The season of hope and optimism is upon us, with the Stanley Cup Final in the rearview and the 2025 NHL Draft slated for this Friday (round 1) and Saturday (rounds 2-7), held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
Having celebrated annual tradition of bad luck in the draft lottery, the Red Wings are slated to pick 13th in the first round. They have nine total picks, owning their original pick in every round except the fourth (traded for Jeff Petry) and picking up extra picks in the third round (acquired for Olli Maatta), fourth round (acquired by eating salary in the trade that saw Yanni Gourde end up in Tampa Bay) and seventh round (acquired for Jakub Vrana).
The format of this year’s draft is expected to look different, with the NHL adopting a decentralized approach, similar to that of the NFL; teams will conduct business remotely, with select first-round hopefuls attending in person to walk up on stage. There’s a lot of grousing about this, mostly from the media, but it sounds like from some teams, too.
The thought is that this will lead to less trade activity, but I’m not so sure. Draft weekend is chaos, with teams spread out over a handful of hotels, so there are a lot of opportunities for hockey personnel to connect, gain intel and stoke rumors just by bumping into each other… but on the draft floor itself, it can be a little hard for a GM to have a conversation away from the prying eyes of 31 teams and the TV cameras. A remote draft allows teams to have their entire staff together (there are a limited number of seats at the draft-floor tables) and makes for easier conversation. Whether that results in more connections between the teams remains to be seen, but whispers of returning to the old format are already out there.
Onto the prospects: I’m going to try to break down Detroit’s options in tiers, as I attempted last year. Some people weren’t crazy about that, but I think it’s even more appropriate for this year. There’s a pretty strong consensus on tiers from the public draft analysts’ lists, but the information you read in the “anonymous scout” type articles is that teams’ lists are very different from what fans might be expecting. I don’t like calling a draft “weak,” because there are NHL players to be found every year, but it seems like there are convincing arguments for and against more of the first-round-graded players than in typical years. And all it takes is a couple of teams to be much higher on certain players than the rest of the league, and Detroit may be well-positioned to snag someone sliding down the board.
Given that I’m pretty high on Detroit’s current prospects, I don’t have any major concerns about any of the options below and how they’d fit into the Red Wings’ plans. No matter how things play out ahead of them, the Red Wings should have some options between high-upside swings, gritty scoring wingers and a few future top-four defensemen.
Run to the podium
There are very few players this year that I’d bet my 401K will not be Red Wings by the end of Friday night. It starts with the likely first-overall pick in defenseman Matthew Schaefer, and it sounds like forwards Michael Misa and Anton Frondell are the next two off the board, not necessarily in that order, and then things open up. I would also not expect forwards Caleb Desnoyers, James Hagens, Porter Martone or Jake O’Brien to be available, but again — all forwards, so any time someone reaches for a defenseman, it increases the chances that one of them might slip into Detroit’s range. There are some nits to pick between Hagens’ size, Martone’s off-puck play or O’Brien’s physicality, but to see them fall near 13 would be quite a story.
Wildcards (but probably not)
Here are three more players I’m almost certain will be gone: forward Brady Martin and defensemen Kashawn Aitcheson and Radim Mrtka. When I first turned my full attention to the draft at season’s end, Martin was a player I frequently saw listed around the 13th pick. But after a strong OHL playoff and U18 tournament, he’s shot up the rankings — maybe even to the top five. Plus, it’s a copycat league, and if there’s a comparable player to Sam Bennett in this draft, it’s Martin, and who doesn’t want that right now?
Similarly, Aitcheson is a defenseman with off-the-charts physicality, and although offense isn’t considered his strength, he still scored 26 goals and 59 points in the OHL this season. If teams want to get harder to play against like Florida, he has a good chance to be the second defenseman off the board. If not him, it’s likely Mrtka, who’s a smooth-skating 6-foot-6 behemoth with high hockey IQ and very few warts in his game. Some mock drafts have one of the two close to Detroit’s pick, I would be surprised if either became Red Wings without Detroit trading up a few spots.
In Detroit’s range
That’s 10 players I’m not expecting will be available; here are the five that I’ve most frequently seen landing around Detroit’s pick. There’s a chance that up to three of them will be unavailable, but these are the names I’m most commonly seeing around the 11-15.
