The Hockey East has been an elite college hockey conference since its inception, and it's produced a ton of NHL all-stars. With that, the conference gets the attention of a lot of first-round talent. So who are those names, and which teams snagged the highest-end NHL prospects?
The Hockey East has an argument for the best conference in college hockey, and what comes with that is a lot of future NHL players. But for this year, there are only three schools with first-round picks: Boston University and Boston College have two, and the University of Massachusetts has one, bringing the conference total to five.
Boston College has two returning first-round picks, with Oscar Hemming, who joined the team in the second half of the season, where he was able to build his stock to become the 14th overall pick for the Columbus Blue Jackets. The six-foot-four winger from Finland only had one goal last season and is looking to build off of it and be a key piece to a potential National Championship contender. The second one is incoming junior Dean Letourneau, who had a huge jump in production in his sophomore season. From his freshman year to last season, he went from three points in 36 games to 39 points in 36 games. At six-foot-seven, he adds a ton of size to the team and is the Boston Bruins' first-round pick from 2024. Letourneau will be in the running for the 2027 Hobey Baker, and NHL teams will have a lot of eyes on him if the Bruins want to buy at the deadline.
Boston University has two day-one picks from the 2026 draft, starting with Tynan Lawrence, who joined the team for the second semester and took some time to adjust to the college game. He developed his two-way game a lot last season, and towards the end, the offense started to catch up, and with a full year at BU, Lawrence will have a large role in getting the program back to the pinnacle of college hockey. The second player is Vancouver Canucks third-overall pick Caleb Malhotra, who dominated in his one OHL season with the Brantford Bulldogs. He’s such an elite playmaker, and his goal-scoring showed out in the playoffs, where he had 13 goals in 15 games. The one knock for Malhotra is the fact that he’ll likely only play one season in college before joining his dad, and head coach of the Canucks, Manny Malhotra.
Lastly, we head to UMass, which has Vaclav Nestrasil, a Chicago Blackhawks first-rounder from the 2025 NHL draft. The six-foot-six winger out of Czechia played his freshman season last year, where he finished second in points for the Minutmen with 31 points in 34 games.
