Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Jalen Chatfield never got the chance to hear his name called at the NHL draft. It's been more than a decade since every team passed him by when he was eligible, and during that time, he found a way to make an impression.
He went to three different development and rookie camps across the league before eventually playing his first NHL game in January 2021 with the Vancouver Canucks.
Years later, he's now playing top-four minutes for a team trying to win a Stanley Cup. And he's not alone in that endeavor. The Hurricanes have three additional players -- Brandon Bussi, Eric Robinson and Sean Walker -- and the Vegas Golden Knights have a pair in Dylan Coghlan and Cole Smith. Those six players have performed in key roles and important times this postseason.
The undrafted players in this year's Stanley Cup Final have made an impact while sharing the same stage as first-round picks such as Carolina's Taylor Hall and Vegas' Mitch Marner. And players such as Chatfield are doing it as members of what is one of the largest and more underappreciated groups in the NHL.
"There's no guarantee that people are going to give you these opportunities," said Chatfield's agent, Darren Ferris, who also represents Hall and Marner. "When you go to these training camps, you have to earn every inch. That's what makes Jalen special. He never let being undrafted define him."
Undrafted players are among the largest concentration of players in the NHL. Nearly 15% of the players who skated in at least one game in the 2025-26 regular season were undrafted, according to ESPN Research. Those undrafted players also accounted for the third-largest group in the NHL -- the only groups with a higher percentage were first-rounders (35.65%) and second-rounders (16.09%).
It's been like this for some time. During the 1995-96 season, 10.6% of the league's players were undrafted, with the highest percentage coming from the first (25.7%) and second (14.85%) rounds. Since then, there has been an increase in undrafted players to the point that in 2015-16 there were nearly as many undrafted players (15.35%) as there were second-rounders (15.66%).
Bussi, the Hurricanes' goaltender, was playing in the AHL before winning 31 games during his first NHL campaign in 2025-26. In Game 3 of this Final, he relieved Frederik Andersen to help Carolina force double overtime. Robinson, a winger for the Canes, turned into a consistent offensive presence on the fourth line who has contributed in many ways. Walker, like Chatfield, has carved a place within the Canes' top-four defense pairings.
Coghlan, a defenseman, has averaged more than 14 minutes per game for the Golden Knights while Smith, who arrived in Vegas ahead of the trade deadline, has added a physical presence in a bottom-six role. Together, it was Coghlan that set up Smith for the series-clinching goal in the Golden Knights' sweep of the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference finals.
"I take a lot of pride in the path I took and everybody's going to develop differently, everybody's got a different path," Smith said. "You got guys who are projected first-round picks all the way through and they got a lot of pressure on them. The guys that come in undrafted, really the only pressure is on yourself is to improve and try to make it and try to stick."
How undrafted players reach the NHL, and have a significant impact at the pinnacle of the sport, is something that goes well beyond a feel-good story about how they overcame the odds.
THE FIRST SIX YEARS of the NHL draft went a maximum of three rounds. It expanded to 10 rounds in 1969, and consistently remained in double digits until 1995 when it was reduced to nine. The CBA signed in the aftermath of the 2004-05 lockout further reduced it to seven.
The final nine-round draft in 2004 included 17 players selected in those final two rounds that would go on to play at least one NHL game, including Jannik Hansen, Pekka Rinne, Mark Streit and Daniel Winnik.
All of them played more than 600 career games. Under the current format, they would have been undrafted.
"At the heart of it, it's just the fact that hockey is a late-developing sport," Anaheim Ducks assistant general manager and amateur scouting director Martin Madden said. "There have been multiple studies over time and even going back decades -- players keep improving until they are well into their 20s. As the speed and tempo of the game increases, the field has been open to more different kinds of players and styles have changed to adapt to that."
Drafting remains far from an exact science. Amateur scouting staffs are charged with predicting how more than 1,000 eligible players will develop -- with the caveat some of them might never develop.
This isn't an issue only facing teams. Agencies are consciously thinking about which prospects they see as possible clients.
There are several transferable skills agents possess, and scouting prospects is among them. Agencies, like teams, do their due diligence when it comes to potential prospects to sign. Former agents such as Jeff Jackson, Kent Hughes and Bill Zito have since moved into front office roles.
"It's an interesting topic because as agents, we're recruiting players younger and younger now," agent Paul Capizzano said. "We're telling our staff, 'Don't give up. ... There are players out there. They are developing at different times.'"
Capizzano represents Mason Marchment, who has become one of the best undrafted players currently in the NHL. The Columbus Blue Jackets winger, one of this summer's top pending free agents, has a unique story around his path as an undrafted player.
