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The 2025 Draft Thread

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Doug Prishpreed said:
He had kind of a slow start but I think he has been really great. The other two have just been even better, stealing his thunder a bit.

I think Nashville would kill to draft him, but we see the smaller kids fall every year so not crazy to think he might fall to as much as the fifth spot. Highly doubt he makes it to 6 though.
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I think if McQueen has a great playoffs we could see him jump up unto the top 5. Its easy to see a GM falling in love with his size. Also Jackson Smith is a bit of a wild card if a GM picking in the top 7-8 takes a defenseman, it happened in the 2023 draft where defense ranked 20th went in the top 10.

I feel like as long as we are picking top 8 we will get a great player. If Hagens, Misa and Schaefer are gone its personal preference after that.
 
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Chainshot said:
Saw someone graphing Hagens production over time and he's been steadily declining in points per game over time. That may be part of why some have others passing him in their rankings. It's also a bit of draft fatigue - we see guys who are at the top of lists early get more scrutiny for what they don't do or don't have than guys who are risers and still thought of as all potential, roses, and sunshine.
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Craig Button has Frondell 2nd, Martone 3rd and Hagens 4th and Misa 5th. I know Button likes to be controversial, it would be interesting to see his how he did in previous drafts when his opinion differed.

His list that I found is from January so perhaps its changed.
 
toddkaz said:
Craig Button has Frondell 2nd, Martone 3rd and Hagens 4th and Misa 5th. I know Button likes to be controversial, it would be interesting to see his how he did in previous drafts when his opinion differed.

His list that I found is from January so perhaps its changed.
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Craig does Craig things. There doesn't seem to be a solid repository of all of his rankings vs. draft position vs. players turning out that I can find. Bob's list of course is a survey of actual scouts so it tends to be more homogenous to the selection process - same reason why he gets the "prediction" of who is being selected next so often is his scouting and front office friends will text him who the pick is going to be while the selection is being registered.

I'm curious for how Bob's list comes out due to the polling nature of it. But as to who makes the best selections... *shrug* Part of this is how teams in that 6-10 range so often fumble a pick and it doesn't seem to be a unifying factor. Sometimes it is rushing guys since bad teams want quick return on perceived good players to move up and out from being bad teams. Sometimes it is development - do they get the time to work on other parts of their game in situations where they're not drinking from a firehose? - and again, bad teams often are bad because of the way they handle those players. Injury is the other variable. Some players get derailed and never get back to their perceived potential because they miss too much time.
 
I went back and looked at the 3rd overall pick, and there's some volatility there in terms of who is projected to go and who actually went 3rd overall.

2016: PLD over Puljujarvi
2018: Kotkaniemi over Tkachuk
2021: McTavish over Johnson
2024: Sennecke over a bunch of players

There seems to be a bit of a bias for centers and power forwards who have projectable physical traits. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again and someone like Hagens drop a slot or two.
 
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Der Jaeger said:
I went back and looked at the 3rd overall pick, and there's some volatility there in terms of who is projected to go and who actually went 3rd overall.

2016: PLD over Puljujarvi
2018: Kotkaniemi over Tkachuk
2021: McTavish over Johnson
2024: Sennecke over a bunch of players

There seems to be a bit of a bias for centers and power forwards who have projectable physical traits. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again and someone like Hagens drop a slot or two.
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I agree with this. Could def see size/physical traits moving someone up, or more so, moving a smaller guy like Hagens down.
 
Der Jaeger said:
I went back and looked at the 3rd overall pick, and there's some volatility there in terms of who is projected to go and who actually went 3rd overall.

2016: PLD over Puljujarvi
2018: Kotkaniemi over Tkachuk
2021: McTavish over Johnson
2024: Sennecke over a bunch of players

There seems to be a bit of a bias for centers and power forwards who have projectable physical traits. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again and someone like Hagens drop a slot or two.
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Exactly, it happened with Sennecke where he was ranked anywhere from 10-15 and was taken 3rd and I think we could see the same thing with McQueen that he goes top 5. I am kind of hoping Hagens drops. He is the one I think fits in best with Buffalo players and style. My bet is we pick 4-6 so we will get a good player no matter what.

Martone and McQueen have size GMs love.
 
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Chainshot said:
Saw someone graphing Hagens production over time and he's been steadily declining in points per game over time. That may be part of why some have others passing him in their rankings. It's also a bit of draft fatigue - we see guys who are at the top of lists early get more scrutiny for what they don't do or don't have than guys who are risers and still thought of as all potential, roses, and sunshine.
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I think it’s more the latter, the draft fatigue, but I didn’t realize his production was dipping so much.

Since he is a super young kid playing the role he does on a college team, id expect some actual fatigue too, which may be an acceptable reason for the ppg decline.
 
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toddkaz said:
I think if McQueen has a great playoffs we could see him jump up unto the top 5. Its easy to see a GM falling in love with his size. Also Jackson Smith is a bit of a wild card if a GM picking in the top 7-8 takes a defenseman, it happened in the 2023 draft where defense ranked 20th went in the top 10.

I feel like as long as we are picking top 8 we will get a great player. If Hagens, Misa and Schaefer are gone its personal preference after that.
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Yeah, if his playoffs are really good, I could definitely see him jumping up as high as #3. By that time, it might be him we are all hoping falls to us at ~5 instead of Hagens.
 
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