2025 NHL Draft Rankings: Lottery Edition

The May Edition of Our Top 224 NHL Draft Rankings from Chief Scout Eldon MacDonald

Updated May 5, 2025

This is a quick update just to get our NHL Draft Lottery Edition of our rankings out in the wild.

Matthew Schaefer Maintains Number One Ranking

Outstanding blueliner Matthew Schaefer leap-frogged exceptional centreman Michael Misa into 1st overall in our January rankings led by our Chief of Scouting Eldon MacDonald and continues to hold his spot this time around. He seems like the odds-on choice for the NHL Draft Lottery winners - the New York Islanders.

Our mammoth quintessential rankings spreadsheet format is composed by the incomparable Chief of Scouting, Eldon MacDonald. We have already featured well over 350 prospects. Check back throughout the season as we add many tabs/sheets (subjects along the bottom) to this spreadsheet.

In this edition, in the second column and second tab we have highlighted NHL Central Scouting's Final Rankings with our own unique way of consolidating the rankings rather than the segregated format NHL Central Scouting presents them as.

There will be too many cool features to list; explore yourself with this top of mind:

• Our exclusive rankings go well beyond the first round - over 350 prospects included in this version

  • Check out the tabs along the bottom such as Defense, Under 5'11, etc. for various unique rankings

• Quick access to Elite Prospects profile linked for each prospect for updated stats - click on the respective prospect name

• Unique prospect analyses as featured in our Substack Prospect Profile series (be sure you’re signed up to our eNewsletter here to keep getting these:

We have in-depth scouting profiles from our scout Trevor Curtis embedded/linked within the rankings spreadsheet. As the prospect profiles are completed on our dedicated 2025 profiles page, they will under the third column "UH" (Upside Hockey) - simply click on that to be taken to that respective profile. For the 2024 NHL draft, we completed over 240!

Please enjoy and, as always, we appreciate any feedback from all of you Upsiders.

Screenshots — May Top 224 Rankings

For the full mammoth rankings spreadsheet check it out at our 2025 NHL Draft Headquarters. Beyond the Top 224 we have prospects on our watch list for the remaining players of interest.

1. Our minimalist-style first round table:

   Readers spoke and we listened on this one: graphics designer extraordinaire Hunter Jones (Hunter Jones Design - he’s also designed our new logos and branding!) suggested we have a more simplistic, easy-to-read rankings table to pair with our extensive spreadsheet rankings format.

   

2. Our mammoth quintessential rankings spreadsheet format:

   

3. NHL Central Scouting's Consolidated Final Rankings:

   (compiled by Eldon MacDonald)

Viewing Tips

From our 2025 NHL Draft Rankings HQ at Upside Hockey, here are our tips for viewing the full rankings:

🔁 For optimal viewing on smartphone or tablet, turn your phone to landscape view; columns in the spreadsheet are frozen (i.e. won't move) up to and including the first column of linked videos, thus scroll through the spreadsheet rankings by swiping on the right side of this information-packed resource.

▶️ You can open up the spreadsheet rankings to a separate page by clicking the icon in the upper right-hand corner. This should open up the spreadsheet and you can select "open with" your platform of choice (Google Sheets works well).

We’re also now hanging out over on Bluesky if you’d like to follow up there.

For the full mammoth rankings spreadsheet check it out at our 2025 NHL Draft Headquarters at UpsideHockey.com.