MARCHMENT PLAYED YOUTH HOCKEY in Ontario -- not exactly an underserved scouting region. The province had 179 players play at least one game this season, per QuantHockey. That is nine more players than the next three provinces -- Alberta, Quebec and British Columbia -- combined. Marchment was also the son of the late Bryan Marchment, a first-round pick in 1987 who played in 926 NHL games.
Marchment was already 6-foot-2 as a teenager, but didn't play major junior until the 2014-15 season when he was 19. Marchment played for three OHL teams in a single campaign before the Toronto Maple Leafs signed him to a free agent contract.
He spent five years in Toronto's system before joining the Florida Panthers organization, where he became a full-time NHL player at 26. That's when he scored 18 goals and 47 points in 54 games during the 2021-22 season.
In his 370-game NHL career, Marchment has averaged 0.63 points per game. Of the 210 players selected in the 2014 draft, which would have been Marchment's draft year, only 38 of those draft picks have played more games than him, and he has more points than 11 of the forwards who were taken in the first round that year that reached the NHL.
Marchment's career point-per-game average ranks fifth among current undrafted NHL players, per QuantHockey. The highest belongs to Los Angeles Kings left winger Artemi Panarin, who has averaged 1.15 points per game.
"All it takes is that one person to like you," Capizzano said. "If that one person is banging on the table, and I think more and more teams are doing that and saying, 'Hey, there are guys out there.'"
Eustace King is the managing partner and co-founder of O2K Sports Management, which represents undrafted players such as Troy Stecher, Zach Whitecloud and Smith. King explained that undrafted players are attractive because they can fit a team's specific needs.
In the 1995-96 season, defensemen comprised the largest slice of the undrafted player poll, at 27.47%, according to ESPN Research. That was followed by right wing (21.98%), left wing (20.88%), center (19.78%) and goaltender (9.89%).
While there is still a demand for undrafted players, there has been a shift when it comes to what teams are seeking. Centers and defensemen (tied at 26.45%) were the largest percentage of undrafted players in 2025-26. That was followed by right wings (19.35%), left wings (16.77%) and goalies (10.97%).
Even the actual number of players at some of those positions has increased. There were 25 undrafted defensemen in 1995-96, while this season had 41. There were 18 undrafted centers in 1995-96 and 41 this season. There are also almost as many undrafted right wingers (30) this season as there were combined wingers (39) back in the 1995-96 campaign.
"You have to draft the best hockey player and sometimes, I think we want to take these 6-4, 6-5 players and say, 'size, size, size,'" King said. "But I'm also sure there's someone who could say, 'We can justify why you want to take the bigger players but I think you have to take the guy who has the best [hockey] IQ.'"
The data further amplifies King's point. Three of the top five active leaders in points per game among undrafted players are shorter than 6-0: Andrei Kuzmenko (5-11), Jonathan Marchessault (5-9) and Mats Zuccarello (5-8).
However, six of the top 10 active undrafted players in games played are taller than 6-0, including Sergei Bobrovsky, Brenden Dillon and Christopher Tanev.
"If you have someone who can skate and he has a good skills package, they can put that together," King said. "I don't think they have to be someone who is 6-4. You've had some very good players who are 5-10, 5-11 and 6-feet. You're seeing more and more of them coming into the league."
THE 6-3 SMITH grew up in the north central Minnesota town of Brainerd, which is 127 miles from Minneapolis. Playing high school hockey in Brainerd, which is less likely to receive the attention compared to schools in the Twin Cities, wasn't the reason why he flew under the radar.
Smith said it had everything to do with his skill development. Hockey was one of three sports he lettered in during high school. Smith was an all-state selection in football along with track and field, and didn't begin to make hockey his primary sport until he graduated high school. He would then spend two seasons playing in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League.
The MJHL is a Junior "A" league for players that have aspirations of playing men's college hockey across all levels.
"My original goal was just to play college hockey enough to get an offer in my last year to play at the University of North Dakota," Smith said. "I think without playing at the University of North Dakota, I wouldn't be where I am today."
Smith isn't the only player who has shared how college hockey shaped his development.
College hockey and its developmental approach has come under a microscope over the last few years. It's played a significant role in how defense has become the NHL's new money position as many of those players went the collegiate route. That has also coincided with how college programs are continuing to attract more elite Canadian prospects who in the past would have likely gone the major junior route.
A third of all active NHL players have come from the college game, according to ESPN Research. The list includes undrafted players such as Justin Hryckowian, Alex Iafallo, Alex Lyon, Evan Rodrigues and Frank Vatrano in addition to Smith and many others.
