How James Hagens battled his way to top-prospect status

CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. — The last thing that happens at a Boston College Eagles practice is a couple players dig into a snowbank roughly the size and shape of a few stacked hockey bags and fish out pucks. The bank forms because, about halfway through the session, coaches do a fairly extensive shovel to clear the ice surface, and they cram the collected snow inside a net. The pucks end up in it because practice carries on and some of the shots that beat goalies get buried in the snow. The number of disappeared pucks really starts adding up once players start trickling off the ice after the final drill, leaving another group of hardcores to have all kinds of fun now that the men with whistles are gone. 

James Hagens is an enthusiastic member of that lingering crew, zinging pucks from the slot and flashing one-on-one moves that, when successful, cause him and his teammates to break into exaggerated celebrations. Loving the game on this level is likely something all these college kids have in common. For Hagens, though, moments like these are that much more meaningful because they’re shared with his older brother and fellow Eagles freshman, Michael Hagens. And, really, that’s a small Hagens contingent compared to what puck time looked like in the beginning. 

“The whole family was into it,” says Hagens, noting his younger sister, Emma, is now a fine player with college ambitions of her own. “Our dad would build a backyard rink over the winter, so we’d get a lot of games going on out there. There are a couple videos that are funny to look back on now, me and my brother at such a young age just going out there and fighting with each other, just being brothers.”

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Michael Hagens may soon have the unique distinction of having been teammates with the player selected first-overall in the NHL Draft in consecutive years. Two seasons ago, Michael played with Macklin Celebrini — 2024’s No. 1 pick, now of the San Jose Sharks — on the Chicago Steel in the United States Hockey League. Today, he and James are chasing a Frozen Four title with BC in a season that could well serve as the leadup to the younger Hagens being 2025’s No. 1. (Like Celebrini, Hagens was born in 2006. He didn’t arrive until after the Sept. 15 draft cutoff, though, so he wasn’t eligible in 2024.) 

James has topped several draft rankings so far, including Sam Cosentino’s December edition, and his college career is off to a very strong start, with 20 points in 16 contests. Some of the attributes that have carried him this far are easy to spot: his skating is something else and, like most gifted players, he anticipates movement on the ice as if he can see the future. Hagens, to be sure, can make it all look very easy at times. 

That said, he’s had to push through some hockey hardship in the recent past and — as a guy who stands just under six feet and weighs 177 pounds — has always heard questions about his size. The way he’s answered, though, has never changed, from the time he was scrapping it out on the Hagens’ home rink to his earliest days in the NCAA. And everyone who’s known him, from then to now, believes that fighting spirit is a big part of what will carry Hagens to incredible heights. 

When Hagens finally drifted off the ice after a mid-October afternoon BC practice, he peeled off his equipment, then hit the trainer’s table for some therapy. Partway through the work, he checked in with the trainer to make sure he wasn’t running behind for an early evening interview. He was, and when he later emerged, bounding halfway up the stairs in a mostly empty Kelley Rink, he wore the unmistakable posture of someone who — regardless of being told numerous times not to fret — sincerely hates being late for anything. 

Getting anywhere on time was always a challenge for the Hagens when the three hockey-playing kids were growing up on Long Island. Their dad is Michael Sr., but to Steve Rizer — who, like the senior Hagens, is a fixture on the Long Island youth hockey scene — it was always ‘Big Mike,’ while the Hagens boys were ‘Little Mike’ and ‘Jimmy.’ 

“Both his parents are teachers,” says Rizer, who coached for a handful of years. “They’re very humble people. They’re middle class, they both work hard. They have [three kids], so they were always grinding. Other people around the rink would always help them out as far as, when you’ve got three kids playing hockey, logistically, you can’t be everywhere all the time.”

While Rizer notes you never watch a seven-year-old, or even 10-year-old, play and reasonably think about him being a top pick in the NHL Draft, it was apparent from those early ages James had loads of talent. That was clear to opposing teams, too, and it certainly didn’t take long for Hagens to get a target on his back. In this case, that bull’s eye was painted on a kid who, basically from Day 1, always gave a few inches and pounds away. Ceding turf, however, never happened. 

“He did have an edge to him,” Rizer says. “He always — not led my team in penalty minutes — but he was always one of the top three guys in penalty minutes. We always laughed about it like, ‘James, you’re 20 pounds soaking wet! What are you doing? Get out of the scrums!’

In the past decade or so, Long Island has started to produce a stream of NHLers, from Charlie McAvoy to Shane Pinto to Sonny Milano to Matt Coronato. As the next big talent to emerge from that area, Hagens quickly landed on the U.S. National Team Development Program’s radar. After a couple years of prep-school hockey, he joined the NTDP. In 2022-23, he jumped up as a U-17 player to compete at the springtime U-18 World Championship and won gold. One year later, playing against a bunch of high-end kids from his ’06 birth year who were just a few months away from being drafted, Hagens dominated the U-18s to the point he broke Nikita Kucherov’s 13-year-old record for points at the event, registering an astonishing 22 in seven games. 

