Boston Bruins Draft Recap 2025

Boston Bruins Draft Recap 2025

The Boston Bruins have been a team that when they do draft in the past few years, let’s just say it hasn’t been an amazing track record, but this season, they may very well have come away with the best pound-for-pound draft class out of anybody. Leading things off, of course, is James Haggins at seventh. I think the world of James Hagens still, and I am absolutely baffled that he fell all the way to seven. Became pretty clear on the week or two weeks leading into the draft that he was probably going to be a back half of the top 10 pick. I just think people have overcorrected on the concerns about him and overcorrected on the benefits on some of the players that went ahead of him. Hagen’s really learned a physical edge to his game this year, which I thought was his biggest criticism at the beginning of the season. I do think that the guys he played with in Gabe Perau and Ryan Leonard just were not a great match for his style of play. And when you look at a player like Hagens and a player that he played with at times this year and Teddy Stigga, another player I’m a huge fan of, those two guys worked way better together in my viewings of Boston College this year. James Haggins is a really, really talented player. Arguably one of the most skilled playmakers in this draft class. High octane, high fun factor. Definitely a big big big swing on big big upside here. Is there a chance Hagens maybe struggles to be a dynamic, intense, and productive offensive center at the NHL level? Sure, he doesn’t have that safety of being a third line center if things don’t really go that well for him. Maybe doesn’t have the size in a lot of coaches minds, but I’m not really concerned about that. I think you give him another year in college, definitely take him along a little bit slower, you might end up with a really, really excellent second line center here that can score and score and score. I might want a better center up the middle really playing those 20 25 minute a night roles rather than Hagens. That doesn’t mean Hagens couldn’t get there. It’s possible. The skill, the quickness, the agility, the finishing ability, and the playmaking vision are just so much fun and really high-end. And in this year’s draft class, I thought that was really valuable. So, to get him at seven, I think that’s a great pick and it’s the one I would have made. At 51st, they took a player that actually was a player that rose on my board at the end of the year quite a bit and Will Moore. He’s a player that came into the season with a little bit of fanfare. He ended my season at 34th on my list. So, to get him at 51, I think is really good value. There were players I had ranked higher, but I see the argument for Will Moore. I thought his under 18 was really, really good. He’s really dynamic and skilled. He’s got a bit of a physical side to his game that I would love to explore a little bit more. His thing is more about hockey IQ, timing, when to use the skill he has, when to protect the puck and how to protect the puck. He just seems to know how to make good reads in the game. I just would love to see more output, more of that confidence and offensive zone pushing to get to the scoring areas, get down low a little more because his ability to generate offense off his own stick, at least during the regular season away from the under8s, was a little bit underwhelming. But you did see those flashes once in a while. you really saw him drop a shoulder, pull pucks wide, drive wide on defenseman, attack the net, all these things that I think really matter. And if he can do that more in the future, I think he’s got a bright future. Getting him here at 51, I think is a great pickup. I think this could sneakily be a really nice bet on a type of player that goes undervalued in the draft year they had, but had really good 16-year-old seasons that people seem to forget about. and maybe they recapture something really special the year after they’re drafted, but there is a bit of a ways to go to get there. At 61st, they drafted Liam Patterson, and Person’s been off and on my list since last summer. I feel like he’s one of these guys that wants to play a much more high-end game than what he’s capable of right now, but you’re betting on him building the foundational tools to get there. And if he does, he could really be something. He wears number 65 for Vea over in Sweden. And you can kind of tell why when you watch him. He just has that offensive confidence, that ability to step up from the blue line, that ability to carry the puck like a guy like Eric Carlson does. He’s not Eric Carlson, I want to be clear, but it seems like he plays like the type of person who had an Eric Carlson poster in his bedroom and grew up wanting to be him. At the end of the day though, Liam is a guy who loves to put the puck on net. He loves to play with the puck, but he’s also a very good skater. Very mobile, very rangy. He’s got some size as well. I thought he showed decently well in