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Height: 6'2 (188 cm)

Weight: 183 (83 kg)

Age At Draft: 17.8

Points per Game (normalized): 1.29

A/P Score: -3.98 (6^th)

Key Strength: Tremendous hockey intelligence, game awareness and skating ability

Key Question: How long will it take him to win his first Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defenseman?

One of the greatest travesties of the 2024-2025 draft prospect season was seeing Matthew Schaefer leave Team Canada at the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championships with a broken collarbone. Not only did Canada lose its best player and a likely chance at a gold medal, but everyone missed out on watching months of play from the most gifted defender (and probably most gifted player overall) in the draft class. Schaefer is also one of the youngest players in the class, with his September 5th birthday beating the cutoff by only nine days. Schaefer plays masterful hockey, the kind that catches the eye of everyone in the rink with the fluidity of his skating, the calm puck management and passing, and the loaded potential energy that can be released at any moment either as an end-to-end rush, a perfect long pass or a crashing slapshot. 

Schaefer uses elite four-way agility and smooth skating to cover a lot of ice in just two or three steps, giving him great positional advantages in his own end. With his size and lateral movement, he can strip away space from attacking forwards, preventing them from turning him or beating him to the net front. He keeps the play outside and forces puck carriers to make non-aggressive choices or suffer the consequences, and the consequences of turning the puck over to Schaefer can be harsh.

With his head up and eyes active all the time, Schaefer becomes a truly dominant player when he has the puck in his own end. He has so many ways to break down his opponents and get the puck up ice and into the offensive zone. He looks happy skating the puck out of his own end, and has the stickwork and puckhandling ability of a playmaking forward who can dip and duck and dive his way through traffic and easily win a zone entry. If the forecheckers attack him with aggression and prevent the skating transition, he will draw them in with easy backward skating, then snap a 100-foot pass to an open, streaking forward and then follow his pass up ice. If the breakout needs to be more methodical, he has the patience to slow the tempo, work the puck to his defensive partner and wait for the play to develop.

His vision and awareness are just as remarkable in the offensive zone. At the blue line, with or without the puck, Schaefer can be seen processing the play, making perfect choices on when and where to pass, when to drive down to the net, when to move the puck laterally or rip a shot on net. His offensive skills can be seen in his Age/Production Score which puts him among the best offensive blueliners of the last two decades (nestled in with NHL stars like Evan Bouchard, Victor Hedman and Bowen Byram).

Schaefer is a future Norris Trophy winner and cornerstone foundational blueliner with all of the tools and the hockey intelligence to be a superstar defenseman for the next fifteen years.

Brian’s Favorite In-Game Note: “Absurdly talented. He just carried 200 feet, beat two US players clean, drove the net, scored low along the ice.”