Islanders select Matthew Schaefer No. 1 overall in 2025 NHL Draft
The most dynamic defenseman in the 2025 NHL Draft class has a new home. The New York Islanders selected Matthew Schaefer, 17, with the first overall pick Friday night at The Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
Schaefer, a superstar with the OHL’s Erie Otters, spent the majority of 2024-25 ranked at or near the top of most prospect experts’ boards, including that of Daily Faceoff’s own Steven Ellis. Schaefer is considered such a prodigious talent that he maintained his elite ranking all season long despite the fact that he played his last hockey game in December.
Schaefer turned heads with a sizzling start to his major junior campaign, compiling seven goals and 22 points in his first 15 games with Erie. He had jaws dropping in November at the inaugural CHL USA prospect challenge, showcasing truly special puck-moving ability and scoring on an end-to-end rush in the first game. He made Team Canada’s 2025 World Junior Championship roster but lasted only two games before sustaining a broken collarbone in a round-robin contest against Latvia. Schaefer required surgery and didn’t suit up again for any team in 2024-25.
Still, it wasn’t the type of injury that produced any significant long-term fears. Even though he doesn’t turn 18 until September, Schaefer is the type of prospect who could jump to the NHL immediately, just as phenom Rasmus Dahlin did after going No. 1 to the Buffalo Sabres in 2018. Schaefer offers a tantalizing combination of ceiling and floor. He possesses the skating and offensive instincts to become a perennial All-Star and power-play quarterback, but he also brings a projectable frame, already 6-foot-2 and 183 pounds, and a sound two-way game that will make him trustworthy in all situations.
Schaefer also projects to become a leader in the NHL someday as someone who has exhibited a lot of character in his young hockey career to date, enduring the loss of his mother, Jennifer, to breast cancer in 2024 and the passing of his billet mother, Emily Matson, just a few months earlier. In June, Schaefer did community work leading up to the Draft Combine in Buffalo, visiting Western New York Compassion Connection, a facility that assists families who have encountered life-altering tragedies.