The Sheet Blog: What will the NHL Draft look like next year?

An opening thought on the 2025 NHL Draft as an event: look, they tried.

I’m not going to pile on, we know where the issues were. but at the same time, given what the league was handed by the teams, they did something different and tried to make an entertaining show out of it.

As we’ve seen with how the league handle the awards, it’s obvious the NHL is in the ‘making moments’ business, and that’s what they tried to do here with both the celebrities and the ‘NHL Draft House’.

It’s been obvious all season that Commissioner Gary Bettman was not a fan of a decentralized draft and went out of his way every time it came up to stress that this was a decision made by the teams and the league was ‘here to serve’ their desires. It didn’t work. And most likely they’re going back to the old format, which was never broken but somehow needed fixing.

When the draft does return to its traditional format, the NHL should aim to do what it’s done with the game itself – discipline yourself to shorten the length of it. For years the NHL has chipped away at the dead time in and around the game and tightened it up to a viewer-friendly two-hour and 30-minute experience, give or take. It’s time to do that with the draft.

Now, if they could get the event down to the same length as a hockey game…..

One positive from the draft in LA? 

We didn’t have to hear teams congratulate the Stanley Cup winner and say hi to everybody back home at the watch party.

I miss Tim Murray, who once told me he wanted to set the record for fewest words uttered while making a pick and added what he wanted to do onstage was simply point to the player he wanted and then walk off, but the team wouldn’t let him.

Isles get the best player, but also the best person

Congrats to the New York Islanders.

Not only did they get the best player in the draft but also one of the best young men any team will have the chance to select. The first thing you notice when you speak to or meet Matthew Schaefer is how mature this young man is and for good reason – he’s had to grow up fast. When you lose a parent in your teens, you go one of two ways, and thankfully for Schaefer he’s taken a positive path. One where he walks with his mother’s memory and lives as a tribute to her. As many have noticed when Schaefer speaks about his late mother, it’s still in the present tense – she’s still here with him.

The Islanders will proudly embrace him as one of their own for years, with both his head and heart in the right place. There was not a heart in the hockey world that didn’t break a little when Schaefer kissed the breast cancer ribbon on the Islanders jersey he put on. And major stick taps to the Islanders for doing that.

Further, Mathieu Darche admitted he tried to move up in the draft with the picks acquired in the Noah Dobson deal but couldn’t get there.  Islanders’ fans, of course, were hoping their new GM could bring the local boy, James Hagens, home. However, a tidy bit of draft business picking off the hard-working Swedish forward Victor Eklund and hard-hitting defenseman Kashawn Aitcheson at 16 + 17.

Islander fans are going to LOVE Aitcheson. And buckle up, because…He. Hits. For. Keeps. And he can also produce offense, scoring 26 goals for the OHL’s Barrie Colts last season.

The Brady Hunch was wrong

I really did think Utah was going to take Soo Greyhound Brady Martin at four. Going back to the Mammoth moving up 10 places in the draft lottery, Utah was all around him and in fact was the only NHL team to visit his farm in Elmira, Ont.

Martin should, however, be a great fit in Nashville. Predators fans have always liked players with a mean streak.

How did Seattle snake Jake?

A few years from now, I wonder if we look back at this draft and wonder how Jake O’Brien fell to the Seattle Kraken at No. 8. The center went off for 98 points for the Brantford Bulldogs playing mainly with 2024 Chicago Blackhawks first rounder Marek Vanacker. O’Brien is tall (6’2) but slight (177), however he has the frame to accommodate more weight, and with the Bulldogs hiring Gary Roberts as their Director of Player Development, you know O’Brien’s going to get up to NHL size. Also, O’Brien is a big-time fisherman. He loves it. Maybe going to Seattle was meant to be.

Speaking of the Kraken, after taking O’Brien they went on a run of selecting defensemen with their next four picks – Blake Fiddler, Will Reynolds, Maxim Agafonov and Karl Annborn. Many of Seattle’s picks in their young history have been used on forwards, especially at the high end (Matty Beniers, Shane Wright, Jagger Firkus, Eduard Sale, Carson Rehkopf, Berkly Catton, Julius Miettinen and now O’Brien), so addressing a positional prospect need here makes a lot of sense.

Flyers dream big

Quick glance at the size of the first six picks by the Philadelphia Flyers:

6’3, 208 (Porter Martone)

6’4, 183 (Jack Nesbitt)

6’6, 232 (Carter Amico)

6’1, 198 (Jack Murtagh)

6’3, 212 (Shane Vansaghi)

6’5, 195 (Matthew Gard)

The Big Orange is back, baby! Also, if they didn’t trade pick #31 to the Pittsburgh Penguins, I wonder if the Flyers would have selected 6’6, 222-pound Simon (Haoxi) Wang of the OHL’s Oshawa Generals. Sounds like they were the team hottest on him, and considering what GM Daniel Briere’s draft strategy was, this checks out.

Full circle for Briere

Kevin Ferguson (@rferguson9) noted an interesting aspect of a trade made by the Flyers in 1995. The team acquired Pat Faloon from the San Jose Sharks, in exchange for Martin Spanhel, along with first- and fourth-round picks in the 1996 draft, which resulted in selecting Daniel Briere and Mike Martone. Mike is the father of Porter Martone who Briere selected sixth overall on Friday.

Let’s go one step further: on that same day San Jose traded those two draft rights, Martin Spanhel and Vaclav Varada to the Buffalo Sabres in a deal for Doug Bodger. Buffalo later moved the ‘Briere first-round pick’ to the Winnipeg Jets for Michal Grosek and Darryl Shannon.

I guess if you squint at it long enough, Briere was sort of a Flyer and Sabre before he was a Flyer and Sabre.

Rink Fries

It sounds like the Penguins were aggressively trying to get into the top 10 on Friday…With the opening of free agency on Tuesday, do we see Utah sign Aaron Ekblad?  Vladislav Gavrikov? Both? Neither? The Mammoth are a major team to watch here, and they’ve already made a major move bringing in JJ Peterka…for 40 games in ’21-22’ in St Louis, Ville Husso was a .919 SV% goaltender and since then outside of four games with the Ducks last season he’s been sub-.900%. And now with his latest extension with Anaheim he’s earned $21 million in his career…the Dallas Stars have a number in mind for a Jason Robertson contract extension and if they can’t come to an agreement around it, they will most likely move to their next plan now that GM Jim Nill has a handle on what his market is. This one won’t be easy since it’s easily argued that Robertson left a hefty amount of money on the table in his last deal (4-year, $31 million) which pretty much became the biggest value contract in the NHL the moment it was signed… I can’t see Tristan Jarry and Bryan Rust starting next season as Penguins… Not a surprise to see the Los Angeles Kings move Jordan Spence. We had all wondered about the talented right-shot defenseman who should be a welcome addition to the Ottawa Senators blueline. I believe the Boston Bruins were here too.

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