NHL
The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 NHL Draft.
OTTAWA — It’s late Thursday morning, with approximately six hours to go until the Ottawa Senators’ dress rehearsal for the 2025 NHL Draft. A few players are at the Canadian Tire Centre, running up and down the stairs of the lower bowl to get in shape. They’re sort of in the way.
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Not having access to their ice surface is one thing — it’s been uninstalled for weeks since the season ended, leaving a concrete floor and pickleball nets. But the players can’t even change in their dressing room, which has been converted into the war room of the Senators’ front office for the draft. Usually, sticks and skates are the biggest tripping hazards to be avoided there. Now the floor is littered with internet and television cables and camera tripods.
Along with league commissioner Gary Bettman, this year’s top prospects will be at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles when the first round kicks off Friday, nearly a week after the league says rehearsals for its draft show first started. But unlike in past years — and even unlike in 2020 and 2021, when COVID-19 regulations resulted in remote drafts — clubs pushed for a decentralized format in 2025 to save on travel and hotel costs. Aside from a handful of representatives who will meet their newly drafted prospects on-site, everyone will be picking from home.
“When you’re used to going to the draft for a long time, I’m kind of anxious, looking forward to seeing how it goes,” Senators head coach Travis Green said.
The Senators won’t be the only team turning a dressing room into a war room: The Montreal Canadiens and New Jersey Devils will, too. The Calgary Flames will use a boardroom at the Scotiabank Saddledome; the New York Islanders, who hold the No. 1 overall choice, and the Carolina Hurricanes will also work out of their home arenas. Teams such as the Seattle Kraken, San Jose Sharks, Minnesota Wild, Washington Capitals and Toronto Maple Leafs will hunker down at their respective practice facilities. Most teams will also have an accompanying draft party for season-ticket holders.
Other teams have needed to get creative with their draft setups. The Pittsburgh Penguins rented office space at downtown Market Square because they didn’t have enough room for their staff at their arena or practice facility. The Winnipeg Jets wanted to use their rink, but a minor-league basketball game forced them into the corporate offices of their ownership group, True North. The Philadelphia Flyers will be at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, while the Anaheim Ducks will run their operation from a community center in scenic Newport Beach.
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“We’re going to show off our market,” a Ducks spokesperson said. “Palm trees, water, boats in the harbor. All that.”
Those Ducks will also channel their movie namesakes when it’s their turn to draft, with actors Joshua Jackson and Marguerite Moreau, both from the “Mighty Ducks” film series, announcing the team’s first-round pick. The Sharks will have WWE star Bayley announce their first-round selection. The Senators have teased a special guest but declined to reveal who it will be, in the name of preserving whatever mystery they could. There could be more celebrities to come as well.
“I think it’s a great thing that they’re able to add their creative license to it,” said Dan O’Neill, the NHL’s senior vice president of arena and event operations.
The NHL has sent each team a video flypack — an audio/visual production system commonly used for live productions, including cameras, servers and various computer equipment. The league is relying heavily on its knowledge from the 2020 and 2021 drafts, when it operated out of the NHL Network studio in Secaucus, N.J., and last year’s draft out of the Sphere in Las Vegas. NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer said the league will oversee almost 90 different feeds across North America.
“It’s a very complicated, unique production,” Mayer said.
In Ottawa, a large U-shaped table formation draped in black now sits in the center of the Senators’ dressing room. Four televisions stand in front of a whiteboard that will show feeds of the broadcast from Los Angeles and how much time the team will have on the clock to make a pick. The Senators have two landline phones in their war room, but neither will be used to make their decision when the time comes. There’s a special headset for that, allowing them to communicate with the league directly.
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For scenery, members of the Senators’ equipment staff are hanging jerseys of recent draft picks, such as Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson, in stalls behind those tables. But these are flanked by old school names, too: Martin Havlat, Chris Phillips, Mika Zibanejad and Daniel Alfredsson.
“I feel like I’m back in junior,” Ottawa GM Steve Staios said of his team working remotely. “In the Ontario Hockey League, that’s how we ran the draft.”
