The Islanders transformed their franchise trajectory in one crazy day

Jun 28, 2025, 00:03 EDTUpdated: Jun 28, 2025, 00:13 EDT

Credit: Matthew Schaefer (Steven Ellis/Daily Faceoff)

The image was unforgettably striking: Matthew Schaefer, weeping, kissing the cancer ribbon on the New York Islanders jersey adorned with his name, moments after they chose him first overall in the 2025 NHL Draft.

The gesture clearly meant everything to Schaefer, who lost his mother, Jennifer, to breast cancer in 2024; the jersey also had her initials stitched inside the collar.

“This is a high-class organization,” Schaefer told reporters at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles Friday night. “To do that for me, it means a lot, and it goes a long way. A lot of people can say, ‘Oh it’s just a ribbon.’ But means a lot for me. My mom’s a big part of my life, and this jersey I’m going to hang up for sure, and that ribbon has a little extra meaning to it.”

The gesture was also emblematic of a cultural shift on a day that may go down as franchise-defining for the Isles, who have struggled for relevancy for the past four years.

In selecting Schaefer, 17, No. 1 Friday night in Los Angeles, the Islanders landed the top all-around player in the class of 2025, a dazzlingly dynamic defenseman who projects as an all-star, a 25-minute-per-night, all-situations dominator. They also secured a young man as heralded for his character as for his play on the ice. We may be looking at their captain a few years down the road. He checked so many boxes that the fact he last played a game in December, having broken his collarbone playing for Canada at the 2025 World Juniors, didn’t deter the Isles and new GM Mathieu Darche from picking him.

“First and foremost, we’re drafting because he’s an unbelievable hockey player,” Darche told reporters via Zoom after Round 1 of the Draft wrapped. “Obviously, the human being is exceptional, a 17-year-old, to have that resilience, maturity, with everything that he’s gone through is beyond impressive, honestly. I haven’t met many 17-year-old kids that act like him. But at the end of the day, we’re drafting a hell of a hockey player. This is a nice story and everything, but he’s a hell of a hockey player that hopefully will be a long time on the Island and will be a key player in this organization because he’s a unique and exciting player for us.”

Of course, taking Schaefer wasn’t even the first monumental move the Islanders made Friday. They also shook up their core hours earlier by trading their No. 1 defenseman, restricted free agent Noah Dobson, to the Montreal Canadiens after he and the Islanders couldn’t agree on a new contract. In return, they received well-regarded checking left winger Emil Heineman plus the 16^th and 17^th overall picks in the 2025 Draft. Darche confirmed that they tried to trade up using those two picks and that local boy James Hagens was one of the players they were looking at, but they couldn’t find a dance partner. Instead, they used the two selections to select a pair of players they never expected to still be available at No. 16 and No. 17: scrappy goal-scorer Victor Eklund and bludgeoning blueliner Kashawn Aticheson. According to Daily Faceoff prospect analyst Steven Ellis, Eklund and Aitcheson were the ninth and 10^th best prospects in the class, meaning, in our eyes, the Isles landed three of the top 10 on Friday.

Between Eklund and 2024 first-rounder Cole Eiserman, the Islanders have a couple high-end shooters to build around in their top six down the road. Eklund is somewhat undersized at 5-foot-11, but he makes up for it with a deadly release and was instrumental in helping his Swedish pro team, Djurgardens, get promoted from the second-tier Allsvenskan to the top-tier SHL for next season.

“Pretty pumped. New York, it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Eklund said Friday.

Aitcheson is a nasty customer who will make life miserable for opponents if he reaches his full potential.

“I think I’m a hard two-way defenseman that will go against the other team’s top lines and be in their face, get under people’s skin and mix it up,” Aitcheson told reporters.

The Dobson trade and big first-round splash continued a tectonic organizational shift that began this winter. Under Lou Lamoriello’s tenure as president of hockey operations and GM which began in 2018, the Islanders enjoyed some early success, reaching the Eastern Conference Final in 2019-20 and, in the COVID-altered bracket, the final four in 2020-21. But despite having an all-time great coach in Barry Trotz, an elite goaltending duo of Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov, a shutdown defense pair in Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock and a dynamic center in Mathew Barzal…that core never cleared the final hurdle. And that’s when Lamoriello really started chasing it. After the Isles missed the playoffs in 2021-22, he pointed the finger at Trotz of all people, firing him in a head-scratching move. New York traded away its 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 first-round picks as Lamoriello feebly scrambled to paper over a mediocre roster; trading a first, forward Anthony Beauvillier and prospect Aatu Raty to get center Bo Horvat in 2023 only delayed the inevitable. In a four-season stretch, the Isles went playoff miss, first-round exit, first-round exit, playoff miss.

As the latter result approached on the horizon this season, with his Isles once again limping around the playoff periphery, Lamoriello finally did the right thing. He sent pending UFA center Brock Nelson, who sat fourth in franchise history in games and fifth and goals, to the Colorado Avalanche. The package coming back the Isles’ way included a conditional 2026 first-rounder and a genuinely exciting prospect in center Cal Ritchie, who has all the makings of an intelligent two-way center who should be a middle-six forward in the NHL at worst.

The move sent the message the franchise was no longer in denial and struggling against a current carrying it out to sea. Walking way from Lamoriello and bringing in Darche, long one of the best league-wide candidates yet to get an opportunity as a GM, cemented the transition. And Darche has quickly erased any doubt that he would mash the reset button. Well, sort of. It remains to be seen what his idea of a reset is. The way he framed Friday’s transactions was more that he was doing what the situation dictated rather than blowing the team up.

“We’re not going to a rebuild,” Darche said on the Zoom call. “The opportunity we had today, in this job, you have to be nimble and adjust to what’s coming. We tried to sign everybody, we couldn’t, but then we got three outstanding young men…High-character individuals tend to overachieve, and the three kids we got today are extremely high character. We all know what Matthew the player is, but Victor and Kashawn are unbelievable competitors. And that’s how you win.”

Is the major pipeline makeover guaranteed to work? No. It’s undoubtedly a risk to recoup a primarily futures-based package for an established stud No. 1 defenseman in Dobson. But if we zoom out: the Isles have a future core of Schaefer, Eklund, Aitcheson, Ritchie and Eiserman. None of those players was in their system 13 months ago. The franchise has embraced the idea of change, and when what they were doing wasn’t working, that’s a good thing.

With files from Steven Ellis

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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