2025 NHL Draft Diary: James Hagens

James Hagens of Boston College in Hockey East is filing a draft diary for NHL.com this season leading up to the 2025 NHL Draft. The 18-year-old center (5-foot-10, 177 pounds), born in Hauppauge, New York, is an A-rated skater on NHL Central Scouting's preliminary players to watch list and a projected first-round pick. He has 20 points (five goals, 15 assists) in 16 games for BC this season. His January diary was filed after he helped the United States win the gold medal at the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship in Ottawa.

Hello hockey fans.

What a tremendous experience it was at the World Juniors.

Obviously, it's the toughest team to make. You're representing your country, so you just kind of have to take the opportunity and run with it. It's something you have to be really grateful for whenever you're throwing on the USA logo. You just kind of have to give it your all every practice trying to make this team.

We got through the preliminary round OK, but we could really feel a change when we got to the medal round. We understood once you're at those medal rounds, it's either win or go home and we wanted to do something that no U.S. team has ever done, go back-to-back. It's something that we all had in the back of our heads, and we all understood how hard it'd be and what we needed to do to make it happen.

One of the best parts was having Nashville Predators forward prospect Teddy Stiga as my roommate. It was really nice, especially being he's my roommate at school. He's easy to talk to. We'll talk to each other a lot, we'll go to each other and in harder times he was someone that was able to help me get through it.

In the gold-medal game, we were down when 1-0 when I was able to score. My goal was a great play by Gabe Perreault to Ryan Leonard. Leonard took that shot, and I just made sure to follow it up. Then the puck squirted out and I just made sure to stick with it and just try to tap it home.

We got down 3-1 late in the second period but no one was giving up. It's just sticking to it, not getting frustrated with the game. We could be down, but we're never out of it. So, we just kind of had to understand where if we stuck to it, everyone kept going.

Then Brandon Svoboda got us on the board there, and then Cole Hutson scored. It was two big goals for us. That really got us going.

I was on the bench when Stiga scored in overtime. I remember I was on the right side of the bench, and I just saw Teddy get past his guy and get the puck. Once he scored, everyone went nuts. You're just trying to get on the ice and celebrate with your team.

When we got the trophy, it just felt really great. It's something that you have to be really grateful for. You kind of feel like everything's paid off that's prepared you for this moment. It's something that I know everyone in that room is really grateful for.

What I'll take from the World Juniors is how to play hockey the right way. You know how tough it is to win a gold medal, and you know what the things you need to do to be able to get to that gold-medal game and win it. So, it's just great that we were all able to come here together and gel well with this group.

Obviously, there's so many guys that you'll have funny conversations with and great memories. So those are all things that you take home with you forever.

Thanks for reading.