Braeden Cootes may be generating significant buzz heading into the 2025 NHL Draft, but the seeds of his rise weren’t planted with highlight-reel goals.
In fact, some of his most formative hockey experiences came when he wasn’t even on the bench.
Cootes had just turned 16 when he was called up to the Seattle Thunderbirds for the team’s championship run in the 2023 WHL Playoffs.
He didn’t crack the lineup- though Head Coach Matt O’Dette admits the youngster was close to breaking in- but Cootes became a force in practice and proved to himself that he was able to hang with the best.
“When I was a young guy, practice was like games for me because you’re not playing,” Cootes explained. “The practices were really hard because you’re going against Nolan Allan (Chicago Blackhawks), Prokop (Nashville Predators), Korchinski (Chicago Blackhawks), you know, those NHL-drafted defenseman one-on-one. It was huge for my development and I had lots of fun doing it.”
Even then, Cootes looked like a special player with an unstoppable engine.
O’Dette often looks back on a three-on-three tournament the T-Birds held between playoff rounds as one of the first moments where Cootes truly established himself in the eyes of his peers.
“The older guys were literally fighting to get Braeden on their team, which I thought was really interesting,” O’Dette recalled. “Sure enough, his team (which included Nashville Predators prospects Reid Schaefer and Luke Prokop, Korchinski and Vegas Golden Knights prospect Jordan Gustafson) won the three-on-three tournament, and he was the best player on the ice amongst all those high-end players that we had. So I thought that was really cool, just to earn that respect from the older players, the elites who played on our team. He kind of commanded that from a young age.”
Two years later, it’s NHL teams battling for the right to draft the high-energy centreman.
NHL Central Scouting has ranked Cootes 20th among all North American skaters in its final list ahead of the 2025 NHL Draft, while TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button has projected Cootes at 22nd overall.
Since making the WHL full-time as a 16-year-old, Cootes has been tasked with tackling his opponent’s top line night in and night out on a rebuilding Seattle squad that has already begun to look menacing once again.
“I think that accelerated his development process- he knew he could hang with these guys and these types of players, and that gave him confidence,” O’Dette added. “He can skate very well, great vision. Can move the puck. He’s got hands. He can finish. He’s got a shot- all the tools that you need. It’s being an elite offensive player, and to go with that, he’s got the high hockey IQ, the 200-foot game, really cares about his own end and the intangibles that you need… All these NHL teams are looking for guys that can win hockey games in the crunch time and in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and he’s the guy that’s going to help you do that.”
The 6-foot, 183-pound forward set new career highs across the board in 2024-25 with 26 goals and 37 assists for 63 points in 60 games while elevating his two-way play.
“I like the puck on my stick, and if I don’t have it, I’m gonna go get it,” Cootes said. “Just relentless on the forecheck. I like to find my teammates in open spots.
My dad always told me growing up that you can only control your work ethic, so just playing as hard as I can until the buzzer goes.”
As the youngest Captain in the WHL, Cootes helped his squad go on a 19-11-2-0 tear in the second half of the regular season to climb from last place in the Western Conference to clinching a playoff berth for the first time since winning it all in 2023.
While the T-Birds bowed out to the regular-season champion Everett Silvertips in the first round, they put up an impressive fight in a six-game series that saw two matches require overtime.
Cootes put up a team-leading eight points (2G-6A) in his first official trip to the WHL Playoffs and bookended his season with gold-medal performances at the 2024 Hlinka Gretzky Cup and 2025 IIHF U18 World Championship, where he earned the captaincy and led Canada in scoring with 12 points (6G-6A) in seven games.
All told, he’s been playing some of his best hockey at the best possible time.
“I worked pretty hard, so you know, like, O’Dette says in Seattle, keep pounding the stone, you’re eventually going to break through,” Cootes said. “We had a tough start to the year as a team, so maybe it didn’t seem like things were going too well then. But you know, young team, it’s just the way it is. Kept getting better every day, being positive and just kept working. I knew I was going to do pretty good at the combine with the testing and all that, and having a good tournament at U18s was, obviously, awesome, and then playoffs too. Having a good second half in Seattle was massive.”
He spoke to 27 teams at the annual NHL Combine in Buffalo, N.Y., at the beginning of June and dominated in fitness testing with top-10 finishes in the no-arm jump, bench press, pullups and fatigue index (no surprise to O’Dette, who says Cootes is often the last guy on the ice and one of the hardest workers in the gym).
Cootes, his two brothers, his parents, grandfather, and several cousins will be in attendance next week when the 2025 NHL Draft kicks off on June 27 at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
