Buffalo, N.Y. — A record-breaking night for Michigan State at the NHL Draft continued late in the first round.
Jack Hextall, a center who played last season for the Youngstown Phantoms, became the fourth incoming Michigan State freshman drafted in the first round of the 2026 NHL Draft at Buffalo’s KeyBank Center. With that, he will be the ninth first-round pick on the Michigan State roster this fall, which sets an NCAA record.
“I didn’t really know what to think,” Hextall said Friday. “Kind of a surreal moment. It’s a dream come true.”
Here is another record: Michigan State saw five of its players and commits taken in the first round Friday night, which ties the 2025 draft for the most Spartans taken. Tommy Bleyl, a defenseman for the Moncton Wildcats heading to East Lansing next fall, became the fifth as the 31st overall pick of the Nashville Predators. Nashville actually traded up for Bleyl, using two second round picks to get the pick from the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes.
Hextall joins sophomore forwards Ryker Lee (Nashville) and Cayden Lindstrom (Columbus), transfer forward Cullen Potter (Calgary) as well as fellow freshmen forward Mason West (Chicago), goaltender Joshua Ravensbergen (San Jose), defenseman Chase Reid (Seattle), winger Ethan Belchetz (Utah), and winger Nikita Klepov (Anaheim) as first-round picks on the Spartans’ 2026-27 roster.
Michigan’s 2021-22 team, which lost to Denver in the Frozen Four, held the previous NCAA record with seven NHL Draft picks on the same team. That included four out of the first five picks in the 2021 NHL Draft.
Michigan State also set a record for its most NHL draft picks in one draft. Counting Potter as a transfer, the 2025 draft saw five one-time Spartans picked in Lee, Potter, West, Ravensbergen and last year’s All-American forward Porter Martone.
So long as Bleyl makes it to Munn Arena in 2027-28, he will tie that group alongside Reid, Klepov, Belchetz and Hextall. As far as he said Friday, he’s making it a point to play for Adam Nightingale’s team.
“I’m really excited, honestly,” Bleyl said. “It’s a fantastic organization. My tour of it, it’s a beautiful campus.”
Hextall is a two-way center who scored 20 goals and had 58 points in 57 regular season games for USHL Youngstown. He projects as a middle-six center for the Spartans, who are leaning on a big freshman class to replenish offseason losses and help contend for a national championship. Michigan State has made the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed the past three seasons but has not made it to the Frozen Four since winning the national championship in 2007.
Before Calgary made its pick, Hextall had a feeling he’d be picked by the Flames. He told his dad, former Illinois-Chicago winger Cory Hextall (who used to play against the Spartans back in the early ’90s) that he thought it was his last chance to be a first-round pick. He was right, on both counts, and it’s a big deal to him to be a first round pick.
“It means a lot. It’s one of your goals throughout the year,” Hextall said.
Part of the process came down to Calgary wanting a center, and a right-handed shot, too. Calgary Flames general manager Craig Conroy told reporters that Michigan State’s development of talent under Adam Nightingale also makes him confident in Hextall’s future growth.
“Competitive, he does everything well,” Conroy said. “Right-shot center, he plays hard on the inside. He does all the little things you need to do to win games. And he’s going to go to Michigan State, so we’re excited.”
Though he is from the Chicago area, Hextall has family in Calgary on his dad’s side, and he’s familiar with the Stampede. He’s also familiar with Michigan State transfer Cullen Potter, a first round pick of Calgary last year, and his future teammate with at least one of those two teams. Hextall will also be roommates with Chase Reid, the seventh overall pick of Seattle.
“I’m super excited to play with them,” Hextall said of his Michigan State draft class. “They’re all incredible players.”
Hextall may get hockey from his dad, but he gets a lot of his competitiveness from his mom.
“She’s really competitive,” he chuckled. “If we’re playing board games or cornhole, she’s super competitive and doesn’t want to lose. Obviously my dad’s the same way. Competing with my cousins and my brother in anything, I just want to win.”
Hextall and Potter will play two other first-round Calgary picks later this season when Michigan State takes on North Dakota in the Hockey Hall of Fame Game on Halloween in Allen, Texas. Calgary’s other 2025 pick Cole Reschny and its sixth overall pick on Friday, Carson Carels, will play for North Dakota this year.
“It’s easy for the development guys, they’re only gonna have to go to a couple teams, but you know, what great programs,” Conroy said. “We believe they’re going to thrive there and then be that much more ready when they come to Calgary. … Can’t beat that.”
Bleyl, a right-shot defenseman, is likely to take the reins of the blue line if Reid makes the jump to the Seattle Kraken a year from now. Bleyl (pronounced BLY-uhl) a mobile scoring defenseman who’s rounding out his game in the defensive end. He measures in at 6-feet tall and 170 pounds, is a mobile playmaker who scored 81 points in 63 regular season games for Moncton, then added 28 points in 21 playoff games as Moncton lost in six games of the QMJHL championship. He was the QMJHL’s Defenseman of the Year, Rookie of the Year and led the league in assists en route to first-team all-star honors.
“I would say I’m a two-way defenseman,” Bleyl assessed Friday. “I have good feet, good hockey IQ, I can break pucks out of the D zone. In the O zone, I can make things happen, seeing pucks through to the net, making passes. And on defense, pretty good body positioning. Good stick, good feet, can kill plays early. Just kind of a reliable guy you can always trust to make those clutch plays for you.”
You could say Bleyl’s skating is as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, which funny enough is the song that came to mind when he was drafted by Nashville. It’s a favorite of Bleyl’s, and he loves country music. He plays violin and piano, and other hobbies include hiking, hunting and fishing.
If NHL front offices still attended the NHL Draft, fans might’ve seen scouts banging the table when Bleyl was still on the board at No. 31. Nashville director of scouting Jeff Kealty told The Tennessean that Bleyl was worth making a move for, even if it took extra draft picks to do so.
“He’s a guy we talked a lot about,” Kealty said. “Just from a strategic standpoint, he was a guy we had earmarked. That if we could do something like this, because we really like this guy. Really glad it worked out.”
cearegood@detroitnews.com
@ConnorEaregood
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan State rewrites pair of records in 2026 NHL Draft
Reporting by Connor Earegood, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Connor Earegood, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
