2025 NHL Draft Prospect Profile: Jack Murtagh
Upside Hockey's NHL Draft profile series: American Edition Volume 2
Upside Hockey’s prolific prospect profiler Trevor Curtis’s 2025 NHL draft eligible prospect profiles are all featured on our dedicated page for this with all featured prospects indexed in our table of contents alphabetically by last name. For the 2024 NHL Draft, we had well over 200 prospect profiles completed.
Jack Murtagh C: American Edition Volume 2
LHC Jack Murtagh (6'1", 185lbs)
NTDP: 24gp/ 11g/ 12a/ 23pts, +2, 12 PIM.
Murtagh (pronounced MURR-tag) missed being a member of the 2026 draft class by only a few weeks with an August 22nd birthday, but that hasn't stopped him from being one of the NTDP's best players, albeit in a season where the squad is quite weak and struggling to score. In the CHL-USA Top Prospects Games, Murtagh (2 goals in 2 games) was head and shoulders above the rest of his American teammates, and one of the very few on his team who could keep pace with the opposing players on the Canadian side, who dominated play by a wide margin in both games. Murtagh is a fairly well-balanced offensive threat with his shot being perhaps his best tool, but he's becoming a good distributor with increased confidence this season in his passing skill. He was more of a volume shooter last season but he's further adept at scanning and processing the play this year, and though he might not have elite creativity, he can connect on the more difficult plays with passes through traffic, as well as over and under sticks. As he showed more than once in the Prospect Games, he can dish the puck with a defender draped all over him. Murtagh is a high-IQ player who processes quickly, solves problems on the fly, and can drive play. Even with an added playmaking dimension in his repertoire, Murtagh's best asset is still his shot; he can release in full flight, and score from a distance with a wicked wrister, or a laser of a one-timer.
Murtagh is an excellent skater, perhaps not elite, but fast enough to push pace and put defenders on their heels. He can reach top speed quite quickly, and is rather difficult to knock off stride. There's still room to grow in this area, as the mechanics of his stride need to be cleaned up a bit to fully maximize his power. His hands are quite fast as well, and his dynamic puck-skill enables him to dangle around defenders, making him hard to stop off the rush. Murtagh is more than a finesse player though, as there's some power in his game; he goes to the hard areas to battle in the trenches, takes abuse to make plays in tight traffic, throws his weight around along the boards and will lean into defenders to cut inside and drive the net. He can go around opponents or through them, and doesn't get enough credit for his hard-nosed, fiery, gritty style. Going forward, he will need to bulk up and get a lot stronger to be able to play this way against men. In transition, he excels at supporting the rush as a play-connector with deft one-touch passes and give-and-goes, but he can also find open ice to carry through clean exits and entries.
Murtagh displays solid positioning and a smart stick in defensive situations, but he unfortunately lacks the same intensity and compete on the backcheck as he does in the other two zones. He can be beaten to loose pucks, and doesn't apply the same grade of physicality in the defensive zone, occasionally losing physical battles that he would have won in the other end of the ice. At times, he can be caught leaving the zone prematurely-perhaps this is because he feels the pressure to cheat in order to supply offense to a squad that is starved for goals. Murtagh is still quite young and maybe a little raw, but I really like this kid and I think the best is yet to come. He will have plenty of time to develop, as he is committed to Boston University for 2025-26. I think Murtagh will be selected in the late first round of the 2025 Draft.
