The New York Islanders have the first overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. The general expectation is that they will probably select Erie Otters blueliner Matthew Schaefer.

After that point, things get a bit hazier.

To illuminate some of the confusion, or at least outline the lack of consensus, we present our annual aggregated consensus draft ranking.

The rankings aggregated

Here’s how these rankings were built: We looked at the top 32 players on 11 different prominent public rankings. We awarded each ranked player points on an inverse scale – 1st got 32 points, 32nd got 1 point – and each player who appeared on one or more rankings had their points aggregated to create our consensus ranking.

Here are the 11 rankings we used in this exercise:

• Elite Prospects
• FC Hockey
• Sportsnet (Jason Bukala)
• Daily Faceoff (Steven Ellis)
• TSN (Bob McKenzie)
• TSN (Craig Button)
• FloHockey (Chris Peters)
• McKeen’s Hockey
• The Athletic (Scott Wheeler) (paywall)
• The Athletic (Corey Pronman) (paywall)
• The Hockey News (Ryan Kennedy)

We like to use the consensus ranking scheme to smooth out any variations in each year’s draft class and provide a general indication of how players are valued across the scouting community. There are a lot of diverse, unique perspectives across the rankings we use, and since they all value slightly different things in their individual rankings, the hope is this produces an aggregated ranking that displays the consensus (or lack thereof) in each year’s draft crop.

Here are the 32 players projected to go in the first round based on this aggregated consensus list.

The consensus first round

In terms of positions, there are 1 goalie, 8 defencemen and 23 forwards (16 centres, 7 wingers). In terms of nationalities, there are 21 Canadians, five Swedes, four Americans, one Russian and one Czech.

With the aggregated list, there’s a pretty decent agreement regarding which 10 players are in the top 10. Their order can get clustered a bit, though. The modelling has Hagens and Desnoyers pretty close together, as are Eklund, McQueen and O’Brien.

There’s a drop-off between 10 and the rest of the first round in terms of consensus, and Mrtka and Smith are virtually tied in the aggregation. (As are Carbonneau and Bear, Kindel and Potter, and Ravensbergen and Boumedienne.)

All of the rankings agreed that the players ranked 1 to 20 on this list are among the top 32 players in the draft – e.g., they consider those players unanimously as first-rounders, even if some rankings quibble with when in the first round they should go. After that, things are all over the place, so don’t be shocked if someone this list has at, say, 21 or 22, goes later than that. It’s just how this year’s crop seems to look.

Just missed the cut

Aside from the top 32 above, there were another 17 players that were listed as prospective first-round picks on multiple draft rankings. Since multiple lists mentioned them, but not enough to reach the projected consensus first round mix, we’re listing them here in alphabetical order:

• D Henry Brzustewicz – London (OHL)
• C William Horcoff – U.S. National Development Program (USHL)
• G Jack Ivankovic – Brampton (OHL)
• RW Ryker Lee – Madison (USHL)
• D Kurban Limatov – MHK Dynamo Moskva (MHL)
• C Cole McKinney – U.S. National Development Program (USHL)
• C William Moore – U.S. National Development Program (USHL)
• LW Jack Murtagh – U.S. National Development Program (USHL)
• LW Vaclav Nestracil – Muskegon (USHL)
• C Eric Nilson – Djurgardens IF (Allsvenskan)
• D Max Psenicka – Portland (WHL)
• RW Daniil Prokhorov – MHK Dynamo St. Petersburg (MHL)
• D Jacob Rombach – Lincoln (USHL)
• C Theo Stockselius – Djurgardens IF (Allsvenskan)
• RW Shane Vansaghi – Michigan State (NCAA)
• RW Mason West – Edina High School (USHS)
• RW Alexander Zharovsky – Tolpar Ufa (MHL)

Between the top 32 and the 17 honourable mentions, 49 different players were considered first-round quality players on multiple public draft rankings. Given that, and the lack of scouting consensus after about 20th spot on this list, we could see some pretty interesting selections in the back half of the first round (and much of the second round) when the draft unfolds.

The 2025 NHL Draft goes June 27 & 28 (remotely) from Los Angeles.