the extremely limited time that he showed at the men’s level this year. So, this is an interesting bet long-term that for a second round pick. Maybe it’s a little bit higher than I would have taken him, but he’s an interesting pick nonetheless, and I’m very curious to see where that one goes. Then they drafted Cooper Simpson at 79. Simpson’s a high school kid who played in the USHL way, way more last season than this season. I didn’t find his USHL games this season particularly promising, but I did like him last season seeing him with Tri City. He was on my board for large stretches of this season. Ended up on the watch list. This makes sense to me. I see Simpson as a really high upside but really low floor style player. He’s skilled. He’s agile. But I just didn’t see enough pace or physical resistance that really led me to believe that he would project really well to an offensive NHL role. But that’s not to say he can’t get there. I think at the very least he could become a good college forward. It’s just a matter of consistency and really pushing himself to his best abilities in order to get there because there are flashes of some really impressive stuff in his game. I just didn’t see it enough to really be confident in putting him super high on my board. He wouldn’t have been my pick here. But if you’re looking at his best moments, I see the logic. And then at 100th, they drafted a player who I forgot existed going into the draft, but I actually was told about him months ago by someone in the NHL going, “Who is this guy and why do our scouts keep talking about him?” Vashik Richards or Vosek Blan depending on who you ask or what website you’re looking at that his name is. We’ll call him Vashik for now. He is tall, very lanky, and similar to a guy like Liam Patterson, loves to want to play like Eric Carlson. confidence, really mobile, really, really challenging players one-on-one really often, biting off a lot. And at the level he’s at, which if you’re not familiar, is the second division of Swedish junior hockey. Generally, nobody ever comes from there and has success in the NHL, but there’s always the possibility for one, a player that thwarted with my watch list here and there over the course of the year, but I just didn’t see the explosiveness or the physical play defensively or just the mobility being applied defensively enough for me to really get over the low level of play that he played in. Granted, the team he played on, they won the chance to go to the top division in junior hockey in Sweden next year. So, we’ll see how that works out for him. interesting project pick for me. There were some players I had ranked pretty high in this range that were still available and it would have been a bit of an arm twist to get me there, but I see the logic again with this. I know Boston’s kind of excited about him. I think there’s a lot to dig into here, but he’s a project. You leave him overseas or you at least give him a lot of time before you put him in professional hockey. And maybe you get something here. At 133rd, they drafted Cole Chandler off of Shawanigan Cataract. Cole Chandler was a player that came up here and there over the course of the season and he’s a really exciting player to watch. I think for the QMJHL level, he shows some really good upside. He’s dynamic. He’s got some skill. He’s got some really clever pass timing in the offensive zone and just was able to create some good offense on a team where it just didn’t strike me as the most threatening offensive team when I saw them this year. Granted, I didn’t see Chandler as much as I would have liked. He’s a player that I definitely had to go check out again after the draft, but if you’re going to bet on skill later in the draft, he’s probably not that bad of a choice. I just don’t know if it’s going to be enough to translate to the NHL. But as far as Quebec guys that aren’t really at the top of everyone’s list goes, Chandler was an interesting option. There’s some good playmaking ability, a decent shot release as well. There were some other guys that I think I liked a little more, but the skill and the upside there is really interesting. At 165th, they drafted, I think, the first player I tracked a game of this year in Krill Yameljanov of local Yarl Slavl. Yamelionov always struck me as just a very smart, well-rounded player. He’s not the most physical guy in the world. He’s not the most skilled guy. He plays with a bit of pace, but it’s not his real hallmark. Got some finishing ability and scored a little bit this year. But at the end of the day, what really drew me to Yamelionov early in the year is that offpuck ability, reading where play was headed, getting involved, causing turnovers. This is the type of pick that wherever he goes in terms of talent development, it’ll help him out no matter what because he does have that strong hockey IQ baseline to build around. I think he has a long way to go to project to the NHL. But as your last pick in the draft, he’s an interesting swing. You leave him in