This has also played a role in why there's been a shift in where undrafted players come from. Back in the 1995-96 season, 79% of undrafted players came from Canada, while 20% came from the United States. This season, 40% of undrafted players are from Canada, another 40% are from the U.S., while the remaining 20% are from Europe, according to ESPN Research.
Going to UND didn't lead to Smith becoming a lethal scorer. He became a two-way player who built a reputation around being a hard worker with a physical edge to his game. Smith spent four seasons at UND developing those abilities and was a full-time NHL player within three years of leaving Grand Forks.
"College is where I started developing as a player and kind of developing an identity, which was going to make me succeed," Smith said. "I think, in the NHL, there's all different kinds of roles that you have to play. You can stick if you can figure out what your identity is and play to that as true as you can. I think that's what helps."
THE DUCKS' MADDEN is a second-generation executive. His father, Martin Sr., has been a GM, an assistant GM, a scout, a scouting director for five different NHL franchises going back to 1969. Martin was a scout with the New York Rangers and the Hurricanes before joining the Ducks in 2008 as their amateur scouting director before being named an assistant GM in 2021.
Three key players in the Stanley Cup Final were drafted by Madden: Hurricanes goalie Frederik Andersen (2010), along with Golden Knights forward William Karlsson (2011) and defenseman Shea Theodore (2013). What might be Madden's most impressive accomplishment is how the Ducks' entire seven-player draft class in 2011 all reached the NHL, with Karlsson being among the four who have played more than 550 games.
Surely, he must have the answer for how there are almost as many undrafted players as there are second-rounders playing in the NHL. Madden admitted that it's a question that teams are still trying to answer.
"At the top of the draft, I think it's getting to be more efficient as more information is out there and we use analytics to delve and dive deep into the guys we watch the most," Madden said. "That part of the draft is more efficient, whereas the curve has flattened after the mid-second round, really."
Madden said that a reality facing teams is knowing they are going to miss on prospects because there are so many unknown variables. One of those factors is how a goalie or skater adapts to playing in a better league, which is why some undrafted players might not attract attention until they reach the AHL or ECHL.
Accepting that they can't control those variables has allowed teams to think about the criteria and the processes they use to evaluate prospects over multiple years.
Organizations have sought to address this by strengthening their scouting departments. Martin was one of four amateur scouts the Rangers had when he first broke into the league. The Rangers had one European scout, two professional scouts and two more scouts that weren't specified as professional or amateur.
The Ducks opened the 2024-25 season with an amateur scouting department that included Madden along with six amateur scouts, two collegiate scouts, a head European scout plus a director of player evaluation.
"With bigger staffs, you have regional scouts that get to dig in and see more," Madden said. "I see a scouting staff as a sampling machine. You've done this enough to know that the best players have terrible games and bad players have outstanding games. When you don't see enough from either, it can be difficult to discern what is real and what is a nice performance."
One front office member who spoke with ESPN on background said another item to consider is how the pool of undrafted players is still a larger number compared to those who were drafted. The executive explained how the draft offers teams a finite amount of slots. After a draft ends, it still leaves several hundreds of prospects that could emerge in the coming years.
That's why the most important skill an undrafted player can develop is patience.
HURRICANES WINGER ROBINSON exercised patience. He played four seasons at Princeton where he went from four points in 27 games as a freshman to scoring 17 goals and 31 points in 36 games during his senior season.
Robinson signed with the Blue Jackets out of college and made his debut shortly after leaving Princeton. But he still flipped between the NHL and AHL for two seasons. He became a full-time NHL player at 24 but was sent back to the AHL during his fifth season in 2023-24 before a trade to the Buffalo Sabres.
He signed a one-year, $950,000 contract with the Hurricanes for the 2024-25 season -- and had the strongest campaign of his career, with 14 goals and 32 points. Robinson then signed a four-year deal worth $1.7 million annually in June 2025.
He had 12 goals in 67 regular-season games this season and added eight points through 16 playoff games.
"I think it's a part of our role and responsibility, frankly, to remind these kids, because they are kids when they're in junior hockey, that it is a long road," Robinson's agent Todd Reynolds said. "You want to use those clear examples of players who have persevered and have talent on that long and winding road to get to the final destination of playing in the NHL."
The agents interviewed for this story expressed that the most important thing they can do is to let that teenager who went undrafted know that all is not lost just because they didn't get drafted.
But how do they deliver that message at a time when franchises have been open about getting younger and building their teams around those who are less than 25?
"I think it will always be like that for the elite talent and the players that are mature beyond their years in terms of their ability," Reynolds said. "I don't know that players like Eric Robinson, if they are being realistic, would compare themselves to those players. That ship has already sailed from their age group, and they're settled in and they're on a slower boat at that point."