The 2025 NHL Draft has the somewhat audacious honor of being the first decentralized NHL draft—that is to say, the first where teams are in their home cities and top prospects are somewhere else. Somehow, it's already time to start scouting 2025 draft-eligibles. Did you know the majority of these guys were born in 2006 or 2007? As in, after the 2004-2005 NHL lockout?
Time marches on. Let's go.
Because this Big Board is so early, expect to see movement in future editions—maybe even significant movement. We're going to take a swing to give us a base to start from, but for this first edition we aren't delving too much into what we've seen in the current season, instead choosing to look at what we already know about these players.