2025 NHL Draft: Chicago Blackhawks select Vaclav Nestrasil with second first-round pick

Blackhawks No. 3 overall pick Anton Frondell meets with the media

The Chicago Blackhawks selected Anton Frondell with the No. 3 overall pick. He meet with reporters on draft night. (Video courtesy the Chicago Blackhawks).

The Chicago Blackhawks had two picks in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft. After taking Anton Frondell, they added a fast-riser with their second pick.

The Blackhawks selected Muskegon Lumberjacks forward Vaclav Nestrasil with the No. 25 overall pick of the NHL Draft.

What we know:

The Blackhawks keep adding to their pipeline, and this time it comes from a conditional pick.

The Toronto Maple Leafs owned this first-round pick and sent it to the Chicago Blackhawks as part of a February 27, 2023, trade that sent Sam Lafferty, Jake McCabe, a conditional fifth-round pick in 2024 and 2025 to Toronto in exchange for Joey Anderson, Pavel Gogolev, a second-round pick in 2026 and a conditional draft pick. 

That conditional pick became the No. 25 overall pick. The condition was pretty simple: Chicago receives a first-round pick in 2025 if this first-round pick in 2025 landed outside the top 10. The pick officially became a first-round selection when the Maple Leafs qualified for the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Vaclav Nestrasil was a fast riser in this NHL Draft cycle.

At 6-foot-5, he brings size to the Blackhawks' forward pipeline. He scored 42 points on 19 goals and 23 assists in 61 regular-season games with the Lumberjacks during the 2024-25 season.

He might be big, but he showed enough skill to catch the eyes of the Blackhawks.

Dig deeper:

Although he's skilled, the reason he slipped into the backhalf of the first round of the NHL Draft was because of a few concerns with Nestrasil's game.

Some anaylsts wondered how his strength, consistency in puck battles, and defensive reliability would hold up at the NHL level. 

However, those concerns didn't keep the Blackhawks away. His testing at the NHL Combine showed off his physical skills, which kept his draft stock rising. Although he was originally seen as a second-round pick, some projections saw a team that didn't need immediate help selecting Nestrasil to stash him for the future.

That's the case in Chicago, as Nestrasil is a UMass Amherst commit and will play hockey in the northeast this season.