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EAST MEADOW, N.Y. — Matthew Schaefer doesn’t want to be the story. The problem for the rookie defenseman: He always is.
Since the Islanders selected him as the first overall pick in the 2025 NHL draft, the 18-year-old Schaefer has become one of the brightest personalities in the league. In a sport that only gingerly dips its toes into individuality, it’s extraordinary that Schaefer became an instant star, and that his franchise, teammates, and management all want him to be.
In the locker room of the Islanders practice rink on Long Island, Schaefer deflects a question about quickly becoming a face of the NHL. “There’s a lot of noise outside that you hear,” he tells Front Office Sports, “but the great thing about hockey is that we’re a family.”
Schaefer has an uncanny ability to thread the needle between being one of the sport’s sudden main characters and the first person to divert the spotlight away from himself and onto his team. It’s one of the many things that makes him different.
On the ice, he has smashed rookie records as a dynamic two-way player who is already one of the NHL’s most elegant, zippiest skaters. He’s often mentioned in the same breath as Bobby Orr—a comparison his agent, Pat Morris, tells FOS he courted when Schaefer was only 16. On terra firma, Schaefer is just as vaunted for his charisma, maturity, and empathy.
He is also a business unto himself. Schaefer has already collected unprecedented marquee sponsorships and is still fielding a flood of offers. He’s also become a financial engine for an Islanders franchise at an inflection point, as it pushes to become not simply a hockey team in New York, but New York’s hockey team.
In Orange and Blue
In nearly every alternate timeline, Schaefer is wearing teal or red. The Sharks and Blackhawks held the highest draft odds in 2025; the Islanders had only a 3.5% chance to pick first. The last lottery ping-pong ball popped their way.
“I’m not going to say that there wasn’t a little bit of luck there,” says Kelly Cheeseman, the Islanders’ president of business and alternate governor. “If you look at the team that just barely missed the playoffs and that winning lottery pick, there’s probably some destiny in that for sure.”
The first overall selection came at the same time as a changing of the front office guard on Long Island. Cheeseman landed in the org in November, a few months after Mathieu Darche replaced the long-tenured Lou Lamoriello as GM. Schaefer would be a massive part of ushering in the markedly new era.
Schaefer’s agent tells FOS he tried to discourage his client from jumping directly to the NHL at age 17: “We said, ‘You need more time.’” Morris, who has been working with him since he was 14, floated another year with the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters, with whom Schaefer had played only 17 games that season, or even heading to college in the U.S. “Matthew said, ‘I’m going to play in the NHL this year. Forget those two other things.’”
The bright-eyed, 6-foot-2 Canadian defenseman arrived on Long Island, where his first non-negotiable task was to learn the holy trinity of New York: bagels, pizza, and the bacon, egg, and cheese. Next, pronouncing “Ronkonkoma” and “Quogue” the day he threw out the first pitch at a Mets game. (It was a pretty bad toss; Morris says Schaefer “called it a changeup.”)
He took instantly to the Islanders market, whose fans are equal parts passionate and tortured. They’ve been burned by sky-high expectations for first overall picks as lifetime franchise players, including Rick DiPietro (2000) and John Tavares (2009), as well as a Stanley Cup dry spell following a dynastic run from 1980 to 1983.
“You see him on the ice and the player he is, and then you hear him off the ice, and if you meet him—impossible not to cheer for him,” says Islanders veteran Ryan Pulock, who has been Schaefer’s primary defensive partner this season. “He stepped right in from Day 1. He wanted to be here, wanted to be part of the community, wanted to establish himself here.”
Schaefer has transformed an Islanders season that could have been dismal, and along with it, recast the franchise’s perception. He already has the most points by any 18-year-old defenseman in NHL history, and on Thursday tied the record for goals by a rookie defenseman in a single season.
“A couple years ago, people weren’t saying nice things about the Islanders. Now, the entire league is talking about the Islanders and him and the effect he’s had on other players and what he’s just brought to the team,” said Isles fan Lee Kreindel, decked in a Schaefer jersey at UBS Arena’s Belmont Hall before the March 24 contest against the Blackhawks.
Across from him, Michael Cavolo, who bought his No. 48 jersey after the Islanders’ first preseason game, added: “We call it the Schaefer Effect for a reason.”
No. 48
Hockey is a team sport, as Schaefer is always first to note. When the group is winning, tickets move and buildings get louder. But Schaefer’s No. 48 is everywhere as the top-selling jersey this season for both the Islanders and all NHL rookies, according to Fanatics.
As orders poured in for his sweater after the draft, the Islanders sold out of the numbers 4 and 8, and scrambled to source across the world for more to meet demand. In the past three months, they say the share of Schaefer jersey sales has climbed to 40%. The second-highest-selling Islanders player, Mathew Barzal, is at 8%.
Schaefer mania has turbocharged the franchise’s overall growth. The Islanders hit their revenue targets this year—all record figures—but what stands out most is single-game ticket revenue, which is up 93% year over year through March.
