The 2025 NHL Draft season is officially underway with the conclusion of the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, the first major event on the prospect calendar. This preseason top 32 (plus 38 honorable mentions, for a total of 70 players to watch) is my second of what will be seven rankings of the 2025 class. It follows my way-too-early top 28 , and will be followed by my preliminary top 64 (released in November), a midseason top 64 (released in January), a March top 64, a post-U18 worlds top 32 (released in May) and my final top 100 (released in June).
Advertisement This age group, made up of 2007s and late-2006s, is led by American center James Hagens, Swedish center Anton Frondel, big Canadian forwards Porter Martone and Roger McQueen, OHL exceptional status forward Michael Misa, and defensemen Matthew Schaefer and Logan Hensler. It looks like a bounce-back year for Sweden and the QMJHL as a whole, too. GO DEEPER Meet James Hagens, the 2025 NHL Draft's top prospect and hockey's next American star GO DEEPER Meet Michael Misa, the OHL's latest exceptional status star — and the NHL's next one The ranking, packaged in our sortable and customizable user interface, is also broken down into tiers.
This preseason list is divided into four tiers: 1, 2-8, 9-12, 13-32+. There are about a dozen players in the honorable mentions who also belong in that fourth tier and factor into the first-round conversation at the moment. That group includes six players from my first list (forwards Filip Ekberg, Jac.