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Draft 2025: not even one defenseman under six feet drafted
Mathis Therrien
Draft 2025: not even one defenseman under six feet drafted
Credit: Getty Images
After an interminable evening and day, the decentralized National Hockey League Draft 2025 is finally behind us.

An event that is normally so exciting and eagerly awaited ended up being more painful and time-consuming to follow.

Still, there were some exciting transactions, and above all some interesting selections from the 32 NHL teams.

In a draft dominated once again by Canadian prospects, there was a nice variety of countries of birth among the prospects drafted this year, as reported by Frank Seravalli.

17 different countries of birth is the highest total for a draft in 21 years.

However, what really caught my eye in this interesting statistical review was the size of the players selected.

Only 30 of the 224 players selected this year are less than six feet tall.

This statistic really surprised me, and that’s where I pushed my research to finally realize something even more shocking.

No defenseman under six feet tall was drafted this year.

You read that right, every defenseman selected in the last two days is six feet or taller.

It’s pretty crazy to notice that, especially considering it’s a 21st century first when compared to other drafts since the early 2000s.

There was already a drop-off in small defensemen in 2024, with only three defensemen under six feet selected, but this is as low as it gets.

This statistic shows that the NHL is still very much focused on big, tall players, especially among defensemen.

It’s easy to see why the Florida Panthers’ recent success with a big defensive brigade has clearly influenced the League’s mentality more than Lane Hutson’s Calder Trophy for a 5’9″ defenseman.

(Credit: NHL.com)

No defenseman from the recent two-time Stanley Cup champions is shorter than six feet, and we have to believe that this has BIGLY influenced the 2025 draft.

If we go even further into the statistics, we realize that it was only in the third round, at No. 89, that the first six-foot defenseman, Artyom Gonchar, was drafted.

And in the end, only nine defensemen measuring exactly six feet were drafted this year.

In short, there’s clearly still a big preference and trend for tall players and especially tall defensemen in the NHL.

Size still has a huge influence on NHL team draft picks, despite Lane Hutson’s huge success in his NHL rookie season.

The Habs’ star defenseman hasn’t revolutionized the NHL, at least not yet.


Overtime

– Coming up.

– All the better.

– He had a great season in Ottawa.

– The end of a great career.

– Of course it is.

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