The Toronto Maple Leafs continued to add to their 2025 college undrafted free agent haul by signing touted C Luke Haymes.
Haymes, of Dartmouth College, will join the Toronto Marlies for the conclusion of their AHL season.
The Dartmouth roster lists Haymes at 6’1/200 lbs., a perfectly adequate size for a modern center prospect. Haymes hails from Ottawa, and the Senators were said to be interested, although Haymes decided to play for Ontario’s real team instead. In fact, there were a great number of teams involved in the sweepstakes, with Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet having reported on the pursuit of Haymes several times, including in late February when he wrote that Tampa Bay and the Rangers were some of the teams interested in the player besides the Leafs. Several sites list Haymes as one of the most, if not the most, sought-after undrafted NCAA free agents for reasons we will dig into momentarily.
A July 2003 birthday, Haymes played through 2020-21 at Ridley College in Ontario before heading west for his age 18 season with the Cowichan Valley Capitals of the BCHL. Going to the BCHL was a pretty common pathway to play American college hockey in the days before the recent CHL/NCAA agreement, and Haymes found decent success there. He scored 49 points in 52 games, leading his team in goals (22) and finishing second in points.
From there, Haymes was off to Dartmouth, a lower-tier NCAA D1 program. The Big Green Men haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 1979-80, and their program was in a particularly decrepit state when Haymes arrived in Hanover, NH. The team won just five games out of 30 in his freshman season and finished 12th out of 12 teams in the ECAC (the same conference in which recent UDFA signing John Prokop’s Union College plays). However, during Haymes’ time with Dartmouth, the hockey program has seen a bit of a revival, finishing fourth and fifth in the conference the last two seasons and going from 5-24-1 to 13 and 18 wins in the previous two seasons.
From a national perspective, Dartmouth was the literal worst team in college hockey when Haymes was a freshman, per the national PairWise Ranking system (60th out of 60 teams). However, Dartmouth finished 22nd out of 60 teams in the rankings in the season just completed. It is a remarkable turnaround, and a player of Haymes’ calibre was undoubtedly a part of that.
Haymes produced a ho-hum first year on that awful 2022-23 Dartmouth team but then exploded as a sophomore, powering his squad up the rankings in the process. He more than doubled his point total, from 16 points to 36 points, and led the Big Green Men in goals, assists, and points. His 36 points were 11 clear of the next closest player, and he was selected as the 2023-24 All-ECAC First Team.
Haymes’ monstrous sophomore campaign put him on UDFA radars last offseason, showing up at 14th on Elite Prospects’ 2024 NCAA FA list. He attended Toronto’s development camp last season but opted to return to Dartmouth, a perfectly reasonable decision for a player who was only 20 years old when the decision was made.
Haymes’ season perhaps didn’t go fully as planned, missing the start of the year with an injury, but he finished with a bang and raised his UDFA profile. Haymes didn’t play his first game until the final days of December, had a brief hot streak in January, then went cold for a chunk of February. However, Haymes’ final eight games saw him score four goals and four assists for eight points, with 23 shots on goal in those eight games. Across the full season, College Hockey News records Haymes at 19:11 in average TOI, second on his team in forwards. He scored 12 goals and six assists for 18 points in 20 games, second on the team in goals despite the missed time.
Yet the scouting services seem even higher on Haymes beyond his counting stats, with no site more bullish than Elite Prospects. They moved Haymes up to #1 on this year’s NCAA free agent rankings and likened him to a drafted player rather than a typical UDFA playing college hockey. They praise his goal-scoring abilities, describing his shot as NHL calibre. Moreover, Elite Prospects compliments Haymes’ goal-scoring instincts and willingness to go to the net to score tougher, playoff-style goals. The site also praises Haymes’ puck retrievals, attention to detail, work rate, and abilities on the boards in both the offensive and defensive zones. For more on Elite Prospects’ take, I’d recommend this breakdown of his game from scout David St-Louis:
McKeen’s Hockey does not have a ranked list of players but it did come up with a collection of intriguing undrafted players for this cycle across the various leagues (NCAA/CHL/Europe), and Haymes was among seven names that they listed from college hockey. The paragraph on Haymes in the article includes many of the same bullet points mentioned by Elite Prospects, mentioning the centerman’s hardworking style, forechecking ability, powerful shot, close-quarters goalscoring, and two-way game. McKeen’s also mentions off-ice intangibles, including leadership and competitive drive, all traits you want to see with a young player.
