About 15 percent of Friday night’s NHL draft picks had one thing in common: they would soon be joining the Michigan State hockey program.
If that seems like a large portion of all first-rounders, that’s because it is.
Adam Nightingale’s NHL draft masterclass was on full display in the first round on Friday night as five of his future Spartans were picked by the Seattle Kraken, Utah Mammoth, Calgary Flames, Nashville Predators, and Anaheim Ducks. The five first-round picks were, by far, the most of any school in this year’s class with the next-closest being North Dakota who had three players go in the top 32.
There were only two other programs with more than one first-round pick (Boston, Denver) while a few Big Ten schools had one each.
Michigan State actually had more first-round 2026 NHL Draft picks than the rest of the Big Ten combined. Think about that for a second — that’s just an insane stat considering the first overall pick was from Penn State.
Michigan State had five picks and the rest of the Big Ten had three combined, per Puck Preps.
Having two more first-round picks in this class than the rest of the conference just shows how great of a recruiter Nightingale is. He can pretty much get whoever he wants with some exceptions — Gavin McKenna and Landon DuPont qualify as those exceptions.
We’re going to look back at this Michigan State draft class as the one that launched the program into annual national title contention — hopefully.
This draft class will fuel Michigan State recruiting success
Although the first-round picks haven’t suited up for Michigan State yet, young hockey prospects seeing East Lansing become the home for top NHL draft prospects yearly is only going to boost recruiting and help Nightingale land future stars.
Michigan State will have 15 (!!) NHL draft picks on its roster for the 2026-27 season and an NCAA record nine (!!) first-rounders as well. Who wouldn’t want to play for that program.
We’ve seen draft success fuel other powerhouses in different sports like Alabama football, Ohio State football, Duke basketball, and Kentucky basketball, to name a handful. All of those programs will have no problem landing top talent because they produce so many draft picks, but they’ve also seen a ton of success on the field with national titles.
That second part is something Nightingale is chasing, and when he finally wins a championship, every top recruit will have Michigan State on their list.
Add us as a preferred source on Google