On Friday night, a lifelong dream will come true for James Hagens.

The only question is how early.

The 18-year-old from Boston College is a no-doubt first-rounder in the NHL Entry Draft. The No. 3 ranked North American skater according to NHL Central Scouting, Hagens falls between No. 2 overall and No. 5 in most pre-draft rankings. In a poll at The Athletic, evaluators were unanimous in voting Hagens as the “best hands” in his entire class.

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No matter where Hagens goes, he’s going to relish the moment.

That’s the advice he’s received from Boston College teammates like Ryan Leonard, Gabriel Perreault, and Jacob Fowler, all of whom have been drafted in the early rounds over the past two seasons.

“They all say the same thing: Just be grateful. Take it all in,” Hagens said. “It goes by quick. This summer is a little crazy, but this is something you’ll remember for the rest of your life. So these are all really special moments that you have to make sure you cherish with yourself and your family. It’s just something to be grateful for.”

Hagens has a chance to be drafted the highest of the bunch.

‘I’ve had to work for everything’

The son of two teachers, Hagens grew up on Long Island in Hauppauge, NY. His father, Michael, played defenseman for Division III SUNY-Brockport (1997-2000), and was quick to get the family hooked on hockey.

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He built a backyard rink and all three of his children took to it.

Hagens’ older brother, Michael, is also a defenseman at Boston College, while his younger sister Emma plays at the Portledge School. Growing up they ventured to Islanders games at Nassau Coliseum and Hagens had a picture with Matt Martin on his bedroom wall. A playmaking forward on the smaller side, he liked watching clips of Blackhawks star Patrick Kane.

After being coaching by his father on the Long Island Royals, Hagens starred at Rhode Island powerhouse Mount St. Charles and the US National Development Team Program before landing at Boston College as a 17-year-old last fall. Feeling he’d accomplished enough after two seasons of juniors, he was ready to raise the bar.

“I wanted to be challenged at the college level,” Hagens said. “I wanted to join Boston College and I wanted to be pushed every day, playing against guys that are older and stronger that will push you and get you ready for the NHL… I knew that it would be the best step in getting me ready.”

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Though it all, Hagens has carried a work ethic his parents instilled in him at a young age. When he attended the NHL Combine in June, he was hopeful that it stood out to teams.

“Just how high my compete level is,” Hagens said. “I love winning. I will do anything to win. Something that’s helped me get to the point where I am today is just how hard I’ve been able to work my whole life.

“Nothing has ever come easy. I’ve had to work for everything that I’ve ever gotten before. And that’s something I’m super grateful for. That’s something that’s just within my family. That’s something I was raised up, taught from my parents and my coaches. So going into those meetings, just really expressing how hard I compete and how badly I want to be on a team and hopefully win a Stanley Cup someday.”

‘He has that fire’

When Hagens arrived at Conte Forum, his new coach Greg Brown was struck by his demeanor right away.

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“He’s a happy kid,” Brown said. “He comes into the rink every day with a smile. Just excited to be there. You can feel his positive energy when he comes into the locker room.”

As a teenager playing in rough-and-tumble Hockey East, Hagens acclimated to the competition quickly. He was named the Rookie of the Month in November, and once he returned from an exceptional World Juniors tournament — five goals, four assists en route to a Gold Medal — in January, Brown saw Hagens raise the bar even higher.

“You could see when games were tight, that he would elevate and really want to assert himself and try and take over the game,” Brown said. “Or (have) a major impact in the game. So he has that competitiveness. He has that fire.”

Hagens wound up with 37 points (11 goals, 26 assists) in 37 games as a freshman. The goal total wasn’t huge, but Hagens was centering a line with NHL-bound wingers in Leonard and Perrault. He was happy to make the right play to set a teammate up. Hagens just wanted the 27-8-2 Eagles to win games.

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Though it wasn’t a Macklin-Celebrini-style explosion, he was pleased to be producing at a point-per-game rate given the level of competition he was facing.

“You’re playing against guys that are 25, 24-year-olds every night,” Hagens said. “It’s tough. It’s hard hockey, but I’m super grateful to be able to have the year I was able to have with the group of guys we did have.”

Away from the rink, there was one other thing that stood out to Brown.

“He cares,” Brown said. “He cares about his teammates. He wants to do the right things. He wants to learn. There’s a lot of — it’s not just going out there to show off his skill package. He wants to play the right way within the frame of the game and that’s not always easy for guys who grow up always being the best guy on the ice. He wants to understand the big picture of how it all works and then be able to be as big a factor as he can within that framework.”

‘Getting drafted has been my dream’

Now comes the uncertainty for Hagens.

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After earning spots on the US Development Team and at Boston College, he won’t have agency in where he’s drafted. It could be his hometown Islanders at No. 1 overall, the Bruins at No. 7, or anywhere from East Coast to West.

If he slides to Boston, Hagens said he’d be embrace being a Bruin.

“I love Boston,” Hagens said. “Being at Boston College, we’re right in the middle of Boston there. So it’s a beautiful city. Only great things to say about it. I love it there.”

After the draft, Hagens said he doesn’t know if he’ll be back in Chestnut Hill for another season. That’s a conversation he’ll need to have with the team that drafts him and his family. NHL teams retain the rights of their draft picks throughout their college careers, so there’s no rush for most selections.

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Brown would certainly welcome him back with open arms.

“He’s a driver on our team,” Brown said. “A key guy. All over the ice, but especially in offensive situations. He’s able to create offense where there seems to be none, and that’s not an easy thing to do. I also think he would grow his leadership in the locker room and on the ice coming back as a sophomore.”

