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Pretty cool, didn't realize there was a Long Island kid that could go right at the very top of the draft in 2025 draft. Hauppauge kid.
Meet James Hagens, the 2025 NHL Draft’s top prospect and hockey’s next American star
Scott Wheeler
Jan 17, 2024
PLYMOUTH, Mich. — The first time James Hagens, his older brother Michael, and their dad Michael Sr. visited Revolution Athletics, a Long Island gym in Bohemia, N.Y., COVID-19 mandates had just lifted and nobody knew who they were.
A couple of months later, when James began working out at Revolution in 2020, he showed up alone as Michael recovered from double hip surgery.
Ben Brokaw, the trainer who took him on, had just graduated from school in 2019 and was interning at the gym.
Even once they began working together, Brokaw still didn’t know anything about James and just thought he was a “young, quiet kid.”
James never did tell him. It took one of the gym’s other part-time hockey and football athletes to fill him in.
“Do you know who that is? When did James start training here?” Brokaw remembers the athlete asking him.
“Oh? He started training a couple of months ago,” Brokaw answered.
“James is one of the best young hockey players in the world,” the athlete said.
“Oh, interesting that nobody ever mentioned this,” Brokaw replied.
At the time, James had just finished his minor hockey career with the local AAA Long Island Royals and was preparing to head off to the prestigious Mount Saint Charles Academy, where his path of destiny would take him to school records, the first line of the 2006 age group at USA Hockey’s national program, and the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge points record (21 in seven games).
Four years after Brokaw learned that that was who James was, the now 17-year-old is the front-runner to be the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. On Monday, in the Chipotle All-American Game, a showcase predominantly for top prospects for the 2024 draft, it was Hagens, a year and a half out from his draft day, who was named player of the game, scoring Team White’s first goal and assisting on their second. The two-point game gave him 50 points in 32 games this season. His coach with USA Hockey calls him one of the top players to ever come through the national program.
“Being here as long as I have now, you start to remember Jack Hughes at this age, and Auston Matthews at this age in a historical perspective,” said Nick Fohr, the coach of the ’06s at the program.
Brokaw knows all of that now, and when he tells that early story, he can only laugh.
“Nobody really knew much about him, which is still funny for me to say,” Brokaw said. “So I instantly had that conversation with James and was like, ‘This is something that I kind of need to know about.’”
Brokaw’s not the only one with a story like that about James Hagens, either.
On the ice, he’s set to be hockey’s next great American star. And off of it, he might be ready to be the face of the sport.
A few months ago, when a guest at Billy Sullivan’s wedding asked him what makes James Hagens special, he said it took him “a year to decide.”
Sullivan, who runs Sullivan Hockey, a video coaching and analysis service for many of hockey’s top prospects, and scouts for the London Knights (who held Hagens’ junior rights before he committed to Boston College last summer), said that Hagens is singular among his clients.
That’s true on the ice, where “there’s a lot that separates him,” he said.
“You can talk about his skating ability and how he floats on top of the ice with dynamic edges, his puckhandling, or his awareness and vision and how he seems to feather passes through a crowd on to the tape on what seems like a shift-to-shift basis, but his killer instinct from puck drop to (the) horn is where the majority of his potent attributes stem from. He wants to be the best and he doesn’t know how to not go hard,” Sullivan said. “What makes Ten (Sullivan’s nickname for Hagens, who wears No. 10 for Team USA) so distinctive is his ability to always appear like the best passing option for a mate, even though they have four others. He’s not just all over the ice, he wants the puck, he needs it.”
But it’s equally as true off the ice, too.
“He is one of best young men you could hope to meet. Humble and casual, and from a great family made up of more people you just enjoy being in a room with,” Sullivan said. “Having that personality off the ice, while being a force on the ice, that’s something special.”
James Hagens is a force both on and off the ice. (Russell Hons / Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
Throughout the season, Sullivan goes over all of Hagens’ shifts, sending him condensed videos breaking down his game. In their back-and-forths, Hagens is a “sponge when it comes to information.”
Said Sullivan: “Just from him seeing a clip or two, I can tell he’s made ‘something’ a priority, and then in short order that ‘something’ is now a weapon in his arsenal. Whether it’s his focus on adding deception to his release, ways to get his first touch into space, creating a multitude of looks off his entries, whatever it is, he’s going to find a way to beat you and make his team better.”
Hagens calls his playmaking his best attribute, though he says his skating is a close second.