RW Victor Eklund, Djurgarden (Swe-2) – Eklund’s in an odd spot where almost every public list has him in the top 10, and every mock draft has him being drafted outside of it (often to Detroit). Eklund is the younger brother of William in San Jose but plays a different game: he’s much more tenacious, but still has the good hands and in-tight skill to produce offense, which he did plenty of in Sweden’s second pro league (outscoring Frondell on the same team). I think the gap between rankings and mock outcome reflects the declining value of undersized wingers (Eklund is 5’11, 161 pounds) who can’t always translate production to the NHL level… but Eklund feels like a good bet in that regard. There might be some eye-rolling over a fourth-straight season of drafting a high-compete, two-way forward (following Kasper, Danielson and MBN), but after the second half we saw of Kasper, who wouldn’t want more of those? I see plenty of differences between all four, with Eklund standing out for his all-around offensive game.
C Roger McQueen, Brandon (WHL) – I considered adding him to the “wild card” section above, but I do think that of the three players in that group and McQueen, he is the most likely to fall out of the top 10. McQueen was headed for top-five draft status but battled a back injury for the majority of the season, playing only 17 games. He’s a 6-foot-5, high-offense center who was outproducing Nate Danielson in the 2023-24 season on the same team as an underager. Teams sound concerned about the back injury (he returned at the end of the season, but was in-and-out of the lineup) and might be gun-shy after being promised a clean bill of health for last year’s fourth overall pick, Cayden Lindstrom, a similar talent that ended up missing nearly the entire 2024-25 season. Personally, I think applying one player’s injury progression to another is foolish, but due diligence is certainly required. Given the depth of the Red Wings’ system, I think they’re well-positioned to take a swing for the fences on McQueen if he’s available, while teams earlier in their rebuild may be shy about taking the risk.
D Jackson Smith, Tri-City (WHL) – Based on past draft history, it would be unusual if we got all the way to pick #13 and only three defensemen were off the board, but Jackson Smith is frequently listed as the fourth-best of the draft’s top defensemen and could be a candidate here. Smith falls in the puck-transporter mold, with good skating, physicality and offensive tools, though he may not have the high-end power-play ability. He has all the makings of an all-situations, minute-munching 6-foot-4 defenseman, but he’s a bit more raw than the rest of the top group. I like how he’d round out an all-first-rounder top-four with Seider, Edvinsson and Sandin-Pellikka, and Detroit could afford to give his game some time to mature as he pioneers a path a few top prospects on this list are taking by switching from major junior to college for next season (at Penn State).
LW Carter Bear, Everett (WHL) – If Detroit is uncomfortable with the risks of anyone falling down the draft order, Bear could very well be the best player available. But Bear would be a great fit in the top-six the Red Wings are building for the future, adding some snarl and goal-scoring to a group that needs it now and in the future. He has great hands and is a natural scorer (leading all WHL draft eligibles with 40 goals) and has the work ethic to play in all situations. The only reason for concern is that his season ended prematurely due to a partial Achilles tear, but he’s said to be back on the ice already. I don’t believe he was a full participant at the NHL Combine, though, which shouldn’t be a dealbreaker but is still an opportunity to get more medical and fitness data.
RW Justin Carbonneau, Blainville-Boisbriand (QMJHL) – I see some similarities in the overall impact between Carbonneau and Carter Bear above, but either would provide a goal-scoring boost to Detroit’s future top-six. Carbonneau is an inch or two taller and is regarded as having one of the best shots in the draft, but doesn’t quite have the work ethic of the other forwards in this tier. But he’s considered the best prospect the QMJHL has produced in a few seasons, as they’ve not had a top-20 draft pick in the past three years. He scored 46 goals, which tied for second in the league, and rumor has it may also be NCAA-bound next season, which feels like a step forward in competition that will serve him well.
Others in the mix
While the five players mentioned above are most frequently linked to Detroit, there are a few dozen more players who could realistically sneak into the top of the first round. These aren’t necessarily the next five best players, but I wanted to highlight worthy candidates with varying skillsets to see what appeals most to our readers.
