Wang could be historic selection at 2025 NHL Draft

The 2025 Upper Deck NHL Draft will be held June 27-28 at L.A. Live's Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The first round will be June 27 (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+, SN, TVAS) and Rounds 2-7 are June 28 (Noon ET; NHLN, ESPN+, SN, SN1). NHL.com is counting down to the draft with in-depth profiles on top prospects, podcasts and other features. Today, a profile on Oshawa defenseman Simon (Haoxi) Wang. Full draft coverage can be found here.

Haoxi Wang left China for Canada as a 12-year-old with his hockey gear and a very rudimentary understanding of English.

Five years later, the 6-foot-6, 222-pound defenseman has grown into a potential first-round pick for the 2025 NHL Draft.

Wang, who also goes by Simon, began the season with 22 points (four goals, 18 assists) in 38 games for King in the Ontario Junior Hockey League.

But looking for tougher competition, he signed with Oshawa of the Ontario Hockey League on Dec. 3. He had two assists in 32 regular-season games and three assists in 21 OHL playoff games to help Oshawa reach the league championship series.

The 17-year-old is No. 34 in NHL Central Scouting's final ranking of North American skaters.

"Simon is an interesting prospect," Central Scouting's Nick Smith said. "His skating, footwork, edges are remarkable for a player his size. He’s a late bloomer who really hasn’t played a lot of hockey so there was definitely an adjustment period entering the OHL. Oshawa has a really deep [defense] corps as well so he may have played more or a different role on another team. His minutes were limited but I give him a ton of credit, he’s really learning how to defend and manage his risk/reward game. He played physical in their playoff run and moved pucks and made good first passes."

Wang is committed to play at Boston University but with the NCAA rule change that permitted players to skate in the Canadian Hockey League, Wang saw an opportunity to test himself at a higher level before starting college.

"I did everything I could in [the OJHL] and I wanted to go for a deep playoff run with Oshawa," Wang said. "I knew there's going to be a lot of setbacks and challenges waiting for me ahead, so I'm excited for the challenges at Oshawa.

"I feel like my raw skills was there from Day 1, the only thing kind of slowing me down was my confidence level and how much I believe in myself, all the way until, I'll say, the playoffs. That's when I started really being myself once again."

If Wang had issues adjusting to the pace of OHL play, his coaches didn't see it.

"For me, it was right away," said Brad Malone, Oshawa's coach last season. "You saw so many good intangibles as a hockey player, his skating, his size, his stick detail, his physicality, his confidence with the puck. Just the way he carried himself. I understood why there was so much hype around him. He's an exciting prospect. You know his story and how he got started, and how far he's came in such a short period of time. It's an exciting thing for hockey, and it's a very exciting thing for him as an individual."

That start for Wang came in Beijing when he followed a friend to hockey practice.

"He started playing, and he told me this upcoming sport is extremely cool," Wang said. "I went to watch one of his practices and then I told my mom, I think I'm in love with the sport. I was 4 1/2 at the time."

Wang loved it enough to make the journey to Canada before he became a teenager.

"One of my friends was in Toronto as well," Wang said. "He started to go for a pro career, and then I kind of came along and stayed at his house for a year. Then COVID hit, so I went back [to China] for a year. Then after that, I just didn't really miss home that much, to be honest."

His mother, Willa Wang, helped along the way, including starting a rink-building company.

"When I was 10, she saw this upcoming market of hockey and the Winter Olympics in China for 2022 at the time," he said. "So she gathered a few partners of her and built a new rink [in Beijing], and started to own the hockey club and the figure skating club. And that's when I have all these amazing facilities to train at when I was kid and build a lot of fundamentals and fundamental skills for me when I moved to Canada."

Wang grew into an interesting enough prospect that Oshawa selected him in the fifth round (No. 83) of the 2023 OHL draft, and hoped to get him into a uniform despite his college commitment.

"For me, you can't teach size, you can't teach his natural ability, his skating ability," Malone said. "When you put those two intangibles together, he makes a very exciting prospect. I think his hockey IQ, both with and without the puck, are very high. He makes a lot of good decisions, a lot of really good reads. He's a tough defender to beat. He understands the defensive side of the game, from a defensive standpoint and being a hard defender and taking on top matchups. I thought the way he distributed the puck and understood certain weak points in teams' forechecks, and then offensively, when to jump down and join the rush. He just did a lot of really good things consistently for us throughout his time with us."

Wang said he'll stay one more season with Oshawa, pushing his Boston University commitment to the 2026-27 season.

Malone won't be there to coach him after being hired as an assistant with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, the Pittsburgh Penguins' American Hockey League affiliate, on June 2. But he saw Wang's plan to return to Oshawa as an opportunity to continue his progression.

"We're looking forward to him coming back and continuing to get better, and continue to do what he does on a daily basis," Malone said, prior to accepting the position with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. "Just continue to make everyone around him better. He's had a big year. He's had a lot to digest in terms of attention and expectation, and he's met those with flying colors. So for me, it's just to continue to do what he's doing, continue to work the way he's working, and whoever drafts him is going to get rewarded with a prospect that's willing to do whatever it takes to be a full-time NHL player. And that for me is what is going to separate him from a lot of people in his age group and his peers, is just his commitment to the game, his hungriness, his eagerness to get in and do the hard things and to make himself better on a daily basis and do it consistently."

Wang has the chance to be the third-ever China-born player selected in the NHL draft, after defenseman Andong Song, a Beijing native who was selected by the New York Islanders in the sixth round (No. 172) of the 2015 NHL Draft, and Winnipeg Jets forward prospect Kevin He, another Beijing native who was selected in the fourth round (No. 109) of the 2024 NHL Draft.

When Song was selected he said his hope was for it to spur growth in hockey in China. Wang said he's hoping to do the same.

"That's one of my goals in the future as well," he said. "I think after my career with hockey, I'll go back to China, help them develop a new generation of players, bring it to North America, wherever they need to go, and help them to become a successful hockey player."

That's down the road, however. For now, Wang wants to figure out what kind of player he can be. Because of his raw skill and lack of experience, his ceiling might be higher than most of his peers.

"I think with my skating and my size combination, I can be a lot of things," Wang said. "I can play in a top-two role or I can play in the bottom-three role. Just all depends on how I develop as a player. As long as I'm putting my mind to it, I'll think I'll be in a great position."