Hagens driven to shine for Bruins after draft fall lit ‘a fire’ under him 

BOSTON -- There was a world in which James Hagens was the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, where the magic of Matthew Schaefer shifted, and the center from Boston College went to the New York Islanders, the team he had cheered on as a kid.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, Hagens fell, a freshman season at BC that didn’t quite measure up to huge expectations, even as one of the youngest players in college hockey, coinciding with the rise of other players like Schaefer, Michael Misa and Caleb Desnoyers. Instead, Hagens was selected by the Boston Bruins at No. 7, bound for another year of college and a future home a little farther north.

“It definitely lights a fire under you,” Hagens said, of the drop in his draft stock, last spring. “Every guy strives to be, you could say, one. It just really -- it should light a fire under you. It’s something that fuels you, not only on the rink, but outside the rink with whatever decisions you’re making: just learning how to be pro, being able to maintain your body, and just be ready to go out there and compete at your very best.”

It’s a message he returned to, recently, midway through training camp, with that draft suddenly seeming so far in the past. As he put it, “You always want to finish first. But it all worked out. It’s definitely something that can fuel the fire, but you’ve got to be where your feet are. I say that a lot, but honestly, it’s what my parents have always told me.”

Because where he is now matters so much more. Hagens, after all, sees the NHL beckon, sees a full-time job with the team that did choose him, a chance to be part of a perennial playoff team, an opportunity to live out a dream.

That could be seen in two games in Buffalo at the Prospects Showcase, when the rookie forward scored six goals in two games, including all four in a 4-3 win for the Bruins prospects in the second game. It was a brilliant start to training camp for Hagens, a shortened preseason that has resulted in the rookie winning a job on the Bruins, where he is set to open what is expected to be his first full NHL season against the New York Rangers at TD Garden on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; ESPN).

He’s looked mature. He’s looked comfortable. He’s looked ready.

“He’s showing it already,” Bruins coach Marco Sturm said. “When he came last year, I felt like he was just a little kid. He’s still a kid -- he looks like one, his face -- but on the ice, it just feels already a little bit different. Part of it is he’s more confident out there now. He’s not as nervous. He knows us. He knows the system. He knows everything. He knows the players. He knows how we have to play. You can tell already. We’ve just got to be patient.”

* * * * *

When Hagens dropped in the draft, it was not his first taste of disappointment, not his first understanding of what it meant to want something he would not get. It is that exact scenario that Nick Fohr calls to mind in thinking through Hagens’ development, his acceptance of what he could be and what it would take to get there.

Hagens, who had hit in so many ways upon joining the United States National Team Development Program in 2022-23, was set to take the next step in his second year when he was invited to a three-day tryout for World Juniors, where he was the youngest player attempting to make the team.

He was cut on Day 2.

“He was bummed out and I was trying to lift his spirits up a little bit,” Fohr recalled of his return to the NTDP. “He was really down and I remember looking at him like, ‘James, you’re really down by this, this team is a really good team. You’re good enough to play there, they just didn’t need you.’”

This was a team with Cutter Gauthier and Will Smith, Frank Nazar and Logan Cooley and Hagens’ future BC linemates Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault.

“It hit me when he said it: He was like, ‘Coach, I’ve never not made a team. Any team I’ve ever tried out for, every team I’ve ever been invited to come to I’ve always made it,’” Fohr said. “And it affected him. It affected him a lot.”

The next stretch was a challenge, through January and February, through inconsistencies and adjustments.

“But he, as good players do, they find their way out of it,” Fohr said.

He broke out of it in a game in Dubuque, a 7-6 overtime loss that might have been one of the few times that Fohr celebrated such a defeat. Because while all the rest of the coaches were grumpy in the coaches’ room after it was over, Fohr realized the silver lining: Hagens had six points, involved in every goal the team scored that night.

“We were like, ‘Hags is back,’” Fohr said. “He’s back.”

That May, Hagens would break a 13-year-old record held by Nikita Kucherov, setting a new scoring record at the 2024 IIHF Under-18 World Championship with 22 points (nine goals, 13 assists) in seven games.

“He never ceases to amaze me,” Fohr said. 

* * * * *

Part of why Hagens is so impressive, part of why he’s such a unicorn, is something that Fohr and BC coach Greg Brown each mentioned, in almost identical terms, when asked about some of the most notable parts of his game.

