James Hagens is ready for a starring role

James Hagens shined in a big role for the U.S. NTDP's U18 team this season. (Rena Laverty/USA Hockey)

James Hagens is rarely frazzled. The 5-foot-10, 168-pound center with the effortless stride and silky hands is a human highlight reel. He can pass and shoot. He anticipates plays long before they happen.

But in November 2022, there was one thing Hagens didn’t anticipate.

He was in British Columbia for the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge. His head coach, Nick Fohr, waited as Hagens finished media interviews. Hagens, who recently had turned 16 years old, had a question.

“Coach, what do I do if I don’t feel like I answered a question very well?’ ” Hagens asked.

Fohr pointed out that it was too late to go back and fix an answer. Still, the head coach was curious about what had Hagens getting second thoughts.

“The reporter asked me something about being the prospective number-one pick in 2025,’ ” Fohr recalled Hagens saying. “And he goes, ‘I guess I’ve never even thought about that as a possibility. And I don’t think I answered the question very well because it just caught me off guard. It’s just something that hadn’t entered my mind.’ ”

The question was not misguided, as Hagens proved throughout that tournament. The Hauppauge, N.Y., native didn’t just lead Team USA to a championship — he set the all-time tournament record for points with 21.

As a young member of the U.S. National Team Development Program’s U-17 team in 2022-23, Hagens ranked first in assists (40) and second in both goals (26) and points (66). The only player with more goals and points is Cole Eiserman (Newburyport, Mass.), who is slated to go early in this year’s NHL Entry Draft.

The only reason Hagens won’t be selected along with Eiserman in June is because he’s not eligible until the 2025 draft. So it makes all the more sense that his NHL draft status wasn’t on his mind when that question was asked.

“It just goes to show you how humble of a kid he is,” Fohr said. “He’s just a down-to-earth kid that stays focused on being the best hockey player he can and letting those things like being a number-one pick sort itself out.”

It’s a mindset that has taken Hagens from Long Island to New England. From New England to Plymouth, Mich. And from Plymouth, Mich., to both national and international prominence.

He’s just too busy living it to be aware of it.

The Long Island Royals played out of Superior Ice Rink in Kings Park, N.Y., which has one sheet of ice. The Royals, however, had many teams, making a full sheet of ice for practices hard to come by.

Michael Hagens, who coached his son’s teams, recognized this as a good thing.

“Sometimes you’d get a choice,” the father said. “Would you rather have one full sheet or two half sheets? And we were always like, ‘Give us the two half sheets per week.’ We always thought we could just get more touches and they could do more. I think it’s benefited kids like James and Mike, his brother.”

The Hagens boys were never without ice time. There were games and practices. Sometimes, James would move up a level to practice and play with Michael’s team, which included current Providence College star Tanner Adams. There were Friday night clinics, which their father helped coach, too.

From 2012-16, Eric Boulton played the final years of his NHL career with the New York Islanders. His son, Ryder, was an ’06 who played on the same Long Island Royals team as James. Boulton often joined his son’s team on the ice for practice.

“He did a lot of stuff the Islanders were doing,” the Michael said. “Like ‘John Tavares is doing this.’ A lot of edge work and turns and corners and stuff like that. He would try and do a lot of skill work that their skills guys were doing and it benefited Mike, James, Tanner and definitely all the coaches. I would sit there and try to be a sponge.

“Everyone looked at him as a tough guy but he was a super smart guy for the game. He knew how to run a practice really well and he knew how to run skills drills really well.”

All of that skill development helped the Hagens family decide to send James to the World Selects Invitational during his U-13 year in 2018-19. James posted 10 goals and 19 points in seven games at the European event.

It was the first time the Hagens family realized there was something different with James.

Around that same time, Mount St. Charles came to watch him. And the Mounties staff realized it, too.

At the new Mount St. Charles hockey academy, Michael Hagens started the 2020-21 campaign with the 15-U team, while James suited up for the 14-U squad, which was loaded with talent.

