- Sudbury gave up 15 draft picks plus two compensatory selections for Tanner Adams’ rights
- Brampton walks away with the 2027 fifth overall pick and 16 more selections through 2030
- Read below for the full pick-by-pick breakdown of the OHL blockbuster
Seventeen draft picks for one 16-year-old who has never played an OHL game.
The Sudbury Wolves acquired the rights to forward Tanner Adams from the Brampton Steelheads on Friday, and the bill came to 15 selections spread across four drafts plus two compensatory picks. Sudbury announced it themselves:
Adams went third overall to Brampton in the 2026 OHL Priority Selection after entering the draft as the top-ranked skater in the class. He never planned on reporting. The Porcupine, Ontario native said before and after the draft that he wanted to stay close to home in Northern Ontario, and Sudbury picked two spots later at No. 5.
Brampton took him anyway. Four months later that gamble turned into a haul, and Scott Wheeler of The Athletic laid out the lesson in it:
Here is everything the Steelheads get back, year by year:
- 2027 (six picks): compensatory fifth overall, a compensatory second at the conclusion of Round 2, Round 2 (OTT), Round 3 (BFD), Round 5 (PBO), Round 10 (SBY)
- 2028 (four picks): Round 2 (WSR), Round 3 (OSH), Round 4 (FLNT), Round 5 (PBO)
- 2029 (four picks): Round 2 (PBO), Round 3 (OSH), Round 4 (WSR), Round 6 (SBY)
- 2030 (three picks): Round 2 (BFD), Round 5 (SBY), Round 6 (KIT)
The two compensatory pieces are what make the return work for Brampton. A fifth overall selection in 2027 is a legitimate cornerstone, and the extra second at the end of Round 2 sits ahead of most of the rest of the package.
Adams earned that price tag with 88 points in 52 games for The Hill Academy’s U16 AAA program last season, 34 of them goals. The 6-foot-1 center gets scouting marks for his shot, his faceoff work and a physical streak that does not usually show up on a top-five pick at that age. He becomes eligible for the 2028 NHL Draft.
Sudbury got the player it spent the entire spring chasing. Brampton got four drafts’ worth of ammunition for a forward who was never going to pull a Steelheads jersey over his head.