C Cole Reschny, Victoria (WHL) – There are a handful of forwards viewed as mid-to-late first-round picks whose write-up sounds awesome until you get to “but he’s 5-foot-10.” Of those players, Reschny is my favorite and appears to be the choice for most of the public list-makers out there as well. He’s a ball of energy with the skill to match it, threatening 100 points as a top playmaker in the WHL. Size remains the most divisive topic among the scouting community, and while there are some high-end players with a similar style to Reschny having success (Seth Jarvis, Logan Stankhoven), it may not be as many as people realize, and the true centers tend to get kicked to the wing. Detroit’s current top-six is fairly small and the reinforcements are a mixed bag — Danielson and MBN have some size, but the next tier like Max Plante and Dmitri Buchelnikov are below average. Obviously, Patrick Kane is not a long-term piece, and many other parts can be changed in the 2-4 years before these players are ready, but it’s worth debating, as you watch the teams with bigger, tougher top-nine forward groups have more playoff success than the purely skilled teams.
LW Lynden Lakovic, Moose Jaw (WHL) – Lakovic vs. Reschny will be a one-off litmus test for how teams want to build for the future, as Lakovic is a 6-foot-4 scoring winger whose work ethic leaves something to be desired, very much the opposite of the reports on Reschny. In fact, I’ve seen pockets of Red Wings fans who were turned off entirely when Corey Pronman landed on Anthony Mantha as Lakovic’s player comparison. Those are pretty dangerous to me — one comparison does not mean his fate is sealed (and Mantha is far from Detroit’s worst first-round pick). There are other factors worth considering, including the talent around Lakovic. He led Moose Jaw with 58 points — a low total that was 10 points better than anyone else, despite missing 21 games. If you’re a team’s best goal-scoring threat by a margin that big, you’re probably playing more minutes against tougher competition than he would have been on a contender where there was more to work with. Still, it’s an area to improve, and he’ll have to work to shed that tag, but if he hits, you’ll wonder why he fell.
D Logan Hensler, Wisconsin (B10) – A year ago, Hensler was thought of as the best defenseman on the U.S. National Team Development Program and a lock for the top 10. After a middling freshman season at Wisconsin, he’s dropped more towards the latter half of the first round. I don’t think he struggled as much as stagnated, and scouts struggle to project his long-term fit. He’s 6-foot-2, mobile and has some offensive skill, though also probably not a top power-play QB in the future. His defending is noted as good-not-great, but some of that can be attributed to being among the youngest players in college hockey, playing tough matchups on a reloading Wisconsin team. He’d make an interesting fit for Detroit as a right-shot defenseman, slotting somewhere among Seider and ASP… It would seem to be fairly low-risk for the Red Wings, with the upside of having an embarrassment of riches down the right side of the defensive depth chart.
C Jack Nesbitt, Windsor (OHL) – I’ve seen more variance on Nesbitt than any other prospect in this range, as high as the first half of the first round and as low as the middle of the second. I think that’s the nature of being a late-riser, leading some teams to worry why the second-half success didn’t match the first. But it’s nothing unusual for 17- and 18-year-old kids, especially those who are pushing 6-foot-5 and still have weight to pack on at 185 pounds. He has good hands, good smarts and plays at both ends, but his skating leaves a lot to be desired. You can improve the finer points of that as you advance through the ranks, but a poor skater is never going to become a burner. He’d be in that “future second-line center” mix that Kasper may have already seized, but Nesbitt appears to have a unique skillset that would make him useful in other areas as well.
C Braeden Cootes, Seattle (WHL) – Cootes would also be an appropriate pick at Detroit’s range, and kind of combines some of the issues detailed with other players in this section. He’s not as small as Reschny, but he’s 5-foot-11.25 (I’ve not noticed in other years if so many outlets listed players to fractions of inches, but it feels mildly funny in a year where so many players would have higher stock if they were 2-3 inches taller — clearly that quarter-inch shows size is no concern). And while Seattle wasn’t as bad as Moose Jaw where Lakovic was, Cootes wasn’t as productive as some others ranked around here (even from his own league). But Cootes has turned heads on the international stage, leading Canada in scoring (and serving as captain) for the gold-medal winning U18 team (which includes a few other players mentioned above: Martin, Reschny, Nesbitt and Smith). This could be seen as a safe pick on, yes, a responsible two-way center, but there’s enough evidence of some high-end offense that I wouldn’t be concerned at all.
There are certainly other players in the mix, but that’s where we’ll leave it for now. Let’s hear it, who do you want to see on stage at pick #13? … or would you rather see the pick shopped for some win-now help. Sound off!
