Upside Hockey's 2025 NHL Draft Rankings: November Edition
Our Top 96 Prospects with NHL Central Scouting's Players to Watch
2025 NHL Draft Class
This is looking to be a high-end draft class mainly for Canada and Sweden. USA is having a down year, particularly the NTDP team, with last year’s NTDP graduates, James Hagens and Logan Hensler, being the exceptions. Russia is having a particularly down year, as is Finland.
Early on this season, we have surprises galore:
Top 10 Roaring Fast Starts: Porter Martone, Michael Misa; blueliner Matthew Schaefer continues his climb up our rankings, moving up from 12th to 6th overall from our Early Rankings to our Preseason Rankings, now up to 3rd overall.
Disappointments: The entire US NTDP Team except for maybe Murtagh; as well as Frondell and Ryabkin
The Upstarts: Jackson Smith, Carter Bear, Lynden Lakovic, Eddie Genborg, Nathan Behm, Cameron Schmidt – note, mostly WHLers
Mammoth Quintessential Rankings Spreadsheet
Our mammoth quintessential rankings spreadsheet format is composed by the incomparable Chief of Scouting, Eldon MacDonald. We have already featured nearly 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 we have highlighted NHL Central Scouting's preliminary players to watch. 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 - nearly 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
Videos! We've moved these just to the right of the prospect name, linking to video profiles (mostly via YouTube)
Unique prospect analyses
Screenshots — November Rankings
For the full mammoth rankings spreadsheet check it out at our 2025 NHL Draft Headquarters.
Our minimalist-style first round table:
Readers spoke and we listened on this one: graphics designer extraordinaire Hunter Jones (Hunter Jones Design) suggested we have a more simplistic, easy-to-read rankings table to pair with our extensive spreadsheet rankings format.
Our mammoth quintessential rankings spreadsheet format:
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).
Still To Come…
We will also have in-depth scouting profiles from our scout Trevor Curtis embedded/linked within the rankings spreadsheet eventually. When added, they will under the second column "UH" (Upside Hockey) - simply click on that to be taken to that respective profile. For the 2024 NHL draft, we completed over 240! Also, as time goes on, scroll over to the right to view selected video links to do your own armchair scouting. See our rankings from the 2024 NHL draft to see what's in store as the season unfolds.
For more examples of our in-depth prospect profiles and prospect tiers, check out their upside on our 2024 NHL Draft Prospect Profile page. We'll be setting up a specific page for the 2025 draft eligible prospects as well. We'll also be adding mock drafts throughout the season.
Please enjoy and, as always, we appreciate any feedback from all of you Upsiders.
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