2025 NHL Draft Questions: What will surprise us this year?

The 2025 NHL Draft is almost upon us, this year taking place in Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater from June 27-28. But this event won’t be quite the same as many others before it.

This year the NHL is shifting to a decentralized format, meaning the front offices will be making their picks and doing other business virtually from their local markets instead of on the draft floor. It’ll be reminiscent of the 2020 and 2021 drafts, which were also done virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2025, however, most of the first-round picks are still expected to be in attendance and will take the walk from the stands with their families, to the stage with the commissioner after being selected.

Matthew Schaefer is this year’s top prospect and all expectations are that the New York Islanders will select him with the first pick, but after that the order could break in all sorts of directions. Michael Misa is ranked No. 2 by many, but Caleb Desnoyers or Anton Frondell or Porter Martone or James Hagens have all made a case to be selected that high by the San Jose Sharks. And, of course, there exists the possibility for trades, and several teams have been linked to rumours around swapping first-round picks and roster players.

The NHL Draft is always an exciting event and though the presentation of this year’s will have a different feeling, the potential for action and surprise remains the same. So we’ve presented our prospect experts Sam Cosentino and Jason Bukala with five questions about this year’s draft and how they think things will play out.

Which player do you think could be taken surprisingly early and throw off the anticipated order of the draft?

Jason Bukala: I believe two players could disrupt the flow at the top of the draft. 

The first is Caleb Desnoyers who I actually have No. 2 on my year-end rankings list. I’ve seen projections that have Desnoyers going much later, which makes me think there could be some teams that don’t value him the same as I do. I’m on the Desnoyers train though. A prospect who’s already over 6-foot-2, will eventually weigh north of 200 pounds, and provides high-end offence without sacrificing defence would look great in a San Jose Sharks uniform. He’s nearly a complete player in my books and the kind of young prospect a coach can trust to deploy in all game situations. 

The second player who could sneak into the top five is Brady Martin from the Soo Greyhounds. Teams are all too familiar with how the Florida Panthers approach the game and could value Martin, who is geared to have the mix of grit and skill that wins in the playoffs. Despite only measuring 6-feet, 186 pounds Martin is the hardest hitting forward in the draft class. He’s a relentless competitor who can also be used in all situations. I project Martin as a top-six centre in the NHL. He’s fun to watch and produced 33G-39A in the Soo this season. 

Sam Cosentino: To me, there are three players who will shake-up the top 10 in this draft class.  

It starts with Desnoyers, who enters the picture as early as No. 2 to San Jose. Desnoyers can play the game any way you want and he’s already got decent size, with plenty of room for growth. He’s the ultimate competitor and a future letter wearer.  

WHL Brandon’s Roger McQueen is my next pick. I’ve always thought that with his back injury — and the recent history of Cayden Lindstrom struggling with one — it would have to be a team that has multiple first-round picks that takes the leap on the player. But that may not necessarily be the case. A team to watch here is Utah with the fourth overall pick. The Mammoth got a sniff of a playoff race this year, and the ownership group is excited to push this thing forward quickly. Their pick is found money with Utah moving up 10 spots by virtue of winning the second draft lottery. The Mammoth have a number of sizeable prospects in their cupboard already, so if this turned out to be an incurable medical issue, the prospect base is strong enough to handle it.  

Lastly, I’m watching OHL Sault Ste. Marie’s Brady Martin, who will enter the fray inside the top five. There isn’t a team out there that doesn’t like what he brings to the table. He is unapologetically himself and plays hard, heavy hockey with an underrated dose of skill. You win with guys like Martin. He has some Sam Bennett to his game. 

Which first-round prospect do you think has a chance to fall in the order, and why?

JB: I’m very curious about how teams will value Roger McQueen. There’s no doubt every club values his size (6-foot-5, 197 pounds) and the fact he scores goals (10G-10A in only 17 regular season games) but he’s coming off a back injury that kept him out for long stretches this season and, despite arriving at the combine healthy and going through all the tests, could offer too much risk for a team in the top 10 to absorb.

SC: James Hagens has the most potential to fall, but undeservedly so. I would love to be the team picking seventh or eighth with him still on the board. Since he went straight to college as opposed to playing junior hockey, he was compared to Macklin Celebrini, who put up almost two points per game and was the youngest Hobey Baker winner ever. Tough shoes to fill.  

Hagens has hit all the important markers, though. He owns the World U17 Challenge points record (21). He surpassed Nikita Kucherov to set the points record at the U18 worlds (22). He put up nine points in seven games at the world juniors en route to winning gold as an underaged player. He will be diminished because he’s a bit smaller than those around him in the draft class and NHL teams will have the bully hockey played by Florida to win the Stanley Cup fresh in mind, leaving some doubt as to whether or not he could prosper in that environment. But make no mistake: Hagens is the real deal.

Who is the wild-card player no one is talking about?

