Boumedienne's route to the draft ran through Columbus

Sascha Boumedienne is rarely sitting still.

Though the Boston University defenseman began his hockey career in Sweden, walking and biking to his local rink every day, it’s rare to find him in the same place for too long.

Since moving to the United States in 2021, the 2025 NHL Draft prospect has accelerated his development en route to becoming one of the youngest players in college hockey last season. After just one season in the USHL, Boumedienne made the jump to the college level and helped his Terriers to the national championship game.

And just a few weeks after the title game in St. Louis, Boumedienne left Boston and joined Team Sweden for the Under-18 Men’s World Championships. Notching 14 points in seven games, he set the single-tournament record for points by a defenseman.

Boumedienne is the No. 18-ranked North American skater in his draft class, with many predraft rankings listing him as a potential first-round pick. That’s a dramatic rise from October, when Boumedienne earned a ‘B’ ranking in the NHL Central Scouting Preliminary Players to Watch List, projecting him as a second- or third-round pick.

But before all of that, and before he inevitably hears his name called next week at the draft in Los Angeles, Boumedienne planted roots well west of Commonwealth Avenue – Columbus.

Boumedienne is a product of the Ohio AAA Blue Jackets, playing with the U16 team for two years as a 14- and 15-year-old.

“It was a great place to be,” Boumedienne said. “I have nothing but good things to say about playing for the AAA Jackets. It was a blast.”

Sascha’s father, Josef, worked with the Columbus Blue Jackets for over 10 years, first as a scout before joining the bench as an assistant coach. On the side, though, he was coaching his son as an assistant with the AAA program – and watching him blossom into an NHL-caliber defenseman.

“For Sascha, hockey was love at first sight,” Josef said. “He’s had that will and desire and that intensity to become a hockey player, all since he was 7, 8, 9 years old.”

Boumedienne was an eager kid playing hockey in Sweden. When he got to Columbus, he had all the makings of a professional.

“We got every asset there to become a very good hockey player,” Boumedienne said of the AAA program. “The coaches and the skill skates and the practices – everything's really dialed in. It means a lot that I got to play there and helped a lot for my development.”

“He’s a hockey-first kid”

You could say Boumedienne was born into hockey.

In January 2007, Josef Boumedienne was in the middle of his season with Oulun Kärpät in Liiga, the top hockey league in Finland. Kärpät plays in Oulu, Finland, the third northernmost city in the world with a population of more than 100,000.

Josef would ultimately hoist a championship trophy that season, but that wasn’t close to the best part – Sascha, the second Boumedienne son, was born that January.

“It was obviously a special time,” Josef said. “We had our first son a year and a half earlier, and then Sascha in 2007, and we ended up winning a championship. It was a good year.”

A former NHL player, Josef Boumedienne retired from professional hockey in 2013. Promptly, he was hired by the Blue Jackets as a scout, and the family settled in Stockholm, Sweden. That’s where Sascha’s love for the game originated.

“I started playing for my hometown team, five minutes away,” Boumedienne said. “So I'd walk to the rink, bike to the rink and be there all day, whenever I wasn't in school or had homework. So that was great, I loved it.”

And although Josef encouraged all three of his sons – including Sascha’s older brother, Sami, and younger brother Wilson – to try all kinds of sports, hockey was all that Sascha wanted to do. Josef quickly got on board and began coaching his middle son when he was 8 years old.

“I wouldn't be where I'm at right now without him,” Sascha said of his father.

The Boumedienne family made the journey across the Atlantic in 2021, when Josef was promoted to be the director of pro scouting with the Blue Jackets. In a new city in an entirely new country, the next steps were a no-brainer: joining the AAA Blue Jackets.

“I knew the reputation of the program being a really good AAA program with good people,” Josef said, citing Chris Clark – current Blue Jackets director of player personnel and Cleveland Monsters general manager – and his son, Braiden, as advocates for the program.

“They brought us in with open arms,” Sascha said.

Boumedienne’s elite skating and puck handling earned him a spot on the Under-16 team as a 14-year-old. That caught the attention of Pat Cannone, a coach with the AAA Blue Jackets and former Miami University captain.

“The way he skated and moved the puck, you could tell that he was a special player,” Cannone said. “He’s a hockey-first kid. He sleeps and breathes it. He watches hockey religiously.”

Cannone would go on to coach Boumedienne for his second season on the Under-16 team.

Boumedienne’s rapid development turned heads – he broke out for 42 points as a 15-year-old with the AAA Blue Jackets in 2022-23, earning him a tender from the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms. This allowed Boumedienne to join the Phantoms organization without going through the USHL Draft, a route very few players can take.

Youngstown, about 150 miles northeast of Columbus, was shaping up to be a place Sascha could spend two more years developing. He debuted with the Phantoms at 16 years old, a good three to four years younger than some of his competitors.

But after a 27-point season that earned him a spot on the USHL All-Rookie team, a new home came calling: Boston University. Jay Pandolfo wanted Boumedienne, at 17 years old, to join his squad a year early.

“After the year in Youngstown, I felt like it was the right decision for my development and my career,” Boumedienne said. “You get to play against grown men instead of playing in juniors and playing against 17- and 18-year-olds.”

After all, it would be just another season where Boumedienne was playing up – something he’d done since he got to the U.S.

