2025 Draft: Top WHL Defense Prospects

Updates on Fiddler, Smith, Hamilton, and Kettles.

NASHVILLE (The Draft Analyst) — The 2025 NHL draft isn’t expected to provide as many top-tier defense prospects as last year, but that doesn’t mean the upper half of the first round won’t include the usual handful. Of the 24 prospects considered first-round candidates on NHL Central Scouting’s early-season watch list, six were defensemen, with two of the six coming from the Western Hockey League — a circuit with a rich history of providing the best league in the world with physically mature specimens to patrol its blue lines. Although the WHL’s shortage of mid-tier defense prospects for this particular draft makes this year’s options less advantageous for clubs than in previous years, the upper portion still has four standouts capable of developing into top-pairing mainstays.