“He had some experience there and you could see the comfort he had immediately as we got to that event,” says Nick Fohr, who coached Hagens for two years with the NTDP. “There’s a lot of pressure on that event, there’s a lot of people worried about it and, honestly, I think a little bit of what helped him is he was [ineligible for the 2024 draft]. So, he didn’t have to worry about the draft, he could just go play.”

That U-18 tournament was the bow on a season that was a smashing success overall, but did feature some turbulence. Hagens felt the sting of being cut from the U.S. squad that ultimately won gold at the 2024 World Junior Championship in January. While it’s understood the WJC is typically a 19-year-old’s tournament, that was cold comfort for a player like Hagens who, as Fohr notes, had surely made every team he’d ever tried out for to that point in his life. “That was a big hit on him last year and it put him in a rut, and he was in a bad spot for a while,” Fohr says. “It showed up on the ice and it took him a while to work himself out of that.” 

Hagens clearly came through clean, but says the disappointment festered until he figured out what to do with it. “When you get cut, it’s something that motivates you, it’s something that kind of helped me out,” he says. “I was stuck there for a little moment, and I just realized you have to use that as fuel and kind of let that push you forward.”

Of course, Hagens hopes to be a part of the U.S. squad that competes in Ottawa at Christmastime, gunning to defend its WJC title. Team USA’s selection camp runs Monday and Tuesday in Plymouth, Mich. He’s surely got the inside track on a spot this time out, and that tournament figures to be his introduction to much of the broader hockey-watching public. They’re going to see a centre who skews playmaker over goal-scorer, as evidenced by his 15 assists with BC this year. He’s also fantastic on his edges, carving and juking in and out of tight spaces. Fohr is fond of saying Hagens is a blend of two undersized centres who recently came through the NTDP, those being 2019’s top draft selection, Jack Hughes, and 2022’s third-overall pick, Logan Cooley. 

“He skates like Jack, has the ability to get on his edges and do things like him,” Fohr says. “But he has a little bit of what Logan Cooley has that makes him so good — just a little bit of awkward, just a little bit of different. That’s something that I’ve learned from my years here: players that look a little bit different and if they can do that at a high level, it’s really valuable for them. Things start to look similar and you’re used to [defending] certain things. When, all of a sudden, somebody looks different — the way they move or whatever it is about them — it makes it really hard to play against guys like that.”

Naturally, part of what’s making the transition to college easier overall for James is being there with Michael. The older Hagens is a 2005-born defenceman who was not selected by an NHL team in his first year of draft eligibility, but could hear his name called next June. 

“There’s nothing better than that,” James says of living the student-athlete experience with his brother.

Beyond Michael, other familiar faces include the likes of Eagles sophomores and 2023 first-round picks Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault, both of whom won U-18 gold with Hagens in 2023. There’s also Teddy Stiga, who played on the same line with Hagens last year at the NTDP and lined up beside him again as the pair began their journey as teammates and roommates together at BC. 

“It’s been awesome,” Stiga, a Nashville Predators second-rounder, says of life with Hagens. “His brother and [Eagles forward] Jake Sondreal live two doors down. We go over there and have some movie nights once we get our homework done. We’re either playing hockey, doing school or, honestly, eating. We go to the dining hall, just kind of talk hockey, talk life. It’s been great.”

On the ice, BC coach Greg Brown sees a player who’s very equipped to meet the challenges that come with facing opponents who can be four or five years his senior. Still, lining up for an NCAA program that’s expected to compete with and defeat the top teams in the country is a big ask. “Like any freshman, it’s always an adjustment,” Brown says. “Even as successful as his junior career was, [in college] you’re still going up against older, faster, stronger guys.”

Testing himself against players like that, in all aspects of the game, is something Hagens was keen to do. It’s a big part of why he chose college over the very real possibility of making a major junior move with the OHL’s London Knights. Both paths have merit, he says, but BC and everything that comes with college hockey called his name. 

“I love playing hard, I love getting into the battles,” he says. “I don’t really like sitting on the outside, I guess, being pretty. There are times for that, but just getting into the game, being sure you’re not being a passenger [is important]. Sometimes I get [too] wrapped up in scrums, but that’s just part of the game.”

It certainly has been for Hagens, right from the time he took his first strides in the backyard alongside his hockey-loving family. “Little Mike would never give him an inch and Big Mike would never give him an inch,” Rizer says. “So, he had to fight for [everything] he could get.”

Jimmy wouldn’t have it any other way.