Five prospects joined the Blackhawks’ 2025 draft class Saturday, adding to Friday’s haul of No. 3 overall pick Anton Frondell and late first-round selections Vaclav Nestrasil and Mason West.
Scouting director Mike Doneghey said the Hawks wanted to “continue to get bigger” and inject some “hardness and toughness” into their prospect pool.
Here’s a breakdown of the five Saturday selections:
No. 66: Nathan Behm, right wing, Kamloops (WHL)
Doneghey said the Hawks considered Behm a second-round value who fell into their laps at the beginning of the third round. Public rankings agreed with that assessment.
“[The Hawks] were pretty high on my list, so it was something I was kind of expecting,” Behm said.
The 6-2, 198-pound forward has good size and good skill. He’s considered a player whose style should translate relatively smoothly to the pro game.
He led Kamloops with 66 points (including 31 goals) in 59 games last season. Doneghey described Behm’s goal-scoring as his “calling card,” saying he wouldn’t be surprised if Behm scored 45 to 50 goals next season in Kamloops.
Behm is working on his explosiveness, but his skating overall is perfectly fine.
“[I’m] being more dominant every shift and using my size a little bit more,” Behm said. “Being a power forward and being skilled, I’m just trying to blend into all roles.”
No. 98: Julius Sumpf, center, Moncton (QMJHL)
While scouting top prospect Caleb Desnoyers, who eventually went No. 4 overall to the Mammoth, the Hawks also saw Sumpf, who skated on Desnoyers’ wing all season in Moncton.
Sumpf, a 6-2 native of Germany, is an overage prospect at age 20. He went undrafted each of the past two seasons but attended the Avalanche and Sharks’ development camps as an invitee.
He tallied 65 points in 58 regular-season games before leading the Quebec league in goals during the playoffs. Doneghey said Sumpf might play for Providence College next season.
“He plays that direct, hard game,” Doneghey added.
No. 107: Parker Holmes, forward, Brantford (OHL)
Like Sumpf, the Hawks also saw Holmes while watching current prospects Nick Lardis and Marek Vanacker in Brantford, and they heard positive reviews of Holmes’ character from Lardis and Vanacker.
“They said, ‘Yeah, this kid is not fake tough,'” Doneghey said.
The selling point on Holmes is his size — he’s already 6-4 and 214 pounds at age 18 — and he eagerly uses that size in fights.
He didn’t move up to the highest level of junior hockey until last season, and he managed only one point in 21 OHL games before undergoing shoulder surgery in November, from which he’s currently recovering.
Blackhawks #107 pick Parker Holmes seems pretty good at fighting pic.twitter.com/grG3mWt62J
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) June 28, 2025
No. 162: Ashton Cumby, defenseman, Seattle (WHL)
Doneghey said the Hawks, in search of that aforementioned hardness, asked every Canadian junior prospect at the combine who the toughest kid in their league was.
“Without hesitation, every kid in the Western League [responsed], ‘Cumby, Cumby, Cumby,'” Doneghey said.
Cumby, another overage prospect who will turn 20 in July, has another enormous frame at 6-5 and 214 pounds. He accumulated 13 points and 102 penalty minutes in 68 games for Seattle last season. It’s undetermined where he’ll play next season.
“He plays hard, but he has holes,” Doneghey said. “His skating’s got to get a little bit better. … [But] we felt again, at that time, we could add a little toughness. [We] took a chance on it.”
No. 194: Ilya Kanarsky, goalie, AKM Tula (Russia)
Kanarsky, another 20-year-old overage prospect, is just the second goalie the Hawks have drafted in the last five years.
Doneghey said goalie scout Dan Ellis noticed Kanarsky in 2023-24 while scouting Kirill Zarubin, the other goalie on the Tula junior team. The Flames drafted Zarubin in the 2024 third round, but Kanarsky then outplayed Zarubin in 2024-25 — posting a .938 save percentage in 34 games — so the Hawks figured they ought to claim his indefinite rights.
The Hawks entered Saturday owning the No. 197 pick, but they traded it to the Panthers for a 2026 seventh-round pick. They also traded Russian forward prospect Ilya Safonov’s rights to the Canucks for future considerations.