When the Senators make their pick, a handful of front-office members, including Staios and owner Michael Andlauer, will walk toward the Zamboni entrance in the arena. In that tunnel, four microphones are positioned several feet from a TV screen and a camera. Nearly 3,000 miles west of the Canadian Tire Centre, in Los Angeles, that prospect will step into a virtual reality room with a 360-degree camera called the “NHL Draft House”.
That’s how the Senators, like every other team, will meet their newest prospects this weekend. And everyone watching the draft at home will get to see that interaction.
“Somebody said this to me the other day: Even though they went up on stage, we never heard that interaction. We saw it, but we never heard what they were saying to each other. We sort of, you know, watched it from afar,” Mayer said.
“That’s going to be a unique piece of what we’re going to do. It’s what people will talk about the next day. It’s also a great way for our hockey fans to see all the personnel from around the league. All the GMs, the coaches, team presidents, team personnel, scouts. All the people that have put in a lot of hard work. They’ll get some TV time as well.”
But some team executives already miss the old days.
“I’ll be honest. I do a little bit. I do.” Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy said. “To go to a city and have that buzz and everything. I think this is all the GMs decided we wanted to see how it works. I don’t think it’s set in stone. I know Gary always liked the draft the other way. But he’s open to doing what the GMs wanted, and this is what the GMs wanted.”
“I’m old and I’m old-fashioned,” Los Angeles Kings GM Ken Holland added. “I like the old way. But I’ve never done it the new way. So I’m kind of interested to see how it goes.”
Last year, when the draft was still in-person, a longer-than-usual season made for a quick turnaround for many teams to Las Vegas after the Stanley Cup was lifted. To make matters worse, a record-breaking heatwave swept through the desert city, with average high temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and a mechanics strike from WestJet Airlines led to numerous cancelled flights, stranding team personnel after the draft.
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It’s just one year. But those hurdles will be avoided, at least en masse, in a decentralized draft. Even Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, who voted in favor of retaining the old central format, understands why this new format is being given a chance.
“We’d probably squarely vote that again,” Cheveldayoff said of an in-person draft. “That being said, getting on a plane and racing back home for free agency, that will be a benefit come Saturday night and not having to do that.”
But in-person encounters will also be lost in this format. Who can forget then-Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke telling then-Sens GM Bryan Murray that he’d beat him to the punch in drafting Nazem Kadri in 2009 in Montreal? Any harmless interaction on the draft floor between two executives could drive fan bases up the wall, imagining trade scenarios. GMs take advantage of those chance meetings, whether to set up actual deals or create smokescreens for other teams. But not this year.
“There’s no running into guys at the hotel, at the venue, on a shuttle bus. So, no small talks (that) can lead to larger discussions,” Columbus Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell said. “There’s also no way to make other teams think you’re working on a trade that might conflict with a player they’re trying to get from you. It’ll be harder to play the draft-floor shenanigans that veteran GMs know how to play.
“There’s some strategy behind how you work the floor, too. When we’re on the phone with another GM (in this year’s set-up), the other GMs don’t see that.”
If GMs want the old way back, they’ll have to make their voices heard. How fans feel about the broadcast might also play a role in the future of the draft’s setup, too. In the meantime, all the NHL can do is put on a good show with as few hiccups as possible.
“Whether it’s centralized, decentralized, whether it’s on the moon, it doesn’t matter,” Mayer said. “We’ll work on it and make it great, and we’ll see what happens with time.”
— Murat Ates, Aaron Portzline, Robert Rossi and Eric Stephens contributed reporting.
(Top photo: Jared Silber / NHLI via Getty Images)
Julian McKenzie is a staff writer for The Athletic’s NHL vertical and is based in Ottawa. He also hosts The Chris Johnston Show with The Athletic’s Chris Johnston. Julian’s work can also be found in the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, CTV Montreal, The Canadian Press, TSN 690, the Montreal Gazette, The Sporting News and in other publications. Follow Julian on Twitter @jkamckenzie
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