The New York Islanders are almost certainly going to draft Matthew Schaefer with the No. 1 overall pick at the 2025 NHL Draft on Friday. 

Most sportsbooks have taken down odds for the first pick, signaling that it’s not even worth posting because everybody knows what’s coming.

Schaefer, a slick-skating defenseman from the OHL’s Erie Otters, is the consensus top prospect in this year’s class, but he’s not the only blue-chipper that Isles fans are desperate to add to the organization.

That’s because James Hagens, a native of Hauppauge, Long Island, who grew up a die-hard Islanders fan, is also projected to be one of the best players in this age group.

Isles Nation has not hidden how desperate it is to keep Hagens on the Island.

Hagens entered the season as the No. 1 prospect, but he was passed by Schaeffer and Michael Misa during the 2024-25 campaign.

And while Schaeffer and Misa are the consensus top two prospects just days out from the Draft, things can go in a thousand different directions from there.

Some rankings have Hagens as the third-best player in this field, while other lists have him pegged just outside the top five. 

It’s unfair to say Hagens is a polarizing prospect because almost everyone has him somewhere between No. 3 and No. 7, but the disagreement on where he fits in this puzzle has made it quite difficult to project where he will be picked and who will be picking him.

Throw in the fact that there’s a lot of chatter that Utah (No. 4 overall pick) and Boston (No. 7) are open to trading their selections, and that the Islanders (among other teams) would be happy to trade for those picks to select Hagens, and you can see why bookmakers, mock drafters, and pundits are all over the place when it comes to projecting where Hagens winds up.

Let’s see if we can use the betting odds to make an educated guess on where Hagens gets picked and how likely it is that Mathieu Darche and the Islanders find their way back into the mix to select him. 

According to the oddsmakers, the first three picks are pretty much set in stone. I would push back on Anton Frondell’s price at No. 3 being so short, but not because I believe the Blackhawks will select Hagens.

Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that Hagens goes inside the top three, but things get very interesting after that.

The Utah Mammoth currently hold the No. 4 overall pick, but there has been plenty of chatter that they’re open to moving the selection.

The Coyotes/Mammoth have made the playoffs once since 2012 (and that was in the Bubble), so there’s a lot of pressure on this team to win now, making them more likely to move their pick for players who can impact their roster next season than other teams this high up on the board.

Adding more intrigue to the situation is that Nashville’s general manager, Barry Trotz, publicly stated that Hagens is “right in their wheelhouse,” which is a signal that the Predators would be happy to pick Hagens at No. 5.

Perhaps Trotz is trying to divert attention from his real plans, but putting something like that out there is at least a signal to other interested parties that they better hop the Preds in line if they want to grab Hagens.

The bookies at bet365 have Hagens priced at +175 to go No. 5 overall, making that his most likely landing spot, at least according to the betting market.

So if the Preds are the likeliest team to pick Hagens at No. 5 (+175 odds carry an implied probability of 40.8 percent), is there a way to figure out the odds that the Isles cut Nashville in line and land the Long Islander?

It’s not an exact science (no sportsbook has posted odds of which team will pick Hagens and I don’t suspect anybody will), but we do have a starting place to work from with Hagens’ odds to go No. 4 overall.

Hagens is 12/1 to be picked fourth, which equates to a 7.7 percent chance when you convert the odds to probability.

But since the Islanders don’t own the No. 4 overall pick, we need to do some guesswork on how this is being priced.

Utah hasn’t been linked to Hagens much, so it’s fair to wonder if these odds already have the possibility of a trade being baked in.

In other words, is the betting market suggesting that there’s a 7.7 percent chance that a team trades with the Mammoth for this pick to select Hagens?

And if that is the case, what are the chances that the Isles can put together the best offer for No. 4?

The Islanders do have some real bargaining chips to work with this summer, most notably restricted free agent Noah Dobson, who is highly coveted around the league.

A deal built around Dobson gives the Islanders a strong starting point to work from to get a deal for the No. 4 (or another pick, should Hagens slip past Utah and Nashville). It would be a hard offer to beat from other interested parties, too.

In other words, it’s not implausible to suggest that the Islanders would be the likeliest team to pull off a deal with Utah for the pick, should the Mammoth decide to move it. That doesn’t make it likely to happen, but it does keep it firmly within the realm of possibilities.

Acknowledging that this is more art than science, I do think you can put out ballpark odds of the Islanders finding a way to bring Hagens home.

The price would have to be longer than 12/1, but not too much wider, because the possibility of a trade is baked into those odds, and the Islanders would be the likeliest team to complete a deal with the Mammoth, given how motivated they’d be if the pick was available.

With all that in mind, I think a fair number to put on the odds that Hagens comes home would be roughly half of 7.7 percent, which is 3.85.

When you convert that number to betting odds, you get 25/1.

That isn’t long-shot territory, per se, but it’s far from a banker.

Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.