As expected, the Minnesota Wild were quiet on the lengthy first night of the NHL Draft on Friday, with their opening round pick traded away last season. But that doesn’t mean the State of Hockey was without a presence as 32 building blocks of the league’s future had their names called in Southern California.
Woodbury defenseman Logan Hensler, after a standout freshman year at Wisconsin, will be headed back to Madison for another season of college hockey, but his on-ice future is in Ottawa after the Senators drafted him 23rd overall on Friday.
Interviewed on stage at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, Hensler admitted that he was nervous waiting for his name to be called, but was happy to be picked in the top 25.
With several members of his family in attendance, Hensler did interviews and talked to officials from the Senators remotely, as the NHL tried its first “decentralized” draft, with officials from all 32 teams based in their home cities, rather than in one arena as has been done traditionally. The new format had some glitches, with the first round lasting more than four hours, and technical difficulties preventing some picks from speaking live to officials from the teams that drafted them.
“I think we all missed the old style,” said Wild general manager Bill Guerin, after his hockey operations team spent an evening he called “long and slow” in the team’s war room set up in the locker room at TRIA Rink. “I think the most important thing is what it’s like for the players. It’s not about us, it’s about these kids getting drafted and their experience.”
After playing prep hockey at Hill-Murray as a sophomore, Hensler spent two seasons with USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program in Michigan, then posted a dozen points as a college hockey rookie with the Badgers last season. With celebrity hockey fans announcing each team’s pick, Ottawa native and once-popular comedian Tom Green called Hensler’s name.
With the 29th pick, Chicago traded up to select two-sport Edina High School star Mason West, who is committed to the Michigan State hockey program, but will also be the Hornets’ starting quarterback as a prep senior this fall, before playing hockey for Fargo in the USHL.
On a night where trades were rare, nothing materialized that enticed the Wild to try to get back into the Friday night fray. They will pick 52nd overall in the second round on Saturday, with the picks beginning at 11 a.m. CDT. Guerin admitted that they weren’t close on any potential moves into the first round on Friday.
“I’m not too surprised. Everybody needs players and it just seems like a difficult year to make deals,” he said.
After weeks of speculation about their assorted offers to move down, the New York Islanders took their draft lottery winnings and invested them in defense, grabbing Matthew Schaefer with the first overall pick. The 17-year-old who spent limited time last season on the blue line for the Erie (Pa.) Otters of the Ontario Hockey League due to illness and injury, becomes the fifth player selected first overall by the Islanders, and the first since John Tavares in 2009.
Schaefer, who lost his mother to breast cancer two years ago, donned an Islanders jersey on stage, kissing the purple cancer ribbon on the jersey and pointing to the sky in honor of his mother.
Earlier in the day, the Islanders traded veteran defenseman Noah Dobson, their 2018 first round pick, to Montreal in exchange for a pair of picks later in Friday’s first round and forward prospect Emil Heineman.
San Jose used the second pick on major junior forward Michael Misa, while Chicago grabbed Swedish center Anton Frondell. Boston College standout forward James Hagens, predicted by many to be a top-three pick, fell to seventh and will stay in Boston after the Bruins grabbed him.
With the 20th pick, which originally belonged to the Wild prior to their trade for defenseman David Jiricek in November 2024, the Columbus Blue Jackets took the first goalie off the board, grabbing 18-year-old Russian Pyotr Andreyanov.