Scott Peters of FloHockey put together his own selection of NCAA free agent candidates in a recent article, with Haymes as the fourth name on the list (though there is not a formal ranking). Peters’ take is pretty brief and lukewarm: “Haymes has decent size, is strong on the puck, and plays with the kind of energy that would allow him to fill out a depth role on an NHL roster. He’s not the kind of player you add thinking you’ve got a huge difference maker, but he’s absolutely worth a contract and some significant AHL time to find out.” That is probably the baseline expectation, but a higher upside seems plausible.
Zooming out and giving something of my own take, one of the most attractive attributes of Haymes’ is his age. It is very unusual to sign a 21-year-old NCAA free agent; typically, players of this age who are good enough to sign with an NHL team were previously drafted. If we look at the two other top NCAA free agents who play center this cycle — Michigan’s TJ Hughes and Michigan State’s Karsen Dorwart — Haymes is 20 months younger than Hughes and 10 months younger than Dorwart, a vast difference developmentally.
Comparing him to past Leafs UDFA signings, Haymes is similar in age to Alex Steeves when he signed with Toronto, while Haymes is a bit younger than Max Ellis was and two years younger than Bobby McMann when they signed him.
In that way, Haymes reminds me a bit of Collin Graf from the last UDFA cycle, a star at Quinnipiac who was a highly sought-after target and ended up signing in San Jose (he has nine points in 26 games this season with the Sharks). There are differences between the two in play style and upside; still, both were 21 at the time of signing, played three years of college hockey, and could be legitimately viewed as better than several drafted college prospects playing in the NCAA. It’s rare to sign a 21-year-old NCAA free agent who has had success in that league.
As a result, I think we can project a higher upside with Haymes or believe he is less of a finished product. Skating seems to be his biggest downside, per the quoted scouting reports, but that can be worked on, and at 21, Haymes will have plenty of time to work on it.
Haymes has also played remarkably few NCAA games to date since the Ivy League programs start their season later than any other D1 college teams, and Haymes was obviously injured for part of this season. Graf played 112 games, McMann played 145 games, Steeves played 104 games, Hughes has played 116 games, and Dorwart has played 110 games. Haymes, by comparison, has played only 83. That suggests even more possible growth and untapped potential.
I will temper expectations a bit purely because of the league Haymes comes from. The ECAC is not the most talented league in college hockey, and while Dartmouth does occasionally play non-conference games against teams like Boston College or UMass, that is different than Matthew Knies at Minnesota or Steeves at Notre Dame playing the weekly grind of a Big Ten conference schedule. I anticipate that Haymes will take some time to adjust to the pace of the AHL and the pace of the NHL, should he ever reach that point.
However, Haymes’ work ethic, versatility, and attention to detail portend very well for a player who could one day steal a bottom-six role in the NHL. Watching Haymes’ game tape, there is some real skill there: a solid vision for play-making and slick hands. I have no reason to doubt Elite Prospects’ tracking data on Haymes, which grades him out among the very best players in college hockey, and when an NHL organization can sign a player who is only 21 and is putting up those kinds of tracking numbers, who brings 6’+ size and (by all accounts) is an upstanding character in the locker room, it’s a no-brainer.
We’ve talked about the Toronto farm system’s lack of depth at center, an issue that has become exacerbated since trading Fraser Minten for Brandon Carlo at the trade deadline. Signing Haymes is a nice win for Brad Treliving’s management team and a very respectable way of shoring up the position while adding overall quality to the farm system.
