2025 NHL Draft consensus big board: Schaefer, top centers headline class

New York Times

25-06-2025

No matter how much we analyze, report and project, the NHL Draft always finds ways to surprise us.
Take last year, for example. When The Athletic compiled its annual consensus big board, Zeev Buium checked in at No. 4 — the second-highest-ranked blueliner in a defense-heavy class. But when draft day came along, Buium hung around longer than expected, lasting until the Minnesota Wild finally traded up for him at No. 12.
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So, throw all the rankings out the window, right? Not so fast. While the overall consensus board did have Buium much higher than he went, the makeup of those rankings also told a story that could have much more closely predicted the outcome on draft day.
While Buium did rank fourth overall and second among the group of six D atop the class — and no lower than seventh overall on any individual list we surveyed — you could also look a little closer and see that four defensemen (Artyom Levshunov, Sam Dickinson, Anton Silayev and Carter Yakemchuk) were ranked ahead of Buium by at least one of the five rankings we compiled to create the consensus list. A fifth defender (Zayne Parekh) was back-to-back with Buium on one of the lists.
So while it was still stunning to see Buium as the sixth defenseman off the board that night at Sphere, it also wasn't totally unheard-of; it only takes one team to love a player, and it's more than possible to be ranked high by virtually everyone (including teams) but end up on the wrong side of a few close calls.
That's where the beauty lies in the draft, and it's also why, each year, The Athletic seeks to make a consensus big board like this one, which surveys five lists in search of both agreements and outliers.
The original five lists forming this consensus belong to Corey Pronman and Scott Wheeler, The Athletic's prospect experts; Flo Hockey's Chris Peters, who co-hosts The Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series podcast; former NHL general manager Craig Button, now TSN's director of scouting; and the great Bob McKenzie, also of TSN, whose list is itself a consensus ranking of 10 NHL scouts — and thus a great barometer for the league's opinion on players. We highly encourage you to read all of their individual lists as well.
But in analyzing them all together, the hope is to find those little extra details that can play such a big role in shaping how things play out on draft day.
The draft's headliner and projected first pick, Matthew Schaefer, is a defenseman, but after that, it's the centers who are expected to dominate the top 10. That starts with Michael Misa at No. 2 on all five lists, and even though winger Porter Martone checks in at third on the overall list, it's entirely possible that there could be an early run on centers right after Schaefer.
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There are all different styles of center making up that group, too. Coming in at No. 4 is Anton Frondell, a strong two-way center out of Sweden whose Allsvenskan production outpaced William Nylander's and David Pastrnak's at the same age. He also plays a responsible game that is easy to project to the NHL. Tied at fifth are Caleb Desnoyers and James Hagens, who was at one time the favorite to go first in the class. His freshman season in college hockey wasn't as loud as recent top picks Macklin Celebrini and Adam Fantilli, but he was still a point-per-game player and brings dynamic skating and skill.
At No. 7 is Jake O'Brien, whose playmaking ability is among the best in the class, and at No. 8 is the late-rising Brady Martin, who was a major standout at the U18 World Championships and plays with the kind of physicality and hard skill that tends to shine in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
And that's before getting to perhaps the most interesting prospect in the whole class. Roger McQueen is a highly skilled pivot who stands 6-foot-5 and skates well, normally the kind of profile that gets you picked closer to the top five. But McQueen missed much of the season with a back injury, and as a result there's some hesitation, particularly after Cayden Lindstrom (the No. 4 pick last season) missed nearly his entire season in 2024-25. Still, McQueen ranked as high as fifth (Button) among the five lists we tracked, though the other four had him more in the nine-to-11 range.
Even outside the top 10, there are more names to monitor, again in all kinds of varieties. Cole Reschny (No. 14 on the aggregate list) is a small, skilled and smart pivot, while Jack Nesbitt (24th) is 6-foot-4 and a big-time competitor with sneaky hands. Teams can pick their flavor.
In all, 12 of the consensus top 25 are potential centers — and while not all of them will stick down the middle in the NHL, it's still notable (and quite appealing) to have that much down-the-middle talent high in a draft.
