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The New York Islanders made the first pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, selecting 17-year-old Matthew Schaefer from Hamilton, Canada. The Islanders also drafted right-winger Victor Eklund and defenseman Kashawn Aitcheson.
While the jury remains out on the success of the NHL's decentralized draft, the first round from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles provided intriguing moments as teams selected prospects they hope can become pivotal parts of future successes for their respective organizations.
Eight teams drafted more than one player on Friday night, and four organizations, the New York Islanders, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Nashville Predators and the Chicago Blackhawks, drafted three players.
Rounds 2-7 of the 2025 NHL Draft will commence at Noon ET on Saturday. In the meantime, check out:
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Matthew Schaefer selected by New York Islanders with first pick in 2025 NHL Draft
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NHL Draft 2025 grades for every first-round pick: Islanders get high marks for Schaefer
The first round of the 2025 NHL Draft has wrapped up, but there’s still plenty of talent available entering Day 2.
Here are the scouting reports for the 20 best skaters and three best goalies still available on my draft board.
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NHL Draft 2025 best players available after Round 1 include Blake Fiddler, Malcolm Spence
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The first round of the 2025 NHL Draft is now in the books.
While the new format, celebrity pick announcers and 'The Draft House' stole the show, the bottom line is 32 prospects were drafted Friday night, fulfilling lifelong dreams and providing glimmers of hope for their new organizations. Eight teams drafted more than one player on Friday night, and four organizations, the New York Islanders, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Nashville Predators and the Chicago Blackhawks, drafted three players.
Curious how each team fared? Check out Corey Pronman's NHL Draft 2025 grades below.
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NHL Draft 2025 grades for every first-round pick: Islanders get high marks for Schaefer
It was not. But I’ll be honest: I didn’t hate it as much as some of you seemed to. Of all the things they tried, only the virtual Draft House thing was a total disaster. The other 90 percent of the show was fine. Rarely great, and consistently cringey in that NHL way we’re used to by now, but rarely terrible.
But let’s cut right to the question that a lot of fans were wondering about heading into this thing: Would this be both the first and the last of the decentralized drafts, with the concept being a one-and-done?
Well… we don’t know. And that’s good news, in a sense, because the only way we would be able to answer that question with any degree of confidence was if the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster. Seeing it work well enough, if only barely, buys the league a chance to try again next year if they choose.
Will they? I kind of doubt it. That’s based less on what we saw on Friday and more on what we’ve heard from Bettman and others in recent weeks. The commissioner has made it clear that he’s not exactly a huge fan of the decentralized approach, consistently reminding us that it wasn’t his idea, and that he was open to going back to the old way.
That sounds noncommittal, and it is. But how many times have fans complained about something like the playoff format or replay review or shootouts or whatever else, only to have Bettman proactively shoot down any hope of anything ever changing? The fact that he’s leaving the door open tells me that the writing may already be on the wall here, much like it was back in 2015 when Bettman clearly hated the new compensation rule for coaches and GMs and it was gone within a year. The vibes here felt similar going into Friday. And while we may not have seen anything that would shame the league into immediately reverting to the old way, we certainly didn’t get the sort of home run presentation that would have everyone clamoring for one more year.
Save the Big Red Button, though. We can keep that.
I don’t think we can blame the new format here, since it’s not like previous drafts exactly flew by. But Friday’s opening round was penciled into the TV schedule for a tedious four hours, and it was clear by the midway point that even that was going to be optimistic. This went on forever, even if you cut out the pause for laughter after Nikki Glaser joked about Brett Hull.
Montreal native and NBA champion Lu Dort flying all the way out to L.A. to represent the Canadiens, only to have them trade not one but both of their first-round picks. They let him come out and hit the Big Red Button, which I guess is the consolation prize.
Also, shoutout to the NHL for apparently deciding to pretend the Dobson trade hadn’t happened ten hours earlier so that Dort would have something to do. Did you see the size of that guy? If he wants to press the button, put a pin in the trade announcement and let the man press the button.
(Hey, do you think they at least toyed with the idea of treating the Big Red Button the way “America’s Got Talent” does the golden buzzer, with a big dramatic slow-motion build up? No? Yeah, I definitely didn’t think about that either, never even watched that show, let’s just move on.)