“I was hesitant about it because he had a really good year in the USHL,” Josef said. “We talked a lot about it, the challenges that will arise playing as a 17-year-old in college hockey. But he was adamant he wanted the challenge, and I'm proud of how he handled it.”

Playing with fellow Swede Tom Willander, Boumedienne made strides as part of a young BU blueline, posting a 3-10-13 line and playing in all 40 games with the Terriers. Boumedienne had the rare luxury of playing a season of college hockey in his draft year, giving him a leg up on the rest of his 2025 draft class.

“I matured as a person and a player from that,” Boumedienne said. “So that's what I wanted to do at an early age, just to learn and develop and play against bigger players.”

Yet without his time in Columbus, Boumedienne said, that might not have even been an option.

“With the AAA Jackets, you get the opportunity to become an NHL player,” Boumedienne said.

Blue Jackets Roots

Before Boumedienne’s second season with the Under-16 team, Cannone – the newly minted U-16 team coach at the time – took the time to get breakfast with Sascha, Josef and Nick Petraglia, the executive vice president of the Ohio AAA Blue Jackets.

“We kind of just got to know each other and laid out the goals we saw for him for the season. Those were my first impressions of Sascha,” Cannone said. “He was a very well-spoken kid. You can tell he was raised properly – he was humble. I think he knew in the back of his head that he was special, but he never came across as arrogant.”

Though Boumedienne has added more size and weight since his time with the AAA team, some things have stayed the same. He’s regarded as a terrific skater with superb offensive instincts. That was evident to Cannone before any scouting reports were put out.

“His edge work, his ability to run a power play and provide offense were elite,” Cannone said. “He has a very good one-timer, so any time he was able to get that off and showcase that also made him stand out. But the way he carried himself as a young kid at that level, not just with his play on the ice but off the ice, you could tell that he was special and different.”

Even as a thinner 15-year-old playing against much larger skaters, Boumedienne caught eyes. His skating – perhaps a result of the edgework he perfected with his dad, and extra skates he did in Columbus – carried him and his team further than they could have imagined. Cannone remembers a narrow overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres AAA team – ranked top five in the country – that wouldn’t have been close without Boumedienne.

“From then on, you know, it opened my eyes a little bit more of how special he was and his ability in those games against top teams to stand out,” Cannone said. “He was doing this all as a kid who was playing a birth year up. When you factor all those things in, you take a step back and you realize, ‘All right, this kid's gonna be different than a lot of these other kids.’ And you see that firsthand.”

Perhaps Boumedienne’s talent is also an inherent consequence of being surrounded by the game of hockey. With his dad’s role on the Blue Jackets, Boumedienne spent much of his time in Columbus at Nationwide Arena with his brothers and friends.

“I have a ton of good memories from there, just strolling around the rink and watching NHL games. I had the chance to go down in the locker room every once in a while, which is pretty special, and talk to some of the players,” Boumedienne said. “Being able to do that is everyone’s childhood dream, right? That was one of the most fun things with moving to America.”

Boumedienne cited Zach Werenski as his favorite CBJ player growing up. As a defenseman, that’s not a bad role model to have.

With a front-row seat for some of the best hockey in the world, Boumedienne’s love for the game only further blossomed in Columbus. It helped that, with the AAA program, he got a second family.

“They treat their players so well,” Boumedienne said. “It’s an unreal organization. I made some really good friends, and we were on some teams with some really tight bonds, and we became really close.”

“We take a deeper approach into their development, and specifically what each player needs to succeed at the next level while also creating an environment of a team and community to succeed on and off the ice,” Cannone said.

The family atmosphere cultivated within the AAA program is infectious. At the mention of Cannone’s name, a massive smile erupted on Boumedienne’s face. It’s a testament to the people – from the ground up – that invest in the person first.

“It starts with Ed Gingher and Nick Petraglia,” Cannone said. “I think the program does a really good job of identifying the right people that coach and work within the program that are in it for the right reasons and want to help Columbus hockey grow. I think it separates the AAA Blue Jackets program from others, where the people that are involved genuinely care and want to see these kids not only succeed in hockey, but in life as well.”

Some of that family, Josef says, will be making the trip to Los Angeles next week for the draft.

“The passion grows every day when you’re around good people,” Josef said. “It's been great for both (Sascha and Wilson), and then for myself and my whole family, quite frankly. We have a lot of friends we learned to know in the AAA program.”

Boumedienne’s still on the move – after his college season and U-18 World Championships, he had the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo. He’ll soon get on a plane and head to Los Angeles for the draft, another step in a career that’s only just getting started.

The prospect of getting drafted by an NHL team excites him. The prospect of that team being the Blue Jackets?

“That'd be something special. Obviously living in Columbus and going to all those games, it feels like home,” Boumedienne said.

“For me, it would be really special," Josef said. "I worked for this organization for 11 years, and that's the longest tenure I've had with one team counting my playing career as well. I love the Columbus Blue Jackets. If that were to happen, that would be great.”

Hundreds of miles away, Cannone will be tuning into the draft, as will many others in Columbus. Boumedienne has called so many places home, but the AAA program is proud to have aided him on a big step in his hockey career.

“It means a lot that I got to play there,” Boumedienne said. “They do a really good job, and we had a blast playing there.”

“Columbus is an area where hockey's been growing for a while now,” Cannone said. “We’re still continuing to grow. So it's very rewarding to see the kids that grew up here (and) move here do big things, whether it's on the ice or off the ice.”