“I always try to make the right play and make the guys around me better,” Hagens said. “I try to always play with my head up and never make selfish plays. That’s what I’m good at.”
He has also worked hard, in his time at the program, on his defensive zone play and his faceoffs, knowing those areas are big for a 5-foot-10 center — whether that’s in video work with Sullivan or Fohr, or staying out after practice most days to take draws.
“He’s one of my favorite kids to talk to,” Fohr said. “You can give him a hard time, he can give it to you back. You can have a good, serious conversation with him. He’s got a really good personality about him. His teammates like him a lot, he’s involved in a lot of different groups. That’s James. He just kind of fits in.”
On the ice, according to Fohr, Hagens is as a cross between Hughes and another one of Fohr’s former players, top Arizona Coyotes rookie Logan Cooley.
The shared size (they were all listed around 5-10 in their time at the program), position (they’re all centers), elite skating ability, and cachet as the best players in their age groups have made the trio natural comparisons for one another.
“He does things that remind me of Jack, and he does some other things that remind me a little bit of Logan. And James is James. It’s going to be a few years down the road where I’ll be saying, ‘This guy reminds me of James Hagens.’ He’s his own person. But there’s bits and pieces from those guys that I see from my years with them. He’s just a really, really good all-around hockey player,” Fohr said.
Fohr thinks Hagens’ competitiveness has so far been underrated, too. On Monday, between his two points at the All-American Game, you could see that competitiveness come out in a race with 6-foot-3 defenseman Tanner Henricks late in the first period, Hagens bowling him over for a boarding penalty.
“Jack Hughes didn’t mix it up a whole lot and didn’t get involved into too much of the physical stuff ever and James doesn’t shy away from that. The amount of times I’ve seen James around the net digging for pucks and the next thing you know there’s a scrum somewhere because he won’t let something go because he’s in somebody’s face,” Fohr said.
“And I think that little bit flies under the radar just because he’s that high-flying, skating, playmaking type of guy and a lot of those guys stay away from that type of stuff. He doesn’t shy away from anything.”
If you ask Brokaw or Hagens about their athlete/trainer connection, they both light up.
Brokaw was a younger trainer when they met. Almost all of his athletes play lacrosse, and Hagens was the first hockey player he ever worked with. That has made for a unique trainer-to-athlete relationship.
“(We) decided to learn together,” Brokaw said. “That’s basically how our relationship started. And it only grew from there.”
Once Michael also began working out with them, another layer was added to that dynamic in the gym.
“They push each other. I’m just as close with Michael as I am with James and there’s a competitive dynamic between the two of them that really speaks to the nature of where they’re both at and how successful they both are,” Brokaw said.
Now four years into their relationship, there are other hockey players in their group, including ’07 NTDP forward Conrad Fondrk and others from the NAHL and USHL.
Though James is only listed at 5-foot-10 and 168 pounds, he stands out in that group in the gym no different than he would on the ice. Each summer, Brokaw runs all of his athletes through a conditioning test similar to the one Hagens is put through at the national program, with standardized sled work, bike work and turf work. They’ve been running that gauntlet for years at Revolution and Hagens broke the facility record as a 16-year-old.
“When it comes to conditioning, he’s a freak,” Brokaw said. “He’s able to push himself mentally just as much as he is physically to get what he wants.”
Brokaw also learned quickly that Hagens is extremely goal-oriented. Heading into his U17 season at the program and knowing he was undersized, he told Brokaw that he wanted to become more explosive and add strength specific to when the puck was in his hands so that he couldn’t be pushed off of it against bigger competition. That summer, he also told Brokaw his goal was to make the under-18 team for U18 worlds as an underager. Then he did, and registered five points in seven games as the youngest player on the team, helping them to a gold medal.
“He’s a naturally gifted athlete in every sense of the word. He’s naturally strong in the gym for his size, he’s naturally extremely explosive. But he has worked very hard at it,” Brokaw said. “Me and him both look for every possible variable we can manipulate to make his game better. That’s something we talk about daily, whether it’s sleeping more, nutrition, or his recovery and being able to go every day.”
To understand James Hagens, you have to start on Long Island.
Asked about home after a November morning skate in advance of a matchup with the Fargo Force (a game in which he’d score two goals, including the overtime winner), Hagens said it would always be Long Island — and Hauppauge, N.Y., specifically.
