The conclusion of U18 worlds and the drawing of the NHL Draft Lottery means that draft season is officially upon us.
The first-round order is taking shape, the playoff field is shrinking, league finals are underway or around the corner across the CHL and USHL, the men’s world championships are starting, the Memorial Cup will follow suit in Rimouski, Quebec, and before we know it we’ll be in Buffalo for the NHL Scouting Combine and Los Angeles for a new-look decentralized 2025 NHL Draft.
After another lottery night, here’s everything I’m thinking about and hearing.
A draft lottery broadcast experiment
I worried that the NHL’s live, four-ball drawing of the 14 numbered balls, with their 1,001 possible combinations, all assigned to the teams according to their percentages, would create for a convoluted, messy broadcast if not done well. And while I don’t think they did a great job setting it up and laying it out for viewers off the top of the show, the updating odds, displayed on screens behind Gary Bettman and company, was well executed. Watching teams get eliminated — by being scratched off the graphic — as they ran out of potential winning number combinations, and seeing the odds of long shots like the Islanders (the eventual winner, moving up from No. 10 to No. 1), Flyers and Penguins grow, made for good suspense. Once they added the winning possible numbers before the final draw to the graphic, that last pull made for a really tense moment of live television. I thought they pulled it off for a first try, and it’s nice to see the NHL trying new things.
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And how about both draws being won by teams with among the lowest odds, with Utah moving up to No. 4 in the second lottery?
Who goes No. 1 and No. 2 now?
Matthew Schaefer feels like a no-brainer for the GM-less Islanders to me. They took scoring winger Cole Eiserman with their first-rounder last year, traded for a 2023 first-round center in Calum Ritchie at the deadline and have arguably the thinnest prospect pool in the league on defense. Schaefer would be a huge boon for them.
He would have also been a huge boon for the team that’s now set to pick second. The Sharks drafted defenseman Sam Dickinson with the 11th pick in last year’s draft, but their pool is stronger up front than on the blue line. If Schaefer goes first, that next group includes a quartet of centers (Michael Misa, James Hagens, Anton Frondell and Caleb Desnoyers) and winger Porter Martone. They’ve obviously also got natural centers Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith. There are camps that believe all of Smith, Misa, Hagens and Frondell may be better suited as wingers than centers (I think everyone expects Desnoyers to stick at center), though, so you can move Smith to the wing with Celebrini (where he already has chemistry) and slot this year’s pick in as the team’s 2C of the future, or do the reverse. That’s a good problem to have with three high-end forwards to build around. Misa’s probably still the front-runner to go No. 2 but I wonder about Desnoyers, who feels like a perfect 2C prototype behind Celebrini.
Watch out for trades … for a change
Every year, when I do Q&As and mailbags around this time, I get asked just as much about potential trades as I do the actual players. If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know that almost always, my answers are a letdown. It’s hard to make trades on draft day, especially in the first round. Top picks almost never get moved. Trade-ups and trade-downs are almost always in small increments.
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But this year does feel like it’s more ripe for action for a couple of reasons. For starters, the belief among teams I’ve talked to is that it’s going to be easier to make trades happen in a decentralized format where there aren’t prying eyes and listening ears. The guys like doing their business over the phone.
But there’s also a higher concentration of picks among a group of teams, which always makes managers more inclined to take risks, be spicy with their picks and, yes, package them.
Seven teams have multiple first-round picks this year: San Jose (2), Chicago (2), Nashville (3), Philadelphia (3), Columbus (2), Montreal (2) and Calgary (2). The Sharks, Blackhawks, Predators and Flyers also have the first four picks of the second round on top of that. The Flyers have seven picks in the first three rounds. The Blackhawks, Preds, Sharks and Canadiens have two second-rounders as well.
Watch out for the Blackhawks, Flyers and Habs in particular. Kyle Davidson has too much quantity in his pool and has already shown a willingness to package picks to move up. The Flyers have the most to play with if they want to move up and will be every team that’s open to moving back’s first call. And the Habs have taken a step out of full-on rebuild and could put their picks in play to try to get better.
What should the Rangers do with their pick?