As several of you pointed out, they put all the prospects expected to go at the top of the draft near the back of the seating area, meaning they had to work their way through congratulatory hugs and high-fives from their colleagues. A lot of you didn’t like that. I didn’t mind. To settle the dispute, we’ll refer to the self-appointed expert on handshake etiquette and wait for Paul Maurice to weigh in.
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I’m not sure what ESPN viewers saw, but Sportsnet introduced its broadcast with a quick tour. It included a podium on the stage that we were told would be for announcing trades. We also got a glimpse of a large red button, which was not mentioned or explained.
As a viewer, you hoped it might be for a trap door that could swing into action if anyone tried to ramble on instead of just making a pick. But no, it turned out to be the “we have a trade to announce” button, which we finally learned when Kris Letang’s kid got to hit it roughly 90 minutes in. We got a horn noise and a quick scoreboard animation, in case you were wondering. It’s the sort of thing I usually roll my eyes at, but then my kids tell me that I hate whimsy and fun. Which I absolutely do, for the record. But let’s call the Big Red Button a winking nod toward what’s often the most exciting part of any draft. We just wish they’d used it more.
You know what, this one’s on me. Every year, there are rumors about top picks being moved, every year I get hyped about it, and every year nothing actually happens. At some point, you either figure it out or you don’t, and I’ve apparently chosen the second option.
That said… I mean, this was the year it had to happen, right? You had the Islanders holding not just the first pick, but also a pair of mid-round picks from the Dobson trade, in a draft where a local kid was projected to go early. It was probably too much to hope they might trade down out of the first spot to take James Hagens, but trading back up into the top 10 felt like a gimme. Once Hagens slipped out of the top five, everyone was thinking it. But it didn’t happen, with Hagens ultimately going seventh to the Bruins.
Did the Islanders even try? Almost certainly, but it takes two to tango, and as you may have heard, these trades are really hard. Once the picks start flying, expecting any team to embrace the risk involved in trading out of the top 10 is probably wishful thinking.
We should have seen it coming. But remember, we were told that this was part of the reason for the new format — that having some privacy to work on moves away from the prying ears of rival teams might juice the action. It decidedly did not. There were no picks involving players during the draft, and the first trade involving a pick didn’t come until the Flyers moved up to 12 in a deal with the Penguins. Which we found out about, thanks to…
The concept makes sense. We’re used to the actual pick announcements being mumbled into a microphone, so contracting out some charisma wasn’t the worst idea. Besides, it means a break from Bettman, and maybe even a reminder that there are some cool people out there who like hockey.
Did it work? Sometimes. It was an eclectic mix, let’s just say. We had a pro wrestler, a yelling golfer, Charles Barkley Zoom-ing in from the smallest room in his unfinished basement, Jerry Bruckheimer being introduced in a way that was clearly designed to trick you into thinking it might be Brad Pitt, the guys who sang that song you liked in 1998, a football player, actors from that movie you liked in 1992, the “Entourage” guy, the “cut it out” guy from that sitcom you liked in 1987, and Barry Trotz doing the first Predators picks on his own because there are no famous people in Nashville.
But we also had Meredith Gaudreau and Happy Gilmore, so… yeah, ups and downs.
Those virtual meetings between the prospects and the front offices that just drafted them, in the area dubbed “The Draft House.”
Yeah, this didn’t work. At all. Once Schaefer’s emotional moment was done, the rest of the conversations ranged from mildly awkward to borderline painful. Put it this way: Under the old system, the networks never bothered to mic everyone up for those handshake moments that used to happen on the big stage. Now we know why — they’re not very interesting. If we keep this format, we can go ahead and scrap that bit.
I don’t think anyone heard about this whole idea and thought, “That will probably be fascinating, the only people who are more charismatic than hockey players are hockey executives.” But it’s worth trying new things. Sometimes they work. Sometimes your audio is all screwed up and echoing, there are weird pauses everywhere, and nothing interesting gets said.
I realize a lot of planning goes into this sort of thing, but someone should have called an audible after James Hagens had to be told to wave at the Bruins’ front office like he was a toddler seeing the pandas at the zoo.
