Famer Steve Nash. Another brother, Martin, played soccer professionally in Vancouver and still coaches here.

Caleb hugged his family members, including famous Uncle Steve, at the draft in Buffalo when the Canucks, under new general manager Ryan Johnson, ignored convention by selecting their coach’s son to be a foundational piece of the rebuilding team.

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