“His ability to carry a puck with his head up and scan the ice and see all opportunities, and not only see opportunities, but create opportunities,” Brown said.

“I remember watching this little guy buzz around the rink and make all sorts of plays and was always really impressed with his ability to play the game with his head up,” Fohr said.

It is, Fohr said, an underappreciated and under-scouted skill and one that can be transformative. It speaks, too, to the abilities, the natural talents, that Hagens possesses as an offensive player.

It has always been part of his game, a message from his dad, from his early coaches, who would, as he put it, “all harp on it.”

“If you don’t want to get laid out, then make sure your head’s up,” Hagens said. “You’ve got to make sure that you can see every option on the ice. The game is quick, so you never know how long you’re going to have and you’re most likely not going to have a lot of time to make a play. So, especially here, you’ve got to have your head up. It really helps you scan before you get the puck, when you’re at the puck, and after it.”

He knows how fast the game is, especially at this level, how quickly a stick can come free, how swiftly a scoring opportunity can appear.

He wants to make sure it’s never too fast for him.

“He’s a guy who likes to slow the game down,” Leonard, his former BC linemate and current Washington Capitals forward, said last spring. “He likes to have the puck on his stick. He’s very offensive minded, but he’s rounded out his game pretty well and that will definitely help him out on the next level. He really likes to make plays, but he also understands the times when to take a shot.”

It’s not entirely easy to categorize Hagens. Brown sees many of his former players in the forward; Fohr gets glimpses of Jack Hughes and Cooley.

Hagens is a player who is at his best when transporting the puck through the neutral zone, with the ability to not only retain full control but also to put opponents on their back foot as he heads past. It’s an awareness that not every player has.

But that’s not all. There’s something else, something that helped fan that fire at the draft, that helped as he pushed through his final season at BC, finding and making use of all the ice time he could get, drilling down on the details that would carry him into the NHL.

“The thing you notice with James is his competitiveness,” Brown said. “He makes the game look so easy at times that you don’t realize that the competitive side is really burning in him.”

* * * * *

Last Wednesday morning, on one of the few true practice days of the preseason, two players stood on an empty sheet of ice. David Pastrnak had beckoned Hagens out early at practice, a chance to work on some one-timers, a chance to give a bit of advice to the young player that Pastrnak once was.

They stood there, passing and shooting, Hagens in a gold practice jersey, Pastrnak in white, one a 19-year-old on the cusp of breaking in, one the player that same teenager called “an idol for me.”

“To be in the locker room and have him pull me aside, ask me if I want to go out and shoot some pucks, it’s something I’m grateful for,” Hagens said. “It helps a lot when you’re able to, a guy like that, pick his brain. Everything he does, I can learn from.”

That is the plan. That is the hope.

That while Hagens seems set to start the season on a kid line with Fraser Minten, 22, and Marat Khusnutdinov, 24, that he -- and maybe all three of them -- will continue to rise up the depth chart, to become the future of the Bruins, to become the center of the next generation in Boston.

“He’ll be an offensive, point-producing player in the NHL,” Brown said. “Those guys get paid the most because it’s the hardest thing to do. But he has the skills and the mental awareness and the hockey IQ to develop into an offensive player in the NHL. At what level? It’s too hard to tell right now, but he will be a point producer.”

So, it’s possible that, while Hagens didn’t go No. 1, while he sustained the inevitable disappointment, that is what could fuel him, could push him, could sustain him as he takes on the NHL, in a real way, for the first time.

“Sometimes things aren’t meant to be, like it’s cool to be No. 1, but in the end, you want to be in a spot that you want to be at, too,” Fohr said. “You want them to want you and so, I don’t think it could have worked out any better for him.”

He is in Boston, where he went to college, where he built his foundation. He is entering a season with all the chances, all the possibilities in the world, entering a season with a team that badly needs him to be the future All-Star, perhaps the future No. 1 center, that it hasn’t had since Patrice Bergeron’s retirement three years ago.

He is, quite literally, living out his dream, even if it didn’t go exactly as planned.

“It was unfortunate that he dropped as far as he did, but in the end, who’s going to end up being the best player out of the draft, we’ll see,” Fohr said. “It still could be him.”

NHL.com senior writer Tom Gulitti contributed to this report