After months of preparation, the 2025 NHL Entry Draft is finally here. However, things will look a little different than in previous years. This year, the NHL voted to host a decentralized draft, meaning that while the top NHL prospects gather in the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles, each team will remain at their home base and submit their picks remotely. The league has been hard at work to give viewers excitement for each of the first 32 selections, inviting current and former stars and celebrity guests to help announce each pick. Who will be there, though, has been kept tightly under wraps, making one of the most unpredictable days of the hockey season even harder to predict.
Matthew Schaefer is projected to be the first overall pick, but after the New York Islanders surprisingly won the draft lottery, there is now some debate over whether they will go with local product James Hagens or top-ranked center Michael Misa, as both are arguably more pressing needs. The next five selections are pretty much agreed upon, as most predict Caleb Desnoyers, Porter Martone, Anton Frondell, Victor Eklund, and Jake O’Brien will be the next off the board in some order, but then the draft really opens up. Brady Martin’s late surge at the U18 World Junior Championships drew plenty of attention from scouts, Radim Mrtka has drawn a lot of interest thanks to his 6-foot-6 frame and right-handed shot, and Roger McQueen looked like a top-10 pick until an injury took him out for most of the season. If the 2024 Draft was difficult to predict, the 2025 Draft will be nearly impossible.
As we have done in previous years, the Live Draft Tracker is back at The Hockey Writers. The tracker will be updated after each and every pick throughout the first and second days of the draft (all seven rounds!). Be sure to check back regularly to see which prospects go to your favourite NHL team.
Make sure to refresh (F5 or CMD + R) throughout the event to see the most recent updates
