Toronto Maple Leafs 2025 NHL Draft Prospect #3: Sean Barnhill

Welcome to my third 2025 NHL Draft Prospect Profile for potential Leafs picks at 64! In our last two profiles, we covered a hulking potential power forward from the WHL in 6’4” Matthew Gard and the cerebral OHL support centre in Tyler Hopkins.

Today, we’ll move on to defensive prospects going down south to Dubuque, Iowa, where an intriguing late riser was making waves in the USHL. As always, I’ll outline his strengths and weaknesses, why he fits Brad Treliving’s vision for the team, and where I would rank him in Toronto’s prospect pool.

RD–Sean Barnhill–Dubuque Fighting Saints–USHL

6’5”–214 lbs–54 GP–4 G–8 A–12 PTS

My Ranking: #48

Elite Prospects Consolidated Ranking: #74

I have to give credit where credit is due. Sean Barnhill wasn’t on my to-watch list for most of the season. I’m a CHL guy by nature as a Kitchener Rangers fan, and I use a lot of preseason lists from bigger names than myself to form my list on what players to watch and prioritize. Barnhill didn’t feature super highly on those lists, but my friend and fellow scout David Saad (@SaadScouting) on X, sent his name in the group chat one day as a player to watch, and he’s been on my short list ever since.

The counting stats this year for Barnhill won’t jump out at you, with just 12 points across 54 games this season, I wouldn’t blame the typical fan perusing potential draft options for their team to brush past him. Unfairly or not, I had similar misgivings before watching him play; however, after watching him, the results were quite positive, so much so that he ended up higher on my board than 59-point scoring OHL defenceman Kashawn Aitcheson, who’s widely considered a first-round pick. (Follow me on X @RyanMaScouting for my full top 100!)

Strengths

Size

Barnhill is a behemoth on the ice for Dubuque; it’s very easy to pick him out on tape at 6’5”, but he’s a really smooth and mobile player at that size. He’s another player who has really solid skating fundamentals and doesn’t look like he’s lugging an 18-wheeler when he tries to get up to speed. I think he’s a good enough four-directional skater at his size to hang at the pro level, and as a defenceman of his size, that’s important.

His brain

He’s also, I think, a smart player who understands his limitations and his strengths defensively and plays accordingly. I haven’t seen him pinch a ton on pucks, and he likes to maintain a nice gap when defending rushes. Some players of his size like to try and exploit their length and get extra pokey when defending transition plays or trying to lay out their opponents with big hits, but Barnhill was a nice calm and poise to his rush defence approach. His stick is active, taking away time and space from his opponents, but he doesn’t overcommit or put himself into bad spots as often.

I’ve also really liked how he communicates on ice with his teammates, whether it’s negotiating handoffs with them through pick plays, or when he finds both himself and a teammate rushing back to cover the same leaking forward. Barnhill’s assertiveness in dictating when he’s the one handling the puck carrier and when to let him go is a positive in my book.

As someone who’s made his stock on the defensive end so far this season for Dubuque, it’s no surprise he’s depended upon heavily as a penalty killer. We’ve talked about his gap control at the line defending entries, and it’s paired with really good scanning habits to create a reliable penalty killer. I’ve yet to catch him guilty of puck watching on the penalty kill, and his first instinct is consistently to take away the slot area and cross-creases.

Defensive ability

Barnhill isn’t this highlight reel of lighting up players as they cross the blueline, but often when he gets you forced out to the perimeter along the boards, he will absolutely close that gap. Effective stick work and his strength allow him to win puck battles, force attackers to the outside, and erase rush threats as a defender.

A good example of why I like Barnhill was in the first shift of my first viewing of him against Muskegon. He had a bit of a messy moment to start the game when speedy Lumberjacks forward David Deputy got a step on him and forced him into recovery mode. Barnhill, at his size, was always going to have little chance in a straight-line race.

What impressed me was that he did really well to use his length to disrupt Deputy and force him wider, then recognizing his forward had rushed back to take the speedy winger, tucked back in towards the middle of the ice, scanning for any opposing forwards driving the net.

Offensive instincts

I can also appreciate Barnhill’s willingness to experiment and expand his on-puck game. I had to go back a bit further to see this (my first game was a playoff game against Muskegon where he played a far more passive style), but there were times where he would show a willingness to activate, or dangle an incoming forechecker with time and space before sending a soft pass to his centre or defence partner.

A Treliving and Berube-led front office group will appreciate Barnhill’s effective defensive package (with room to grow) and his movement skills. The flashes of a developing on-puck skillset, offensive mindset, and intelligence also don’t hurt. I’d rather a prospect with the tools willing to try things out than one who prefers to just stay in his comfort zone.

Weaknesses

Barnhill is, of course, still very much a project as a potential future NHL pro. His results as an on-puck distributor are a mixed bag.

Lack of puck skills

Most of his puck touches in the build-up of play often come with time and space, which is also when he’s by far the most comfortable trying a few dangles or pivots. Against explosive forecheckers that can catch him off guard or disrupt him while he’s in the midst of one of these stick handles or turns, it often means a turnover is coming next. He’s best on the puck when he’s confident and decisive in his actions, but when he doubles back or hangs onto it for too long without moving forward is when he gets himself into trouble.

Again, I appreciate the experimentation and the confidence in his skillset, and when he goes on these individual rushes with the puck at 6’5”, it’s glorious to watch, but the roller coaster ride he takes you on with his on-puck game remains a huge question mark and why he’s not likely to go in the first round.

Production

Another concern is the offence; the point totals are low, and after watching a few games, a picture starts to form.

He just doesn’t get many puck touches in the offensive zone. There’s not a ton of dynamic ability in tight with the blueline behind him; he’s not someone who can walk the line with the puck and find shooting angles. Most of his touches in the offensive zone have to do with puck battles along the boards, before he sends the puck back down low for his forwards to cycle. I do like his shot volume, he’s not afraid to walk into space with the puck when it’s given to him, and he doesn’t need a big wind-up on his point shot one timer.

I’d also like him to play with more of an edge defensively. He’s effective enough at this stage at moving bodies off of pucks, but the contact balance fails him at times, and he can be outleveraged by shorter, stockier forwards. I’d also like to see improved and more efficient routes on retrievals. The defence isn’t perfect, but looking at comments from EP about his gap control earlier in the year, to my viewings of him in late April, I have a lot of faith that it’s an area of his game he’ll continue to rapidly improve in.

Fit

I’m a big fan of Sean Barnhill, and in a draft class that’s not as strong as most years, I love his potential upside. At 6’5”, his raw toolkit is about as good as you could hope for at this stage of the draft. He’s confident, and while his calling card and most direct route to the NHL will be on the back of his mobility and defensive play, his tantalizing flashes of puck skills and an NHL-calibre shot will offer teams an exciting potential package as he continues to fill out his frame.

The question surrounding his NHL outlook will ultimately rest on how well his on-puck game develops as he transitions to the NCAA with Northeastern University in 2026–27, but as one of the fastest improving prospects in the class, out of all the “big, raw project defencemen” available in this range of the draft, Sean Barnhill is the one I would bet on.

Barnhill continues my trend of picking physically mature players with a good balance of a high floor while offering enough moments of high-end traits to believe that there’s more to unlock in the player than he’s shown.  If I had to place him in the Leafs Prospect Pool Hierarchy, I’d likely have him right around where I have Noah Chadwick.