Over the past year, there’s been plenty of speculation about where he’ll land next, but Hagens is doing his best to embrace the noise. Sooner or later, he knows his name will be called, and he’ll be one step closer to the NHL.

“Honestly, you just kinda have to be grateful about it,” Hagens said. “Being able to hear your name in those conversations and obviously leading up to the draft now, being allowed the opportunity to get drafted into any organization in the league, it’s something you have to be grateful for. It’s one step in your process, but you just have to be ready.

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“Getting drafted has been my dream my whole entire life. That’s why I started playing hockey. That’s why I still play. I’m really just grateful for everything right now. The noise will always be there, but you just have to make sure you’re living in the moment.”

Read the original article on MassLive.

Click here to view Trev Alberts’ Monday press conference.

Trev Alberts’ job title is Texas A&M’s Director of Athletics. In some ways, tailor maybe should be added.

That’s a reaction to how Alberts described the task he and A&M face in navigating the changing future of college athletics.

“(It’s) how to thread the needle between tradition and modernization,” Alberts said in a Monday meeting with local reporters inside a third-floor conference room at Kyle Field.

Maintaining traditions at A&M won’t be a problem. Successfully modernizing A&M’s athletic department to excel in the new era of Name, Imagine & Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing projects to be much more challenging.

Reacting to the recent House v. NCAA settlement, which allows NCAA member schools to directly pay student-athletes, Alberts announced that A&M will distribute $18 million to football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball.

A popular national template suggests directing 75 percent of funds to football, 15 percent to basketball, five percent to baseball and five percent to women’s sports.

“Some institutions have chosen to use that (75-15-5-5 model) as a template for their institution,” Alberts said. “Our percentages don’t reflect that. We’ve chosen to make market-based decisions based on revenue.”

The distribution could cause derision within athletic programs. Coaches in different programs could be competing against each other to get more funding.

Alberts said that hasn’t been a problem at A&M, but he has heard that has been an issue for other colleagues.

Alberts declined to reveal the percentages to be shared with A&M’s athletes for competitive reasons. But football is the only revenue-producing sport at Texas A&M, so it stands to reason that the majority of A&M’s shared revenue will go to football players.

“I’m not going to run out and tell you exactly what the numbers are and what the percentages are because there’s a competitive piece to that, right?” he said. “But I think you’re going to start to figure out where the numbers lie.”

He said in a year there may be more data available that provides at least guidelines how players perhaps should be compensated not only by sport, but by position.

Alberts acknowledged that some programs could be at a disadvantage to conference opponents.

For example, Kentucky, which puts great emphasis on basketball, figures to share a greater percentage of revenue with its basketball players than many other SEC programs.

“You’re not going to knowingly put any of your programs at a competitive disadvantage,” Alberts said. “But I think it’s absolutely true you could find yourselves in a situation — based on the priorities of the investments — that some of your programs will have less rev share than some of their competitors.”

Some of the differences, at least, could potentially be offset by greater NIL opportunities.

Alberts said if a program, like football, has players earning substantial money though fair-market NIL deals then some funds could be redirected to other sports.

To enhance those NIL possibilities, Alberts said a new position is being created to help locate NIL opportunities and ensure they meet the standard “fair market value” as determined by Deloitte, which will act as a third-party clearinghouse for NIL deals.

“We’re not ready to announce a name, but we are hiring a new position that will be an associate AD reporting directly to me that is an attorney,” Alberts said. “It’s basically, what is our strategy and how do we leverage every one of our assets?

“If we’re able to get fair market value NIL deals at a certain level, we may not need as much rev share there. We can put the rev share over at this sport because they’re not as successful. So, that’s why I think that fair market value NIL strategy is going to be really important to our future.”

Alberts later added: “We have to be better than our peers. To me, that’s the differentiator in the game. That’s why we’re going to throw a lot of energy and effort in making sure we have a good strategy there (NIL).”

Alberts is hopeful that a sound, effective strategy could launch A&M to great competitive success.

“This is our time,” he said. “If we have the courage to make tough decisions and act and modernize in some areas, I think Texas A&M can separate and do things we’ve never done here before.

“That’s why we’re all here. The opportunities are here at Texas A&M to do things that most people can’t do because of scale, because of resources and other things.”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Harvard University baseball alumnus Mike Stenhouse ’80, a two-time All-American and three-time All-Ivy selection for the Crimson, has earned induction into the College Baseball Hall of Fame, the College Baseball Foundation announced on Monday.
 
During his time at Harvard, Stenhouse earned All-America accolades twice, including First Team All-America in 1978, and All-Ivy honors three times, including First Team All-Ivy laurels in 1978 and 1979. A 2003 inductee into the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame, he played three seasons for the Crimson from 1977-79 and still holds the school records for career batting average (.422) and career triples (12).
 
Stenhouse won the Charles H. Blair Batting Title in Ivy Games after hitting .500 in conference play in 1978, set the school record for single-season batting average (.475) in 1977, and claimed the school record for single-season triples (six) in 1979.
 
The 26^th overall pick in the 1979 Major League Baseball Draft, Stenhouse went on to play in the MLB from 1982-86, competing for the Montreal Expos (1982-84), Minnesota Twins (1985), and Boston Red Sox (1986).
 
The 18th induction class will be honored at the 2026 Night of Champions presented by Prairiefire on February 12, 2026 in Overland Park, Kansas, the home of the College Baseball Hall of Fame. The event will serve as the ceremonial start to the 2026 college baseball season, which begins on February 13, 2026.