It’s a place where “everyone knows each other” and the hockey community is “so close.” He fell in love with the sport going to open skates at a rink down the street from his childhood home with his brother, his dad, his mom, Kristine, and his younger sister, Emma, a 2009 who is also regarded as a top prospect in the sport.
He attributes his skating ability to one-on-one sessions with his dad, not a skating coach.
“My dad actually took a lot of time with us when we were younger and we kept doing skating work no matter what,” he said. “(The skating) is something I’m really grateful to have and I give a lot of the credit to him.”
Michael Sr. also used to build the three kids a backyard rink every winter where the two boys would settle their disputes in games of one-on-one. Luckily for James, Michael is a defenseman, so they could each practice their “thing” together.
James calls it a “true honor that I’m able to say I made it to here coming out of Long Island, to add to those names that have come out of there.”
He trains with many of those names in the offseason — Matt Coronato, Shane Pinto, Sonny Milano, Joey Duszak, Jeremy Wilmer, among others — in skates run by Mark Cole, a former minor pro player who coaches locally. He has always looked up to Coronato and gives him credit for being a down-to-earth guy who has always been there for advice.
He still practically lives at two of the rinks he grew up playing at, and it makes his day when he runs into old coaches or families from teams he grew up on.
Like most kids from the Island, he grew up an Islanders fan. And like most kids from the Island, he also grew up playing lacrosse and football, the only two sports that rival hockey locally. His mom made him drop football but he stuck with lacrosse right up until he left for the NTDP, winning a state championship with his childhood friends the year before he left.
“Being able to play a different sport was actually one of the biggest things for me,” he said. “I loved that I was able to get my head off of the game and learn a different game and play style. I think it really helped me to link the two games together.”
Even his agent, John Kofi Osei-Tutu of Puck Agency, is from Long Island. In fact, Osei-Tutu grew up playing for the Royals as well. The community is so small that Osei-Tutu lives a “15-second boat ride” down the water from James’ grandfather and jokes that he can wave to him in the offseason. Sullivan, whose video work James credits as a big part of the development of his game, is really the only person in his inner circle not from the Island.
As young kids at 10, 11 and 12 years old, Osei-Tutu brought James, Michael and Providence College freshman Tanner Adams out to skates with his clients so they could chase around guys like Coronato.
“I actually think part of what made James such an impactful player is that he’s been pushed around by those guys,” said Osei-Tutu. “They’ve never taken it easy on him. And you can just see James has a little more snarl than the average skill guy and I think that’s part of that.”
When he was 13 and 14, he played one season with his brother. Next fall, they’re going to play together again when they both start as freshmen at Boston College. Michael, who plays in the USHL with the Chicago Steel, was committed to Harvard before making the switch to Boston College. James always knew he wanted to follow his brother, and also considered Harvard before landing on BC after a visit last summer. James also told The Athletic he “definitely” considered playing his draft year for the Knights in the OHL, calling London “so great” and the team a “big factor” as he and his family discussed where he would play next season.
He can’t wait to play with his brother again, even if it may only be for a season or two before he makes the jump to the NHL. Michael’s the outgoing one who loves to smile and keeps his younger brother loose and focused on the right things. He’s also an excellent student, whereas school hasn’t always been a strength of James’.
“He’s going to be a big help,” James said of going off to college with his brother. “He’s going to be by my side and be able to take my mind off of it through the draft process. He’s family and there’s nothing more important to me than that. (And) it’s cool to see how well he can do on the ice and in the classroom. He can be an honors student and straight As and then carry that outside the rink and be a good person and still be the guy who lightens the mood.”
Osei-Tutu said the modesty and humble nature that Fohr, Sullivan and Brokaw mention when they talk about Hagens comes from a modest upbringing. Kristine and Michael Sr. are both school teachers on the Island. To supplement their income to afford high-level hockey for the three kids, Michael Sr. is the captain of a fishing boat during the summers and Kristine used to work at the local restaurant owned by Mike Bracco, the father of another local product, Jeremy Bracco.
“James is not the guy who just walks into the room and expects everyone to bow down to him and thinks he’s better than everybody else. Kids on Long Island have had a terrible reputation over the years and we’ve done a lot here to try to change the culture,” Osei-Tutu said. “There’s a lot more humility and a lot more gratitude. Coronato’s the same. And James really embodies all of that.
“Everyone gets the time of day and he’s always going to do the right thing.”
If he keeps doing the right things, the sport is his for the taking. |