There wasn’t much suspense on the top pick this year, but the moment was still memorable based on Schaefer’s tears, as the top pick and his family shared the moment while honoring his mom, Jennifer, who passed away in 2024. It was a touching moment, and the broadcast handled it in a way that gave it room without feeling overboard.
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Let’s just say it – Bettman was working the room up there. They took away his podium (except for trades, which we’ll get to in a minute), meaning he had to free-roam around the stage. That’s harder than you think, and he did… OK? I think he did OK. In fact, I think the boss was kind of feeling it out there.
The old, awkward Bettman did show up occasionally, including when he had to go back to the same tired “I love the passion” routine when he got booed. But overall, he’s clearly put in some work on the whole public speaking thing. It may have taken him 30 years, and we’re basically comparing him to Roger Goodell and Adam Silver, which isn’t exactly the world’s highest bar. But sure, he cleared it. He even got a genuine chuckle from the “I’m not that short” line about the mic before one of the Blackhawks’ picks.
I’m saying nice things about Gary Bettman and I hate it, let’s move on.
The first round of the draft isn’t always the biggest story of a busy week, but you’d at least like it to be the big news of the day. But by the time things got started on Friday night, hockey fans were already chewing on five major stories that had broken in the hours before.
We had a major blockbuster involving two of Friday’s first-rounders and Noah Dobson. We had a weird salary dump. We had two of the three biggest names on the UFA board sign extensions, with Sam Bennett and John Tavares both taking discounts to stay put. Oh, and we also got word of a brand-new CBA. By the time the first boos hit Bettman’s ears, some fans were probably all hockey newsed out. That would have been bad news, since they still had roughly fourteen hours of the first round to get through.
Here are my thoughts on the good, the bad and everything in between from Friday night’s opening round of the 2025 NHL Draft.
The Good
Gary Bettman still getting booed. Look, go ahead and change the things you think you need to change, but some traditions are sacred.
It wasn’t much. Call it a smattering. But it was enough to remind you that yes, there were some real fans in attendance, not just the draft prospects themselves. (I think. Wait, did any of the prospects boo Bettman? Because if so, I’m skipping the waiting period and putting them all in the Hall of Fame.)
OK, we've reached the end of the first round. Here are all the celebrity pick-announcers, painstakingly listed for posterity:
The Calgary Flames have selected 18-year-old Arizona State C Cullen Potter with the 32nd pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.
Potter left the U.S. NTDP following his U17 season, changing his commitment from Michigan State to Arizona State and beginning his college career early. It was a risky decision, but the early dividends have been positive. He looked very good for Arizona State and helped them in a meaningful way as a 17-year-old. Potter's skating is elite. His edge work plus foot speed are both clearly NHL-level. He will be able to generate a lot of controlled entries in the NHL due to his feet and a very high skill level. Potter is more of a one-on-one and shooter type of forward than a playmaker even though he can make plays. For a smaller forward, I would like to see Potter not stay on the perimeter as much as he does, but he has enough interior offense that I think he can score in the NHL as a middle-six winger.
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Joshua Ravensbergen was selected with the No. 30 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft by the San Jose Sharks. '
Read more on the Sharks' latest draft pick below.
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How goalie Joshua Ravensbergen went from unknown to Sharks’ 2025 NHL Draft pick
The Los Angeles Kings have selected 18-year-old London D Henry Brzustewicz with the 31st pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.
Brzustewicz played a notable role on a strong London team this season, appearing at times on both special teams. He's a tall right-shot who skates well and doesn't shy from using his feet to jump up into the attack. He's a skilled and creative player with the puck. Brzustewicz can make plays through opponents, hit seams in the offensive zone and can create offense on the move. Defensively he's reliable, using his length and feet to close on pucks and getting back to retrieve efficiently while also having an edge in his game. He's been a sharp riser this season, a story we've heard often with London players developing well. I could see more offense coming from him with more opportunity.
Pick grade: B-
Thoughts on the pick: West was one of the most polarizing players in this year’s draft. He’s a first-round hockey talent, with legit size, speed and skill. He is a legit dual-sport athlete, though, who is committed to playing football in the fall of 2025 before going to the USHL. This is a massive gamble given those obvious risks. I don’t mind the pick at 29, I probably wouldn’t have traded up for him, though.
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