Fitness Testing at NHL Scouting Combine Gives Prospects, Preds a Taste of What's to Come

All was relatively quiet early Saturday morning inside the KeyBank Rink in Buffalo - until it wasn’t.

From the far side of the floor, the first of many commotions of the day filled the space, a combination of shouting and pedaling - and then relief.

The culprit was the Wingate Cycle Ergometer test - perhaps the most famous activity of the NHL Scouting Combine - and the 2025 iteration was no different.

The activity itself only lasts 30 seconds, but it’s plenty intense with multiple trainers clapping, screaming and mentally pushing the League’s top prospects over the finish line of the fitness testing portion of the Combine, the grand finale in the form of perhaps the most grueling stationary bike pedals of their lives.

"I think digging deep, it just kind of shows everything you have inside,” NHL prospect and Boston College forward James Hagens said. “You want to stop pedaling. You know it’s 30 seconds, so it’s tough. You have to make sure you push harder and harder every second you go, just digging within and putting everything you have out there.”

“Obviously the bikes are always tough, just kind of a grind in that sense,” NHL prospect and Brandon Wheat Kings forward Roger McQueen said. “But I kind of expected it. The bikes are always tough, and I thought everything went pretty well.”

Just as soon as the work begins, it quickly concludes with one more moment in the journey of a young hockey player striving to hear his name called by an NHL club, one step closer to the realization of a dream.

That portion of the adventure will come at the end of the month in Los Angeles at the 2025 NHL Draft with the Predators set to make four selections in the Top 35 picks, but for now, testing was top of mind.

There are other less boisterous assessments too - vertical and horizontal jumps, bench press, pull-ups, agility and the like - and they all combine to form a profile that can tell plenty about a prospect, especially how far along they are in their physical development at this stage.

"The one thing with all these kids is they're all 18 years old, but they're all a little different in terms of where they are with their physical development at this point - how much they've trained, how much training they've done leading up to this point in terms of when their season might’ve ended,” Preds Assistant General Manager/Director of Scouting Jeff Kealty said Saturday as he watched the fitness testing. “I think the biggest thing is you're just kind of looking to see what type of athleticism they have, what type of potential they have in some of their explosive numbers, which can correlate out to your ability to skate as you develop. It’s a small piece of the whole thing, but just kind of another layer for you to look at.”

In particular, the vertical jump test is something Kealty puts some stock in when it comes to the physical makeup of a hockey player.

“I think a lot of times the vertical jump…can be kind of a marker that you look at that can correlate out to skating potential, explosive potential,” Kealty said. “I think that's one thing that we like to look for.”

The Preds will receive plenty of data from all 84 players who were healthy enough to participate in the testing, and they’ll use that to help determine who they’ll select with the fifth overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft later this month, plus three additional picks in the Top 35.

And while the testing isn’t necessarily a make-or-break venture for the prospects, a young athlete thrives on some healthy competition.

“It was a lot of fun,” NHL prospect and Barrie Colts defenseman Kashawn Aitcheson said. “You get to do with buddies, obviously a lot of competition; yeah, it was really fun.”

Even the Wingate? Yes, even the Wingate, commotion and all.

“The bike, it’s a tough one,” Hagens said. “You just put out everything you have and then take a little bit to recover, but it was good all around.”