There was Sacha Boisvert, a North Dakota commit slated to be picked in the first round of the 2024 NHL draft. Forwards JJ Monteiro and Kolin Sisson, both Providence College commits, and Theo Kiss, a UMass commit, were prominent roster players as well. So, too, was defenseman Will Felicio, who’s committed to Denver. In net, the team featured John Parsons (Ithaca, N.Y,), who’s currently on Hagens’ team with the NTDP. He’s committed to Providence College.James Hagens got his story in Long Island. Then he moved on to Mount St. Charles. Now, he’s taking the entire hockey world by storm.

“There was a ton of really good players in that group,” Mount coach John O’Connor said. “It was kind of our philosophy — get those guys competing with and against one another Monday through Friday.”

And it worked. Even with all that talent, Hagens stood out. He had 27 goals and 57 points in 27 games, leading the team.

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Most importantly, a new element to Hagens’ game was added — strong play in his own zone. Yes, the skill with the puck and smooth skating was there. That didn’t need much refining. But playing smart hockey was the next step. And he accepted it.

“I know you can be as skilled as possible and you can go down and you can be the best player in the offensive zone,” James Hagens said. “But if you’re not taking care of your own game in your own zone, that’s the biggest thing that they cared about.”

The coaches who drilled that in were Frank O’Connor and John O’Connor.

“If James never spent a year with those guys, I don’t know if he’d be doing what he’s doing,” Hagens’ father said. “It was a tough place but in a good way. They taught you to compete. They demanded the best out of you every practice. If you were slacking or weren’t doing something right, they were tough.”

Hagens graduated to the 15-U team in 2021-22, where Scott Gainey was his head coach.

“Unpredictable,” Gainey said of Hagens’ game. “He obviously had a little bit of swagger to him back then. And you could just see that even in the way he carried himself. That’s just the confidence he had and it was his own game. Even at a young age, it’s hard to pinpoint something but it’s something you see and you feel and you recognize.

“It’s one of those kinds of head-scratchers that you’re like, ‘OK, this kid’s got a little something to him.’ I haven’t said that too often in the 20-something years I’ve been doing this.”

Gainey recognized the next step for Hagens was managing the game.

“I’m not here to teach James how to stickhandle, go top corner and his skating edges and stuff like that,” Gainey said. “But what myself and my assistant Jim Creamer brought to the table is the game within the game, managing the game and knowing your situation, knowing the clock and knowing what’s at stake.”

Hagens got plenty of practice with that during his 15-U season. In 54 games, Hagens scored 54 goals and tallied 115 points.

In the summer of 2021, Hagens geared up for USA Hockey’s Select 15 Camp, the tournament where the NTDP and colleges get an early look at age-15 season players.

Eiserman and Aidan Park were widely seen as the best ’06s in the country entering the camp. Hagens was somewhere in the top 10.

That soon changed drastically.

“He was hands down the best player at that camp,” John O’Connor said. “I was standing with one of the big-time college programs from out west and they’re like, ‘We want to go after him,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, he’s only in eighth grade.’ He’s like, ‘We wouldn’t go after an Eastern kid unless he was the best kid. James Hagens is the best kid here.’ ”

Hagens didn’t finish as the top scorer in the tournament — that was Eiserman, who scored seven goals in four games and tallied 11 points. But Hagens was tied for second with six goals and seven points.

“That speaks to his competitiveness,” John O’Connor said. “He’s not just a guy that’s going to play on the perimeter and make a few flashy passes on the power play. He’ll get down to block shots. He’ll do what it takes to win.”

To those watching, it was clear Hagens had something to prove.

“I think James might have taken that a little personally,” Gainey said of Hagens being looked at as second fiddle. “A little motivational tool for him because he wants to be the best on the ice.”

The camp solidified Hagens as being one of the top players, if not the top one, in his birth year. It also ensured the NTDP was tracking him consistently.

“Pretty much from day one he was on that radar,” Gainey said.

When it came time to go to the 40-man camp in Plymouth, Mich., for a chance to make the NTDP squad, Hagens got some extra repetitions practicing with Mount St. Charles’ 18-U team, which was preparing for the national tournament. “

Watching him out there with those guys, it was like, ‘Holy crap, this kid is good,’ ” said Brown assistant Matt Plante, who was then the coach of the 18-U team. “This kid could be on our first line.”

