Film Room: How Roger McQueen could become the 2025 NHL Draft's best player

Roger McQueen could change a franchise. 

A highly-skilled centre with dual-threat scoring, some of the hands around, power forward skills, and budding dynamism, he brings as complete a skill set as you’ll find. 

After a breakout stretch in the second half of 2023-24 and a blazing start to 2024-25, it seemed like McQueen could challenge for No. 1 overall in the draft class. 

Instead, injury struck. When he returned, it took a few weeks before he regained form, and then his season was cut short after another injury in the playoffs. In total, he played just 20 games. 

Now, he presents the draft’s biggest risk, but also its biggest upside swing. With No. 1 centre potential, he could be the draft’s best player. 

Here’s why. 

Game-breaking skill

This doesn’t need a fancy introduction. Just watch:

There are a bunch of interesting patterns there: The pure handling skill, attacking space, getting to the middle of the rink, and how he's always in motion. Let’s start with the first three. 

McQueen is one of the most skilled handlers in recent draft classes, made even more impressive by his size. Having so much reach confers some advantages, but it’s more of a disadvantage when it comes to puck control. It’s harder to handle pucks closer to the feet, and easier to get poked off the puck with greater distance between the player’s feet and the puck. 

However, players like Evgeni Malkin, Anze Kopitar, and Tage Thompson break that generalization, combining deft in-tight control with full-reach moves and, especially, by attacking space next to defenders. 

McQueen is no different. He has rapid-fire handling and the skill to tap pucks through defenders and dangle under their sticks, but he’s most effective combining those same skills that allow other tall forwards to assemble endless highlight reels in the NHL. 

As McQueen closes in, he angles toward the direction the defender is coming from and pulls the puck back deep into his hip pocket – a deceptive and dynamic position. As they go for the poke, he quickly pulls it forward, accelerates, and cuts through their space. If they try to angle him out, he fakes the wide drive before cutting behind their heels to the middle. Simply put, if he’s going inside, he’s faking wide first, and if he’s going wide, he’s faking inside first, maximizing his odds of success. 

Because McQueen is so skilled at handling pucks tight to his feet, he can adjust mid-move and adapt to what defenders concede, too. And he’s very skilled off the backhand and from tricky positions, like when fending off defenders.

The other special element on McQueen’s dangle reel is the routes that he takes. Notice how he’s always getting pucks in motion and attacking defenders with speed – that’s a skill, one many highly skilled prospects lack. 

It starts with McQueen’s routes in the defensive zone. He reloads a lot, swinging behind the puck, building speed, and presenting his stick. Once the puck arrives, he catches the pass with his feet moving and accelerates into open ice, aiming towards a gap in the defensive armour. 

Though McQueen drives the net with and without the puck often, he’s just as frequently positioning himself as short trailing support or overlapping the puck carrier’s route, becoming an easy-to-hit option with speed already built up. Then, he's looking to challenge defenders with crossovers, taking the empty space next to their feet.

Always in motion, always with speed, and always using crossovers, McQueen creates and exploits speed differentials regularly, often flowing straight into his shot. Those handling skills allow him to cut inside at will here. In the NHL, his timed off-puck sprints to the net, coupled with his shooting skill, will become a greater part of his game. 

McQueen has the classic quick-release wrister off the rush, but also a ton of other skills. He blends shots into rapid-fire handling and shows an impressive ability to adjust to passes and lanes. He redirects passes tight to his feet into the top corner, hammers one-timers from tricky positions, and shows lots of in-tight handling skill – all shown in the above video. 

High-end playmaking potential

While McQueen leans shooting for now, he’s one of the 2025 draft’s better playmakers, with potential to become one of the best. 

Those handling skills directly power his playmaking, highlighted by his adaptability. Whether he’s pulling pucks into his feet before passing, reaching out to pass behind defenders’ feet, or saucing pucks over sticks, he has the skills to find pathways through just about every lane. And he's nearly as dangerous off the backhand, especially when it couples with his reach.

In McQueen’s best sequences, he uses his in-motion skill and ability to shift defensive gaps. But, instead of dangling around, he passes through, setting up point-blank chances. He reads defenders, draws them in, and rips pucks to the open teammate often. On the power play, those abilities go from frequent flashes to shiftly staples, allowing him to control the game. 

McQueen also has impressive underlying numbers, generating expected primary assists per 60 at 5-on-5 at a higher rate than 92 percent of CHL forwards this season (all ages), while scoring in the 71st percentile in slot passes per 60. That speaks to his efficiency as a playmaker and also suggests that simply more volume could take his offensive game to new heights. 

Achieving No. 1 centre potential hinges on increasing that playmaking volume, as well as improving play selection. He forces moves through traffic and overrelies on wide-lane driving at times, missing opportunities to set up teammates in better spots to instead shoot or dangle. Continuing to bolster his off-puck skating will help, too, as some teams were able to disrupt his acceleration and negate him from rush offence entirely. Combined, improving these small things could make him a consistently dynamic force at the WHL level right up to the NHL. 

None of these are unusual or unfixable for prospects, even top-end ones. But there is a bigger concern… 

Track record and injury history

Injuries. McQueen’s injury troubles extend beyond this season. While minor in scope, he hasn’t played a full WHL season yet. And, beyond that, there’s also the time missed worth considering. This season, in particular, is prime on-ice development time he won’t get back. Meanwhile, the vast majority of players – his competitors for NHL lineup spots in the future – did get. 

However, there's no denying the track record – McQueen has been a high-end prospect for years. The fourth-overall pick in the 2021 WHL Draft outproduced Cayden Lindstrom, Beckett Sennecke, and others on the same team at the U17 World Hockey Challenge. The next summer, he was a dominant force at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, outplaying and outscoring plenty of other high-end talents.

Though McQueen’s time in the WHL was more of a slow burn in a tough environment, he, once again, looked like a high-end talent come January 2024, where he put together all of his skills in dominating fashion, putting together draft-minus-one performances that rivalled top-5 locks in this draft. 

Simply put, betting on McQueen isn’t betting on a handful of elite games – it’s betting on a pre-draft-year track record comparable to soon-to-be top-five picks and plenty of elite games over the years. 

The projection

Given the skill set, it doesn’t take much imagination to see McQueen becoming one of the CHL’s very best players. In fact, he arguably already is. 

At 5-on-5 in this sample, McQueen generated scoring chances for himself and teammates at a virtually identical rate to Michael Misa and Caleb Desnoyers, and more than top point-getters like Brady Martin, Jake O’Brien, Ben Kindel, and Cole Reschny. That’s while being an elite player at getting off the wall, gaining the offensive zone, winning battles, breaking up lots of plays in his own zone, and throwing plenty of hits. 

In a vacuum, projecting McQueen is just as easy as projecting Desnoyers, Misa, or Porter Martone. Just like them, he has top-six skills, play-driving potential, and a fallback game to a more complementary second-line role if he can’t translate the full offensive skill set. He, too, has the special outcome: A play-driving dual-threat No. 1 centre who brings value defensively and physically, provided he can make up lost time and continue his transformation into a dynamic power centre. 

With the injuries and lost time, McQueen is certainly a risk, but he’s far from a mystery. He has the track record, skill set, and style of play to become the draft’s best player. 

Wherever McQueen ends up getting picked, there’s no other prospect who could impact the game quite like him. And that chance for special is worth betting on very early.