Each year at The Athletic, our colleague on the MLB team, Stephen J. Nesbitt, has built an MLB All-Under-25 Team that aims to put together a batting order and a pitching rotation of the best young players in baseball.

Over the last couple of years, NHL prospects writers Corey Pronman and Scott Wheeler have stolen the idea to try to assemble our own NHL All-Under-25 Team.

The idea is simple. Build a 23-man roster (13 forwards, seven defensemen, three goalies) made up of the best players born since 2001 (though a couple of them turned 25 in early 2026, this meant that they were all under 25 when the 2025-26 season began).

Actually narrowing it down from a list of nearly 50 players we felt were worth considering is much less simple. The goal was to build an actual team with actual lines and roles for today. So this isn’t a prediction or projection for these players into the future, but rather an annual team meant to capture the here and now.

Here’s the second annual team they settled on.

The forwards
LWCRW

Line 1

Tim Stützle

Macklin Celebrini

Connor Bedard

Line 2

Matt Boldy

Jack Hughes

Lucas Raymond

Line 3

Cole Caufield

Leo Carlsson

Juraj Slafkovský

Line 4

Cutter Gauthier

Wyatt Johnston

Dylan Guenther

Extra

Logan Cooley

We agreed on the top 12 forwards here and liked the idea of moving Tim Stützle and Connor Bedard to the wing so that Macklin Celebrini, Jack Hughes, Leo Carlsson and Wyatt Johnston could slot in down the middle. From there, rounding out the top six with the pedigree of Matt Boldy and Lucas Raymond allowed us to keep the Canadiens duo of Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovský together.

Despite his missed time this year, Logan Cooley was the final addition to the forward group over Seth Jarvis. The size of Matthew Knies and Aliaksei Protas, the two-way play of Matty Beniers and the youth of Adam Fantilli, Ivan Demidov and Beckett Sennecke were also considered, with the latter trio likely to feature on future teams.

Fantilli and Jarvis were both on last year’s team, and Jarvis is one of the top two-way forwards in the league and was an Olympian this year, so that one was particularly tough and could have gone either way.

Here’s what a theoretical NHL All-Under-25 Second Team forward group depth chart looks like, just to give you an idea of how deep the pool is here:

Aliaksei Protas – Seth Jarvis – Ivan Demidov
Matthew Knies – Adam Fantilli – Beckett Sennecke
JJ Peterka – Matty Beniers – Matvei Michkov
Dylan Holloway – Quinton Byfield – Will Smith
Zach Benson – Anton Lundell – Alexis Lafrenière
William Eklund – Frank Nazar – Jimmy Snuggerud

The defensemen
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Pair 1

Matthew Schaefer

Moritz Seider

Pair 2

Jake Sanderson

Lane Hutson

Pair 3

Thomas Harley

Brock Faber

Extra

Jackson LaCombe

There wasn’t a ton of debate about this defense group. Jake Sanderson, Thomas Harley and Brock Faber just played well on their respective senior national teams at the Olympics. Moritz Seider is one of the better all-around defensemen in the league. Matthew Schaefer and Lane Hutson are offensive leaders in the league overall at their positions.

There were minor debates on the seventh defense spot. We considered Simon Edvinsson, Luke Hughes, Owen Power and Philip Broberg for it, but we eventually settled on Jackson LaCombe, who has been terrific the last two seasons for Anaheim.

Younger D, such as Brandt Clarke, Simon Nemec and Zeev Buium, just aren’t there yet.

The goalies
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No. 1

Spencer Knight

No. 2

Dustin Wolf

No. 3

Jesper Wallstedt

Spencer Knight was the consensus top young goalie in the league after an impressive first full season in Chicago. After that, we could have gone either way with Jesper Wallstedt or Dustin Wolf as the backup goalie. Wallstedt has split starts, so he has less of a track record, even if he has more of a typical NHL toolkit than Wolf.

Our fourth goalie and hardest cut in net was Jet Greaves, who has a compelling statistical case and has been excellent as the starter in Columbus this year. But we went with a little more youth, as Greaves has already turned 25.

Yaroslav Askarov is another potential future candidate for this team as well, but he isn’t quite there yet.

The team