2025 NHL Draft’s Kashawn Aitcheson might not be flashy, but he’s going to be a difference-maker

Tuesday night saw Game 1 of the first-ever CHL/USA Prospects Challenge take place in London, Ontario, and it was decidedly in favour of the CHL squad with a 6-1 win over the USA.

The game saw many great performances, including multi-point outputs from Lynden Lakovic, Michael Misa, Matthew Schaefer and Cameron Schmidt, but Kashawn Aitcheson also had an excellent game that may have fallen under the radar. He did score the sixth goal for the CHL, but it was his all-around game that really stood out.

Steven Ellis joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about Aitcheson’s performance in the game during The Next Wave segment.

Steven Ellis: I am a Kashawn Aitcheson fan, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen him have as good of a game as he did yesterday. He was blocking shots. He landed a massive hit on L.J. Mooney, which if you don’t know L.J. Mooney, that’s the cousin of Logan Cooley on Utah. L.J. stands for Little John by the way, and that’s actually true. But [Aitcheson] went out there, there’s a 30 pound difference between the two, and it was basically the biggest hit I think I’ve seen live in person a very long time.

But not only did he throw some big hits, but he was probably the best at actually playing defense. And I think that’s the thing that we forget a lot when it comes to young defensemen, your job is to play the defense. He’s really good at it. And he also scored a goal that took them five minutes to review. That was kind of annoying at a time when it was already 5-0, we didn’t really need a five-minute review from there.

He is a guy that, from an overall, all-around standpoint, he might not be flashy, but he gets the job done, and he gets the job done really well.

You can watch the full episode here…