A year ago, in last year's defense-heavy class, 10 blueliners were picked in the first round. This year, our consensus board has only 11 in the top 50.
Schaefer, a unanimous pick at No. 1 among these five lists, is the headliner, but there's a real difference in who should go next among the D. Wheeler, Button and McKenzie's lists all have rangy 6-6 defender Radim Mrtka as the next man up at the position, but Pronman and Peters both have the hard-hitting Kashawn Aitcheson. Penn State commit Jackson Smith, though, is right in that mix with them, bringing strong two-way potential, with his skating a real asset to transition play.
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There's a slight gap after that group before the next cluster on this list, which begins at No. 18 with Kitchener's Cam Reid, who's on the smaller side but plays a very smart and competitive game, which could make him a nice bet in the late teens or early 20s in spite of his stature.
It's worth noting that McKenzie's list, however, has Wisconsin righty Logan Hensler (No. 20) at 15 after his poll, closer to the first group of defenders than to this later cluster, which also includes Swedish lefty Sascha Boumedienne, who won top defense honors at the U18 World Championship, and WHL righty Blake Fiddler, who plays in the shutdown mold.
While only Reid finished top 20 on this consensus ranking, it wouldn't be a shock to see any of the four, or multiple, go in the top 20 on draft day. In fact, when you consider the scarcity of defense in this class, perhaps that should be the expectation.
This is always one of the most interesting parts of this exercise, but this year, it was notable how much agreement there was between most of the lists.
Many of these gaps, then, aren't all that massive. And to be clear, these aren't necessarily the biggest gaps on the top-50 list — the deeper you get in the rankings, the more variance there is, so we tried to look for one of two things: any differences high in the draft (where any distinctions are more notable) or a strong outlier high ranking, as in the cases of smaller forwards Cullen Potter and Cameron Schmidt, or goalies Jack Ivankovic and Joshua Ravensbergen.
Ravensbergen, out of WHL Prince George, finished as the top goalie on the consensus list, but notably only had one vote inside the top 25: Pronman, who ranked him 19th. Meanwhile, Ivankovic was outside the top 35 on every list, except for Button's, where he ranked 12.
Drafting top goalie prospects in the first round has yielded mixed results in recent years, and for that reason, it would be understandable if teams are hesitant to do so this year. But again, it only takes one team to really believe in a goalie to swoop them up and surprise the field.
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Potter is among the most dynamic skaters in the draft, and has some offensive flair as well — the question is, as a 5-foot-10 forward, will he create enough in the interior parts of the ice to really translate as a top-six player in the NHL? His 22 points in 35 games as a freshman for Arizona State were good, though they don't provide an emphatic answer to that question. And accordingly, Potter is outside the top 30 on three of the five lists. But Wheeler has him all the way up at No. 16, and he slots in at No. 21 for McKenzie.
Another interesting split is Nesbitt, who at 6-foot-4 brings toughness, good hockey sense and impressive hands, but is also a heavy-looking skater. Pronman and McKenzie's lists both have him in the top 17; the other three have him 25th or later, with Button having Nesbitt all the way down at No. 38. The bet is he will be a comfortable first-rounder on Friday night, but that range of opinions is what can make the draft so interesting.
More toward the top of the first round, where the differences are smaller, but under more of a microscope, it's notable to see a nine-spot gap between Wheeler (No. 7) and Pronman (No. 16) on Mrtka, and to see Hagens and O'Brien all the way down at No. 8 and No. 11, respectively, for Button.
Hagens in particular feels like one of the top stories in this draft. It's possible that his early-season front-runner status has put too much of a microscope on him, allowing his flaws to be nitpicked in a way more late-surging prospects were not. A point-per-game season in the NCAA is still outstanding production, and Hagens has a long track record of success.
Again, there seems to be less disagreement on these lists this year than in the past. Could that mean we're headed for more of a 'chalk' draft? Perhaps. But as last year showed, even something that feels like consensus can be shaken up by just a couple of key decisions going a different direction.
Here is the complete consensus list for 2025:
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos of Roger McQueen, Jake O'Brien and James Hagens: Minas Panagiotakis, Jonathan Kozub, Leila Devlin / Getty Images)