JB: Owen Griffin is a forward from the Oshawa Generals who had a very productive second half of the season and followed it up with an outstanding playoffs. Griffin is only 5-foot-10 and 160 pounds, but he isn’t an easy out in traffic. He battles to extend plays in the middle of the ice around the opponent’s net and cycles off the half-wall making plays. He’s a former first-round OHL pick by the Generals who has significant offensive upside that he is just starting to tap into. Griffin produced 16G-13A in 21 playoff games for Oshawa this spring and was a plus-7. I see him landing somewhere in the second-round. 

SC: Will Horcoff of NCAA Michigan is the wildcard prospect no one is talking about.  He’s 6-foot-4, 200 pounds and enters the conversation as early as the middle of Round 1. He went from being a ‘B’ rated prospect in NHL Central Scouting’s preliminary rankings to the 28th-ranked North American skater in the midterms, to the 24th-ranked player in the final rankings. He could be picked at a wide-open point of the draft and his NHL bloodline (father is Shawn) will definitely play a part. Will deserves this on his own accord, but it’s sure nice to have a dad who was the consummate pro.  

How would you compare this year’s draft class to the past three by top-end talent and overall depth?

JB: The top of this draft class offers teams a mixed bag of potential. 

I view Matthew Schaefer as a top pairing defenceman who will log 25 minutes of ice time every night, produce better than secondary scoring, and be deployed in all situations.

Porter Martone could end up being a top-line winger in time. His combination of size (6-foot-3, 208 pounds) and offensive ability (37G-61A in only 57GP) projects him as a potential power scorer. These types of players are very hard to find in trades when they mature into NHL players.

As the top of the draft starts to slide a bit I run into James Hagens as a prospect who started the year as the top rated player in the draft class. He’s dynamic offensively but doesn’t kill penalties. The forwards ahead of him on my personal list, Michael Misa and Caleb Desnoyers, have proven they can be used in all situations. 

At the end of the day the top of this draft class isn’t going to be as dynamic as the previous few drafts. Schaefer is an outstanding player who has potential to start right away, but he isn’t at the same level as Connor Bedard or Macklin Celebrini were at the top of their drafts. I also don’t see a Leo Carlsson, Logan Cooley, Matvei Michkov or Ivan Demidov at the top of this class. 

SC: This draft class doesn’t compare as much to the last three draft classes as it does to 2020. That year, we were highly confident that Alexis Lafreniere was the first overall pick, but he wasn’t a Connor McDavid, an Auston Matthews or a Nathan MacKinnon. After him, a number of players who play key roles in the NHL today, but aren’t necessarily stars, were selected. To this point, the one exception is Tim Stutzle, who is bordering on stardom.  

When I look at players like Cole Pefetti, Jake Neighbours, and Kaiden Guhle — all picked in 2020 — I don’t necessarily see them as top line players, but hugely important pieces to their team’s success currently and into the future. I think we will see a number of really good players from the 2025 draft class play big roles for successful teams in the future.

This class will be defined as the Matthew Schaefer Draft, but we may remember it for its depth of players, not for its superstar players. That’s the difference in 2025. Schaefer has franchise-changing potential, but because he’s played fewer than 100 games over the past two seasons, there is still some doubt.  

Lots of chatter about potential trades this year, including Boston, Utah, Chicago, and Vancouver among a large group of teams rumoured to be exploring moving their first-round pick. Will the trade dynamic change in a decentralized draft, and how many first-rounders would you boldly predict will be moved?

JB: I’m sure our NHL draft producer, Scott Lennox, would agree that not having the traditional draft setting will limit the live “good TV” moments for our viewers when it comes to trades, but it won’t have an affect on the process for the teams. Clubs will still be interacting over the phone and lining up in the NHL registry queue to have trades approved. 

It’s hard to guess the number of first-round picks that will be dealt, but I do believe the top of the class could go off the rails for several teams and their lists. 

There might be a team or two that values a forward over Matthew Schaefer. Assuming Schaefer goes first overall to the Islanders, I believe San Jose’s phone will ring immediately and the Sharks will be offered an opportunity to add an NHL player to their roster as well as switch spots inside the top six of the draft. The same scenario could play out with the Blackhawks at pick three, but I’m really interested in what Utah does with the fourth pick. The Mammoth feel they are close to playoff ready and are loaded with prospect depth. I wouldn’t be surprised to see two trades in the top six slots, followed by two more in the middle of the round, for a total of four first-round draft pick trades this season. 

SC: The trade dynamic is definitely hurt by not being in-person. The days leading up to the draft, when everyone is in the same town, often creates the type of buzz that lead to trades. When a lot of people are in the same place at the same time, conversations are usually sparked organically. There will be no instances of teams seeing each other in a bar setting, a hotel lobby, or at a restaurant, and I think that kills the kind of scuttlebutt we’ve become used to at the draft.  

While many GMs prefer to be more discreet, I do believe a lot of what comes to fruition starts with people working under the GM operating in the above settings. This time around, I think things will have to be more preconceived than usual. It doesn’t mean those teams won’t be on everyone’s radar, but the logistics of getting a deal done will be done through digital means and not face-to-face.  

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