Winners and Losers From 2025 NHL Draft Weekend
Another year. Another influx of young talent.
The annual NHL draft breezed into the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles over the weekend and kick-started 224 new storylines across the league's 32 cities.
Some of the choices inspired instant optimism, while some prompted instant head-scratching. And the B/R hockey team was more than happy to wade into the selection pool to apply its go-to winner and loser tags to high-profile picks and other moves made (or not) from Friday through Sunday in southern California.
Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.
Winner: New York Islanders
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The Islanders arrived in SoCal having already scored a victory by bucking the odds and moving up to snatch the first pick in the draft, which they used to choose virtuoso puck-moving defenseman Matthew Schaefer.
First-time GM Mathieu Darche made room for his 17-year-old phenom by signing defenseman Noah Dobson and then shipping him to Montreal for a player and two picks, giving the team three of the first 17 players off the 2025 board.
The uptick is tangible. And that's not all.
The bonus? Schaefer immediately endeared himself to the fanbase with a tearful tribute to his mother, Jennifer, who died from breast cancer 16 months ago.
"I just want to say to my mom and also all my family and friends and especially (the Islanders front office)," he said, "thank you."
Winner: San Jose Sharks
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One team's transactions are another team's treasure.
Though the Islanders jumping past San Jose to grab the No. 1 pick wasn't ideal for a franchise that finished last overall, the Sharks made the best of a painful situation by grabbing a player whom just as many suggest will have a significant NHL impact.
Once New York dealt Dobson and made Schaefer a no-brainer to fill a gap left on its blue line, teenage center Michael Misa fell to No. 2, where GM Mike Grier added him to a pipeline already bursting with young, skilled talent.
The 18-year-old just completed his second season in Saginaw, where he set the OHL ablaze with 62 goals and 134 points in just 65 games.
"You can see the drive and the competitiveness and the continued want to be the best. Those are all really key things," said Chris Morehouse, San Jose's director of amateur scouting. "If you want kids to hit their potential, they have to have that overachieving mentality, and I think this kid has it."
Winner: Boston Bruins
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James Hagens was as high as No. 3 on a lot of draft boards, so any team getting him in Friday's opening round was bound to be pleased. But when he fell to No. 7 and into the hands of the Boston Bruins, it seemed even a little more perfect.
The 5'10", 185-pounder has a high motor, a high hockey IQ and reaches a high top-end speed on his skates. And the fact that he built his pre-draft profile as a point-per-game player at Boston College, which played its home games just a few miles down the road from TD Garden, seems to indicate a seamless transition.
It didn't hurt either that the pick was announced by a Bruins sweater-clad Adam Sandler, who starred in Hagens' favorite movie, Happy Gilmore.
"I love Boston, I love the area, it's so special to be able to have Adam Sandler make that pick," Hagens said. "It's something I’ll remember for the rest of my life."
Winner: Montreal Canadiens
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The Canadiens didn't have a pick in Friday's first round after the aforementioned deal to acquire Dobson from the Islanders, so it's unlikely any of the nine choices they made in rounds 2-7 will be household names anytime soon.
But getting their hands on Dobson, the 12th overall pick in 2018 who's scored 10 or more goals in each of the last four seasons, provided the sort of instant jolt that only the most sure-fire of teenage prospects can match.
Still just 25 years old, the 6'4", 200-pounder agreed to an eight-year, $76 million contract to facilitate the trade with New York and brings a sturdy, two-way game that's seen him average as much as 24:31 of ice time per night.
He joins a blue-line group that already includes reigning Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson, Kaiden Guhle and Mike Matheson, alongside the soon-to-arrive David Reinbacher, selected fifth overall in the 2023 draft.
"It's the best hockey market in the world. The fans are incredible. I love playing at the Bell Centre," Dobson said, "and just also the group of players they have already and the talent they have on that team and what they've been building. I'm just super excited to join that group and add to it."
Loser: Edmonton Oilers
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It's been a bit of a rough patch for the Edmonton Oilers.
Not only did they lose in the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight year, but the subsequent media availability with the players included the "with that being said" bombshell that's put the city on Connor McDavid watch.
So, to suggest the orange-and-blue faithful were hoping for a little draft weekend distraction to take their minds off things is a bit of an understatement.
And by distraction, we mean a trade for a goalie to upgrade a crease currently occupied by the consistently underwhelming Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard.
But it didn't happen. Juuse Saros is still in Nashville. Ilya Sorokin is still in New York. And the one relatively high-profile goalie who did get dealt, Anaheim's John Gibson, wound up going to Detroit for a premium (Petr Mrazek, 2026 fourth-rounder, 2027 second-rounder) that Oilers fans might be wishing they'd paid come next spring.
"It's going to be a process that we’re going to go through and eventually we settle on the thing that makes the most sense," GM Stan Bowman said. "Part of the evaluation is does it make the most sense to keep this group? That's certainly a possibility. So, no, we're not at the point where we're definitely bringing in new goalies."
Loser: Big-Game Hunters
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It's a part of the hardcore NHL fan's DNA.
Frothing at the mouth over potential big-time player moves.
It happens during free agency. It happens at the trade deadline. And it happens during draft weekend, when teams get more eager to swap players for picks or unload restricted free agents who've not yet agreed to stay put.
The latter was a particular talking point heading into the weekend in L.A., where current or soon-to-be RFAs such as K'Andre Miller, Bowen Byram and Jason Robertson were the subject of varyingly intense trade rumors. But then...pfft.
Neither Miller, nor Byram nor Robertson departed from existing addresses in New York (Rangers), Buffalo or Dallas, leaving the aforementioned Dobson and Gibson to stand alone as highlights amid a field otherwise crowded by exchanges of picks.
Oh well, there's always next week.
Loser: Decentralized Drafting
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It wasn't without its memorable moments—particularly Schaefer's tears and Anaheim's No. 10 pick Roger McQueen helicoptering to Disneyland—but the overall vibe of the league's try at a decentralized draft was far easier to forget.
All but six of the league's 32 GMs had voted in favor of pulling the plug on the old format, in which each team had a place at the host site complete with a placard, a phone and a table full of three-piece suits available for last-minute networking.
It was replaced by an awards-show ambiance where players were pulled on stage to pose with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, then spun toward a video board for glitzed-up Zoom calls with GMs and scouts from their drafting teams in which everyone thanked everyone and expressed made-for-TV excitement for their impending union.
One four-plus-hour first round later and the hope is they'll revert to status quo.
"This is what the clubs said they wanted," Bettman said in March. "A number of them also said maybe we should change back. I told them, 'We'll go through this experience, and if there's a surge of interest to return to the old format, we'll put it back to the clubs again.' We ended the old framework with a bang in the Sphere in Las Vegas, and if the consensus is that we'd rather be together…We let the clubs decide, and we'll act accordingly. We can be flexible."