Russia for a long time. You build around that hockey sense and that awareness off the puck. And there is a bit of a foundation to his game that you can build on and you could take him in any number of different directions. Maybe he’s just a little bit of everything and you see how it goes. But it’s an interesting pickup nonetheless, and I was really pleasantly surprised that the Boston Bruins took a chance on him pretty late. So, the Boston Bruins come away with what may very well be the best rating out of any team in the entire series, 1C. I don’t think anybody in the draft really blew my mind and drafted everyone off my list that I simply just could not live without. But the Boston Bruins did a really good job doing what I value, which is looking at upside and looking at skill and pace and energy and just betting on the best that a player could be. And I think they did that and they could be pretty handsomely rewarded for doing so. Hagens at seven, stupid good value, really skilled, really dynamic, and everybody’s focused on physical play, which again, I think Hagens is better than advertised. I really worry about people overcorrecting on that and forgetting that this still is a game that’s played on ice and is speedoriented and skill can get through physical play and speed can get through physical play. If a guy like Hagens ends up drawing a lot of penalties cuz he’s pushing through a lot of traffic because of the energy he has, I’m all for it. So for me, Hagens brings a really interesting set of talents that could really guide Boston into a new era really, really well. Will Moore is a bit of a watered down version of that. I want to see some more intensity, some more consistency, but the really bright moments were really bright. Person and Richards are really nice upside bets coming out of Sweden. I don’t know about likelihood with those guys, but you can at least see the upside when you watch these guys play. And if they can just develop really, really well from here, easier said than done, then they might have something really interesting. And Cooper Simpson, Cole Chandler, and Carellian are all solid bets. There were definitely players I liked more than these guys that were undrafted or at least drafted a bit later than where they took them here. Cooper Simpson has had some good results in the past. He was a pretty good US player two years ago and I just didn’t see the same level of dynamic and creative offensive ability this season, but who knows what’s possible in the next little while. Cole Chandler was a fun player to watch and rediscover after the draft and Carill Yiannov has a nice foundation you can build on. And all of these guys are really interesting and I see the logic behind pretty much every pick here. Even if I wouldn’t have gone the same direction in a lot of these picks, I think a 1C is totally fair. They could hit on some of these picks and end up with some really good players. But there is a decent chance that maybe some of these guys don’t hit the mark. Maybe there’s a bit of hindsight as 2020 going on in 5 years, but for right now, I think they ended up doing really, really well. A quick note before we finish today’s video, I just wanted to mention we are at 9600 subscribers, give or take. Getting to 10,000 before next season would mean the world to me. So, if you are not subscribed, which about half of our viewers aren’t, I would suggest subscribing because I’m biased, but we have some good content coming. And our live shows twice a week are really fun. We get to talk about hockey. We talk about whatever else you want. We can talk about the time I ate an onion. We can talk about the future of the sport. We can talk about the current state of the NHL. And we just try to have some fun a couple times a week. And it’s always great to see people come by. Thanks to everybody who already is subscribed. Let’s get to 10K. That’s a nice little project for us to do now. And with that, we’re going to call it. If you like the video, definitely like and subscribe. If you really liked it, definitely consider a subscription over at scouching.ca, where you can get access to all kinds of fun data tools and our Discord server and plenty of other fun stuff that you’re just not going to find anywhere else on the internet. So, check that out at scouching.ca. Thank you for watching and we’ll see you in the next one. And with that, we’re going to call it. If you liked the video, definitely like and subscribe. 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The Boston Bruins made some big moves at the 2025 NHL Draft — and in this video, Will Scouch goes through each of their picks and shares his thoughts on the players they selected. From first-rounders to late-round swings, Will breaks down what stood out, what might work, and what could be questioned.

At the end, he gives his overall thoughts and a final grade on the Bruins’ 2025 draft class.

#NHLDraft #Bruins #Scouching #HockeyProspects #BostonBruins

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