Hagens made the national program, where the transition into the intensive, hockey-first environment is typically hard.

“You learn to be a professional at the (NTDP),” said Jimmy Mullin, a former assistant coach at the program and current Merrimack College assistant coach.

But it wasn’t a difficult transition for Hagens. The New Yorker’s game translated seamlessly. The production and play away from the puck was there.

A lot of that can be attributed to the similar environment that he was brought up in at Mount St. Charles.

“That was the biggest thing that helped me — going to Mount and transitioning to the program,” Hagens said. “Making sure that you’re getting assignments done on time, making sure you have a couple hours every day to pump out your schoolwork. To make sure once those games come on the weekend, you don’t have to worry about getting schoolwork done before a game or after a game or something like that. It’s just time management, honestly.”

The only flaw in Hagens when he arrived at Plymouth, Mich., was his weight. He arrived at around 150 pounds. So, naturally, Hagens got to work, putting on roughly 17 pounds of muscle.

“What he did was abnormal in putting on that weight,” Mullin said. “That is pure dedication.”

Gaining that muscle weight helped Hagens get the call to move up to the NTDP’s U-18 team at the end of last season. He even participated in the World Junior Challenge-18, helping Team USA win the gold medal over Sweden with a goal and four assists.

“There are only a few percent (able) to do what he was able to do,” Mullin said of Hagens.

In September 2021, Michael Hagens committed to Harvard. When James became eligible to make his commitment on Aug. 1, 2023, Harvard seemed like the logical choice.

But then Michael decommitted in late August 2023, making the Hagens Watch the main story in the college hockey recruiting world.

It was a decision that James Hagens didn’t take lightly.

“I think James said this once,” his father said. “He’s like, ‘It’s probably the toughest decision because it’s one of the last real decisions that you have in your hockey career — where you’re going to play in college.’ After that, everything’s decided for you.”

On Sept. 20, the Hagens brothers announced they would attend Boston College.

“We always wanted them together,” their father said. “They wanted to always play together.”

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Added James, “For our parents, it’s going to be nice that they don’t have to book two plane tickets to two different states to watch us play.”

Hagens won’t have that luxury when it comes to another big moment in his career — the NHL draft. In November, both The Athletic and TSN’s Craig Button ranked Hagens as the No. 1 prospect for the 2025 NHL Entry Draft.

Part of it is because of the similarities in his game to NHL stars like Jack Hughes, a former No. 1 overall pick.

“I think there’s a comparison there for sure, obviously, having coached Jack myself,” Fohr said. “The edge work and the ability to float on the ice like Jack does. There are lots of comparables on that front. I lean a little bit to Jack obviously. I think there’s also a bit of Logan Cooley there.

“He’s kind of a cross between those guys.”

Mullin sees another NHL All-Star comparable for Hagens.

“I think his skating abilities are a lot like Mathew Barzal,” Mullin said. “How low his center of gravity is that’s super elusive. But his legs are starting to be big-time legs and he’s starting to become a man.”

Then there’s the other side of being a top prospect — the hype. After going No. 1 in last year’s draft and moving on to play for the Chicago Blackhawks right away, Connor Bedard became a face of the league. Will Smith (Lexington, Mass.), moments after being drafted No. 4, was asked by ESPN’s Emily Kaplan to rap “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” on the spot. Thankfully, he remembered the lyrics.

If Hagens is to go No. 1 and the comparisons to Hughes grow louder (hint: they will), his personality will be on center stage as the league’s next big thing. Those around Hagens think that will be great — both for him and the NHL.

“If he wasn’t going to the NHL, he’d be a movie star,” John O’Connor said. “He’s got charisma. He’s got an infectious personality.”

But that doesn’t matter to Hagens. The hype, the comparisons, the projections, the stories — he pays them no attention.

“I feel like looking at that stuff; it can hurt you,” Hagens said. “It can make you stop working as hard as you do or make you feel like you’re getting there when you’re not really there. It’s something that could bring you down and kind of just boost your ego and be satisfied with where you’re at. The biggest thing for me is not worrying about any of that stuff.”

Hagens is more than happy to let his play do the talking. And he certainly doesn’t need to be aware of it. He’s too busy living it.