EAST MEADOW, NY — Matthew Schaefer’s previous 72 hours were a bit hard to keep track of.
The 17-year-old went No. 1 in the NHL Draft by the New York Islanders on Friday night in Los Angeles, received congratulatory texts from Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid, and Matthew Tkachuk, partook in endless media availabilities, and then was whisked away in a private jet to Long Island for the first day of development camp on Monday morning.
“I want one now,” Schaefer joked, referring to the private jet. “I don’t have too much money, though. I think I only have some nickels in the bank. But I was telling my dad I’m going to start making a savings plan so by the time I’m done playing, I can maybe get one.”
Celebrations were limited. He spent the six-hour flight trying to get some well-deserved shuteye before lacing up his skates and hitting the ice at the Islanders’ training facility in East Meadow — his first action since a broken clavicle sidelined him. Now comes the work.
“I was smiling ear to ear the whole time,” Schaefer said of his first workout as an Islander. “Just to get back out there, hockey players don’t like watching, so getting all the equipment on and playing with the other guys, getting out there, that was a big thing for me… Getting drafted is nice, No. 1 overall is a huge honor, but you put that in the past. You can always think about it, but when you’re at camp, you’re at hockey, you put that behind you, and you work as hard as you can. Put your head down. Nothing’s given, so the work starts now. The real work starts now.”
The first impression of Schaefer is as expected. The power that he can generate in the lower half of his body makes skating seem easy, with long strides simply eating the ice beneath him. His hands are quick, and he is so sure of them that he is able to keep his eyes up ice with the sort of poise you see from a seasoned NHL veteran, not a kid who was finishing up his high school finals online just a few days ago.
“Just the way he goes about his business, he’s super professional,” Islanders defenseman Isaiah George said. “You wouldn’t realize that he was a first-round pick with just how humble he is. On the ice, it obviously speaks for itself. He’s a great skater, a really heads-up player.”
While there were 15 other skaters on the ice during his session on Monday, he was never far from an Islanders coach. He stood on the goal line in the left corner speaking with former Islanders defenseman and a regular local host for young players, Dennis Seidenberg. He was on the blue line, cutting it up with development coach Rod Pelley. In the right face-off circle, he was asking another ex-Islander defenseman, Johnny Boychuk, if he was properly “walking the line” with the puck.
“It’s pretty cool. They know so much,” Schaefer said. “To hear what they have to say, critique this, maybe do this, maybe do that, just help in any way. There was one time I was walking the line, and I did this move, and I was like ‘Oh, did you like that?’ And he said, ‘I loved it.’ Little things like that are good to know so I can improve my game. And when they say ‘Oh, maybe do this,’ I’ll try it… I’m going to learn so much from them this week.”
He will lean on them and some of the more established Islanders veterans — he has already spoken to star forwards Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat — in the coming months, as he eyes a spot on the opening-night roster, which would make him just the second-youngest player to appear in an NHL game in franchise history.
Lofty expectations, and at its initial utterance, an important goal to set. But Schaefer is not looking at this as a hope, but more as an expectation.
“You want to play in the NHL, and you want to play for as long as you can,” Schaefer said. “For me, it’s just getting my body ready and working as hard as I can, playing with NHL guys all summer. They’re going to be pushing me. Being in that environment is super big, and I want to be on that opening-night roster. So that’s a me thing.”
