Matthew Schaefer is the New York Islanders defenseman who won the 2026 Calder Trophy on every ballot cast, after one of the best rookie seasons a blueliner has ever put together. The first overall pick in the 2025 draft played all 82 games as an 18-year-old and finished with 23 goals and 59 points.
| Position | Defenseman |
| Number | #48 |
| Team | New York Islanders |
| Shoots | Left |
| Height | 6'2" (188 cm) |
| Weight | 186 lb (84 kg) |
| Born | September 5, 2007 (age 19) |
| Birthplace | Hamilton, Ontario, Canada |
| Drafted | 1st overall in 2025 by New York Islanders |
| NHL debut | 2025-26 |
| NHL seasons | 1 |
| Career points | 59 in 82 games |
| Stanley Cups | 0 |
Page Contents
Early Life and Junior
Schaefer grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, and came through the Hamilton Jr. Bulldogs before spending his U16 year with the Halton Hurricanes. He put up 32 points in 25 games there in 2022-23 and was named the league’s player of the year. Erie took him first overall in the 2023 OHL Priority Selection.
His first OHL season was about the workload, not the numbers. The Otters used him hard as a 16-year-old and he finished with three goals and 17 points in 56 games, enough for a spot on the OHL’s first all-rookie team. The offense showed up the following fall. Schaefer had 22 points in 17 games in 2024-25 and had separated himself from the rest of the draft class.
Then the season came apart. Mononucleosis cost him nine games early on. He came back, went to the World Juniors, and broke his collarbone in Canada’s second game. That ended his year at 17 games, which meant NHL teams had to make their decision on what they had already seen.
NHL Career
The Islanders won the 2025 draft lottery and took Schaefer first overall on June 27. He was the franchise’s first No. 1 pick since John Tavares in 2009 and the first OHL player off the board at the top since Connor McDavid in 2015. He signed his three-year entry-level contract on August 4 and never went back to Erie.
New York put him on the opening night roster out of camp. Schaefer debuted October 9 in Pittsburgh and picked up an assist on a Jonathan Drouin goal. Two nights later, in his home debut against Washington, he scored his first NHL goal. He was the league’s rookie of the month for October.
It never slowed down from there. He scored an overtime winner against Utah on November 14. He passed Denis Potvin’s Islanders rookie mark for a defenseman in late February and Stefan Persson’s franchise record on March 31. On April 9 he scored his 23rd goal and tied a record Brian Leetch had held since 1989.
The team around him could not match it. New York went 43-34-5 for 91 points, finished sixth in the Metropolitan Division and missed the playoffs. Schaefer played 24:41 a night anyway, a true number one defenseman’s workload, and came out at plus-13 on a club that spent the spring watching.
The Calder vote was not close. He took all 198 first-place ballots, the first unanimous rookie of the year since Teemu Selanne in 1992-93. Ivan Demidov finished second and Beckett Sennecke third, and both of them outscored him. Schaefer was also named to the NHL All-Rookie Team.
International Career
Schaefer has worn a letter for Canada at nearly every age group. He captained Ontario to gold at the 2023 Canada Winter Games and scored the overtime winner in the final. That same year he captained Canada to gold at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge.
Canada went undefeated for gold at the 2024 World Under-18 Championship with Schaefer averaging just under 18 minutes a night and posting five points in seven games. He captained the country again at the 2024 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, won another gold, and put up six points in five games.
The 2025 World Juniors are the one that got away. He had a goal and an assist in the opener, then broke his collarbone against Latvia and was done for the tournament. Canada added him to its long list for the 2026 Olympics and left him off the final roster.
What Makes Matthew Schaefer So Good
Start with the skating. Schaefer takes the puck and goes, and he does it without waiting for a play to open up ahead of him. That is the reason the Islanders could hand an 18-year-old 24 minutes a night in his first season and not have to hide him against anybody.
The shot volume is the other half of it. He put 222 pucks on net as a rookie and scored on 10.4 percent of them, which is a forward’s conversion rate coming from the blue line. Eight of those goals came on the power play, and he finished with 18 power play points.
He also picked his spots. Four of his 23 goals were game winners, and two of those came in overtime.
Records and Milestones
Schaefer’s 23 goals tie Brian Leetch for the most ever by a rookie defenseman in a single season. Leetch did it in 68 games in 1988-89.
The 59 points are the most by a rookie defenseman in Islanders history. Stefan Persson had owned that number since 1977-78 with 56. League-wide, 59 points ranks 11th all time among rookie defensemen, and Larry Murphy’s 76 from 1980-81 is still the record nobody has touched.
Only one NHL defenseman scored more than Schaefer in 2025-26. Jakob Chychrun had 26. The Calder made Schaefer the sixth Islander to win the award and the first since Mathew Barzal in 2017-18, and the NHL lists him as the youngest winner in its history.
What Matthew Schaefer Is Chasing
The near-term number is 100 career points. Schaefer sits at 59 through 82 games, so an ordinary second season gets him there before he turns 20.
The franchise numbers take a decade. Denis Potvin owns everything that matters for an Islanders defenseman with 1,052 points and 310 goals across 1,060 games, and Persson is a distant second at 369 points. Schaefer’s career goal total is 23, and Persson is the realistic first name to pass on that list.
Age is the whole argument. Schaefer is 19 and Potvin needed 15 seasons in a New York sweater to build the record he left behind.
Off the Ice
Schaefer wears 48 because his older brother Johnny wore it first. Johnny picked the number after meeting Danny Briere at a tournament in Buffalo where Briere was coaching his own son, and Matthew took it from his brother.
His mother, Jennifer, died of breast cancer in February 2024, in the middle of his first OHL season. He has spoken about her often since, including on the night he scored his first NHL goal.
He spent his rookie year living with Islanders veteran Matt Martin and his family rather than getting a place of his own on Long Island.
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Stats last updated September 12, 2026. Source: NHL official statistics.