No. 1 pick in 2025 NHL Draft fuels local rivalry: ‘We're going to beat the Rangers every time we play them'
'We're going to beat the Rangers every time we play them,' defenseman Matthew Schaefer said Friday night after the Islanders made him the first player taken in the draft, highlighting a day that saw the Rangers' archrivals trade their best defenseman before making three of the first 17 picks.
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Recently hired general manager Mathieu Darche started the retooling of the Islanders by trading Noah Dobson, a restricted free agent defenseman, to the Montreal Canadiens for 23-year-old forward Eric Heineman and the 16th and 17th picks in the first round of this year's draft. A few hours later — and after the Canadiens signed Dobson to an eight-year, $76 million contract — the Isles surprised no one by selecting Schaefer, a defenseman with Erie of the Ontario Hockey League, with the No. 1 pick in the draft. They capped their night by taking two more promising young players with the picks they received from Montreal for Dobson.
Schaefer (6-foot-2, 186 pounds), is the second player from Erie to be chosen first overall. The other was center Connor McDavid, who went No. 1 to the Edmonton Oilers in 2015.
'It's such an honor, and especially the first overall pick, Mathieu Darche's first pick,' Schaefer said. 'So happy for him to get the GM job, and very honored to be his pick. But I've heard so many great things about the organization, the team, the players. I know (Islanders center) Bo Horvat really well. … They have very skilled players, so I can't wait to get there this week and train. I'm looking forward to it.'
Darche was thrilled to land the consensus No. 1 player available this year.
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'Matthew the hockey player is outstanding,' he said. 'The human being is as outstanding as the hockey player. We're so excited to have him here.'
And clearly Schaefer is fired up to join the local rivalry against the Rangers.
Related: Why Rangers draft history since 2000 not pretty without 1st-round pick
Rangers rivals trade Noah Dobson, take Matthew Schaefer No. 1 in draft
The Islanders hope Schaefer, their first No. 1 overall pick since John Tavares in 2009, will be able to step into Dobson's skates next season. They'd be thrilled if he turned out like the only defenseman they've taken with any of their five No. 1 overall picks. Denis Potvin, the first player taken in the 1973 draft, tortured the Rangers during a 15-year career that included four Stanley Cup championships and ended with induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
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You may have heard those chants of 'Potvin sucks!' at Madison Square Garden.
There was a lot of speculation that the Isles would try to use the two first-rounders they obtained from Montreal to grab James Hagens, a center from Boston College and a Long Island native who grew up an Islanders fan. Though fans at the Islanders' draft party were chanting his name, Hagens went to the Boston Bruins with the No. 7 pick.
Instead, Darche opted to keep the two picks he acquired from Montreal and selected forward Victor Eklund of Djurgarden in Sweden's second division with the No. 16 pick. He's the brother of San Jose Sharks forward William Eklund and played for Sweden at the World Junior Championship in 2024 and 2025. Eklund will need to get stronger to enable him to make the most of his plentiful skills and hockey smarts, and he said he plans to return to Sweden after attending development camp in July.
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
They used the No. 17 pick on another defenseman, taking Kashawn Aitcheson from Barrie of the OHL. Aitcheson's physicality and style of play are reminiscent of former Rangers captain Jacob Trouba – he plays with the kind of edge NHL teams love, is a good skater and has good hands and hockey smarts.
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Aitcheson looks like he has all the tools to be a top-four NHL defenseman, although he's likely to need at least one more season in juniors.
The Rangers were one of a handful of teams that watched the action but won't get to make a pick until the second round begins on Saturday. Their first pick will be No. 43, the 11th choice in the second round.
New York owned the No. 12 pick in the draft, but opted to send it to the Pittsburgh Penguins, who had acquired it from Vancouver after the Canucks obtained it in the Jan. 31 trade that brought center J.T. Miller to the Rangers. The Penguins opted to trade it to the Philadelphia Flyers for two lower picks in the opening round, Nos. 22 and 31. The Flyers used the choice to select Jack Nesbitt, a center from Windsor of the OHL.
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The silver medal will be split three ways, with Vladic K., Hugo T. and Samuel P. all finishing with 85 points. Each of them maxed out four questions for 15 points each, added a 10-spot somewhere else, and then nailed Draisaitl for the bonus. And each fell just short. All three will have plenty to think about over the offseason — Vladic can blame the Kings for missing the mushy middle by a few points, Hugo can curse Georgiev for falling three starts short of 50, and Samuel had an agonizing four different questions with just one miss: Montreal for question 2, Seattle for question 3, Matthews for question 9 and Vatrano for question 10. Not only would he have won the contest if any of those had come through, he'd also have won if he'd only left any of those answers off his entry entirely. Safe is death, as John Tortorella once said, but Samuel would be our champion if he'd only played it just a bit safer. But he didn't, and that's good news for our winner: Congratulations to Matt A., whose 88 points were enough to top our leaderboard in a 'Jamie Benn wins the Art Ross' level performance. Matt banked the max points on each of the first three questions before getting tripped up by DeBoer and Tocchet on the coaches. He recovered with max scores on the GMs and the goalies, dodged the Calder bullet by listing only Macklin Celebrini and Lane Hutson; his fans probably booed him for playing it safe, but those three points made the difference. He banked 10 more points on the Hart question to get to 88, which was enough to overcome misses on the Norris and the transactions. And yes, you're reading that right — for the first time, our winner is an entrant who bypassed the bonus question. I wasn't sure it could be done, but the NHL is full of surprises. Congratulations to Matt. Thank you to everyone who played along, even if you were one of the many entries to get a zero for the year. And a huge thanks to Mike, whose work in scraping the data and maintaining the entry database is invaluable. We'll plan to do it all again in September. Until then, take the summer to strategize. Most of you have nowhere to go but up. (Top photo of Auston Matthews: Dan Hamilton / Imagn Images)