The Rangers have a decision to make. The quick refresher is that they traded a protected top-13 2025 first-rounder to the Canucks in the J.T. Miller trade, and as part of the protections of that pick (which now belongs to the Penguins after the Canucks flipped it) the Rangers retained the right to hold onto it and send an unprotected 2026 first-rounder instead.
Now that the Rangers know they’ll be picking 12th in this year’s draft, they have to decide whether they’re going to hold onto it or take the risk that comes with giving up an unprotected pick next year. Anecdotally, the consensus online seems to be that they should give up this year’s selection, that next year’s draft is much stronger, and that it’s not worth the risk of giving up a pick that could become Gavin McKenna.
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I’m not sure I agree on multiple fronts.
First, I’m not convinced, outside of what McKenna represents at the top of next year’s draft, that it’s actually much stronger, and I’d caution you against trusting anyone who is declaring definitively that it is more than a year out. Keaton Verhoeff and Ivar Stenberg look like star prospects behind McKenna, there’s an impressive group of WHL D and Swedish forwards, there’s belief that guys like Czech forward Adam Novotny and Canadian forward Tynan Lawrence could be the real deal as well, but it’s also another weaker class for USA Hockey and Finland, and it’s a long, long way away.
Second, I’m not convinced that the Rangers can’t make the playoffs next year and turn that puck into a late teens pick. And I’d sooner bet on them finishing where they did (just outside the playoffs with lottery odds in the single digits) or making the playoffs as a wild-card team that lowers the pick into the late teens than I would on them completely bottoming out and finishing low enough in the league standings to have double digit odds at winning the lottery.
Third, there’s value in a prospect who is a year closer to you when you’ve got a veteran roster built around 30-somethings like Miller, Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and two late-20s superstars in Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin.
If you made the move for Miller, you made it because you want to continue to make the playoffs and push. If you’re Chris Drury, I think you have to believe that your guys, under a new coach, are more likely to take a playoff spot away from, say, the Montreal Canadiens or Ottawa Senators than they are to finish last or second-last in the Eastern Conference next year. I’d make the pick, even if it feels a little bold and risky, and trust that I’ll be picking later than 12th in 2026.
Brady Martin’s stock
Nobody’s stock is hotter coming out of U18 worlds than the hard-hitting, ultra-intense center.
“I think he has a chance of sneaking inside the top five,” texted one OHL coach after the tournament. “I think (the top 10) was happening prior to this but this definitely locks it in,” texted an OHL general manager.
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I think he’s in play starting as early as Utah at No. 4 (he’s their type), and certainly the Flyers at No. 6 and the Bruins at No. 7. There’s nobody like Martin in this draft class and he’s not going to last long on draft night.
Is this the year the Kraken finally take a D?
The Kraken have made four first-round picks in their franchise’s history. They’ve taken a forward — Matty Beniers (No. 2, 2021), Shane Wright (No. 4, 2022), Eduard Sale (No. 20, 2023) and Berkly Catton (No. 8, 2024) — with each of them. They’ve made 14 picks in the first two rounds of the draft. They’ve taken a defenseman — Ryker Evans (No. 35, 2021) and Lukas Dragicevic (No. 57, 2022) — with just two of them.
They now hold the eighth pick in this year’s draft and I’m not sure the best player available won’t be another forward, too. There has been a lot of talk about who the second- and third-best D in this class are, but I think Radim Mrtka and Kashawn Aitcheson have separated themselves from Jackson Smith. Mrtka and Aitcheson aren’t for everyone, though, and taking them at No. 8 would still be considered a little early relative to some of the players who are likely to be available. The Kraken have backed themselves into a bit of a corner, with a deep pool up front and a clear hole to fill in their pool on the back end. Last year would have been the year to take a D. One went with each of the next four selections after they took Catton (Zayne Parekh ninth, Anton Silayev 10th, Sam Dickinson 11th, Zeev Buium 12th). I love Catton as a player and prospect and had him ranked ahead of two of those four D on my list at the time, but they’re in a challenging spot now. I’d be interested in being a fly on the wall during their final scouting meetings, because you can make a convincing case for a forward like Jake O’Brien over Mrtka (who played in their backyard with the Thunderbirds this year and I actually think would be a great fit for them) or Aitcheson.
(Photo: Jared Silber / NHLI via Getty Images)
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