Cheeseman gestures to a 48-month planning sketch on the whiteboard hanging on his office wall. “[Matthew is] critical for the opportunity that we have in front of us, and he just elevates it on a much faster timeline,” he says. “I’m not going to lie—we had a little bit more of a stair step.”
The intangibles matter, too: The first-game kids pressed against the glass with signs for Schaefer during warmups; the season-ticket holders like Kreindel and Cavolo, who can’t stop themselves from gushing; the postgame “MA-tthew SCHAE-fer” chants through the halls of UBS Arena after Isles wins—even from a guy in a Canucks jersey.
‘It’s Just Who Matthew Is’
In February 2024, then-16-year-old Schaefer lost his mom, Jennifer, to breast cancer. Just two months earlier, Schaefer’s Erie host mom had died by suicide. In a third blow, the respected owner of the Otters, who had been a mentor and friend, died unexpectedly at the end of 2024.
Schaefer has since spent days upon days of his own time with grieving kids, including just before the draft. On an off afternoon in June during the 2025 NHL combine in Buffalo, Schaefer told his agent he wanted to visit a grief-awareness facility just outside the city, WNY Compassion Connection.
Morris attempted to introduce him first. “He grabs the microphone from me. Just spoke with no notes for 20, 30 minutes,” Morris tells FOS. Schaefer also left his phone number with an invitation for each kid to reach out during dark times.
When Schaefer signed his entry-level contract with the Islanders a couple of months later, with his jersey in every locker room stall at UBS Arena, he was surrounded by 40 kids who’d all lost family members. He spoke with each individually. Cheeseman says, “It’s just who Matthew is.”
The reality is it’s impossible to separate Schaefer’s business story from his personal tragedies. His poise in the wake of loss is why he’s been so embraced by both fans and sponsors.
“There are not that many players in our league collectively that have individual brand deals, much less a kid on Long Island in a market that is traditionally seen as not the most attractive from a media perspective,” Cheeseman says. “We’ve all been around this business long enough to know that doesn’t happen.”
Schaefer doesn’t sound like he could separate family values from commercial opportunities, even if he tried.
“There’s gonna be a lot down the road for me,” he tells FOS. “There can be a lot of brands, but if they don’t have that family mindset, and they don’t have that mindset where everyone’s there for each other, and everyone’s gonna help, and everyone’s involved …” He smiles.
‘I Need to Know the Real Matthew Schaefer’
Schaefer’s story, outlook, and marketability landed him an endorsement deal with apparel company NoBull, the official training shoe of the NHL. He’s the brand’s only hockey player in a roster that includes Livvy Dunne and Mac Jones.
NoBull is owned jointly by Tom Brady and New York billionaire Mike Repole, who helped St. John’s transform its men’s basketball program into a national powerhouse. After Schaefer’s first brand photo-shoot, one of Repole’s employees told him that the rookie gathered the entire crew “like a locker room meeting,” and gave a five-minute speech about his gratitude. “I’m like, this thing really happened?” Repole says.
“They were all saying thank you to me, but at the end of the day, I’m like, ‘Don’t say thank you to me; I didn’t really do anything.’ You guys are all the brains behind it. You guys are my bosses,” Schaefer tells FOS.
After hearing the story, Repole says he had to meet the teenager. He was almost hoping to “poke a hole” in Schaefer’s character. “I already know how great you are in hockey, but you got these guys fooled,” he told the teenager the first time they spoke. “I need to know the real Matthew Schaefer.”
Schaefer talked about his team and, of course, his family. He asked a thousand questions about Repole’s own family. He’d also done his business homework.
“He knew everything I did, from Vitaminwater to BodyArmor to NoBull. … He knew more about me than some of my damn employees,” Repole says. “I’ve been partners with Kobe Bryant. I’ve been partners with Tom Brady. He is as inquisitive about business as they were, and he’s 18 years old.”
Repole still hasn’t found the secret fatal flaw. “I’ve never ever met an 18-year-old kid like this on any level, especially with the adversity, the pressure, what he’s doing right now,” Repole tells FOS. “He’s one of one.”
Making It
At 18, Schaefer understands he has a big commercial future, and also that much of it is over his head at his age and stage in the league. He leans on his dad, Todd, to liaise with agent Morris and his team at Newport Sports Management about business opportunities, then come to him to break down contracts, offers, and obligations so he can understand them.
The Canadian is still working on his New York fluency, including his pronunciation of “Hauppauge,” a Suffolk County hamlet about 40 minutes from UBS Arena, which still sounds more like “hot dog” with a flourish.
“He can be a piece of work, but in a good way, and I think every single guy in here loves him for that,” Pulock tells FOS.
The Islanders organization is also looking at what’s next for 48. “I do want Matthew Schaefer to be mentioned in the same conversation with Aaron Judge on sports-talk radio,” Cheeseman says. “That’s when you know you’ve made it in New York.”
