Winners and Losers From Day 1 of the 2025 NHL Draft

The 2025 NHL Draft kicked off with the first round on Friday night, and as expected, defenseman Matthew Shaefer went No. 1 overall to the New York Islanders.

The Islanders added two more picks in the first round thanks to a draft-day trade with the Montreal Canadiens involving defenseman Noah Dobson, kick-starting a major rest for the organization.

While it's difficult to properly address a draft pick -- or draft class -- on draft night, we can still get a sense for some winners and losers from the entire process.

Including the process itself.

So let's dig into the winners and losers from the first-round of this year's class.

Winner: Montreal Canadiens

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The Canadiens entered the 2025 draft class with a pair of first-round picks, some salary-cap flexibility and a desire to get better.

They managed to pull that off by completing the biggest trade of the day when they sent the 15th and 16th picks to the New York Islanders in exchange for defenseman Noah Dobson, and then signed him to an eight-year contract extension that will pay him $9.5 million per season.

Dobson is coming off a down year offensively, but he is still in the prime of his career and a bona fide top-pairing defenseman. Adding a player like that to a rapidly improving team that already has an outstanding young core built around Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Ivan Demidov and Lane Hutson is a huge move and should significantly raise the expectations for the franchise going into the 2025-26 season.

The Canadiens exceeded everybody's expectations in 2024-25 by simply making the playoffs, but they were not in a position to just stand pat with that and hope for it to happen again. They needed a big addition, and Dobson is a potentially significant move that makes an already improving team even better.

While trading two first-round picks might seem like a steep price, those picks are essentially coin flips at that point and there is a good chance neither one of them ever amounts to the player that Dobson currently is. Strong move for a very good price.

Winner: New York Islanders Hitting the Reset Button

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Having said all of that on Dobson and the Canadiens, Friday was still a big night for the Islanders as they ended up with three picks in the top-17 of the draft.

They turned those picks into three high-end prospects, including Shaefer, Viktor Eklund and Kashawn Aitcheson.

Not all of them will pan out.

But that's not even really the point right now.

The main point is that the Islanders are committed to a direction that has their long-term interests in mind. They have been stuck in the NHL's middle-ground and no-man's land for way too long, and their combination of draft-lottery luck, combined with adding multiple first-round picks for Dobson, at least gives what was an extremely weak farm system some serious upgrades in talent.

Whether it all work remains to be seen.

But picking a direction at least helps.

Loser: Trade Speculation

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Every year we go through this.

We get trade rumors. We get trade speculation. We get reports of trade talks so insane that we would never actually believe them.

And every year there is basically nothing on that front.

It happened again this season.

While the Dobson trade was a significant move, it was the only significant move involving an NHL player.

Erik Karlsson, Jason Robertson, K'Andre Miller and every other major player mentioned in trade speculation pretty much remained where they are, at least for the time being.

The lesson for next year should always be the same: Trust the history. Not the rumors. These days are usually underwhelming on the trade front.

Loser: The Decentralized Draft Format

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This year was the start of a new process for the NHL Draft, where all 32 teams remained in their home cities and did not travel to the draft location.

It flopped. Majorly. In a lot of different ways.

For one, that might have played a role in the lack of trades as the 32 general managers did not have an opportunity to do business with one another face-to-face. There were no casual chats on the draft floor, no opportunities to get business done quickly, and none of the in-person action that has worked so well for so many years.

Second, it created an awkward, almost cringeworthy situation where teams were welcoming their draft picks into the organization with what was essentially a public Zoom meeting over a big screen. In years past, that would be a conversation on the stage that was more private and more one-on-one for the team and players. This was just .... awkward.

Finally, it did not really do anything to speed up the process.

The first round still took over four-and-a-half hours, and we were still subjected to endless monologues by the people making the picks, where they said hello to all of the fans' supporters back at some random sports bar that nobody outside of the city has ever heard of.

Give us the old format. It was not perfect. But it was certainly better.

Winner: Roger McQueen Still Going Top 10

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Every NHL team is going to think they ended up with a steal on Friday night, but the Anaheim Ducks may have actually done so by getting center Roger McQueen with the No. 10 overall pick.

And McQueen going in the top-10 is something of a win for him, as well.

From a physical and talent perspective, McQueen has everything an NHL team should want in a prospect. He has great size at 6-5, incredible skill, an advanced defensive game and speed. The only knock on him was some health concerns going into the draft regarding a back injury that sidelined him for most of the 2024-25 season. That injury prevented him from being a potential top-five pick (or perhaps even higher) and pushed him down the draft board a little.

But his upside is as high as any player in this year's class, and the Ducks were able to get him in the No. 10 spot to add to an already strong collection of young talent.

A lot of things still have to go right for him, but if he stays healthy and puts everything together, this could be a huge score for a Ducks team that needs as much talent as it can get.

Loser: James Hagens' Slide

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This is both a win and a loss depending on how you look at it.

From a Bruins perspective, getting Hagens in the No. 7 spot without having to trade up is a massive win. They need a high-end center, they need a potential franchise player, and they got one in Hagens without really having to do anything except sit back and wait.

But for Hagens, sliding down to the No. 7 spot feels like something of a loss. At least based on the optics and his status as a prospect.

Mostly because when the 2024-25 season began, he was the early favorite to be the No. 1 overall pick in the class. In the end, he did not even go in the top five.

Maybe it will work out better for him by going to a team that has had success in recent years and has a track record for winning. But the drop from one down to seven is still surprising given the way the season began.