James Hagens grew up in Hauppauge passionately rooting for the Islanders along with his family, often in the crowd as a young boy at Nassau Coliseum. Now, as one of the top prospects in this month’s NHL Draft, he has seen the bumper stickers around Long Island imploring his hometown team to “Bring Hagens Home” with the No. 1 pick.

It would be a wonderful story for a hard-working, blue-collar family and the team’s Long Island fan base. A marketing home run that would, obviously, almost certainly have a positive on-ice impact given the immense skills and potential of the 18-year-old Boston College center.

Having said that, however, new general manager/executive vice president Mathieu Darche can’t — and won’t — factor in sentimentality when making his choice, and Matthew Schaefer is also available. 

Schaefer, the still-17-year-old defenseman from Stoney Creek, Ontario, is ranked first on the NHL Central Scouting Bureau’s list of North American skaters and could be a Norris Trophy candidate for seasons to come with his skating, playmaking and on-ice vision skills.

The Islanders’ improbable win in the NHL Draft Lottery despite just a 3.5% chance of doing so has given Darche, the first-time GM, a unique opportunity to jumpstart his tenure.

Teams don’t draft for need with the first overall pick. But it does happen that the Islanders are a little threadbare in top-end defense prospects. The first round is on June 27.

Having Hagens and fellow Ontario Hockey League star Michael Misa, a center, available gives this year’s draft a little more intrigue than the previous two, when there was no doubt that Chicago would draft Connor Bedard first in 2023 and the Sharks would eagerly snag Macklin Celebrini the following year.

Yet, while Darche is rightfully not tipping his hand publicly, it wasn’t hard to glean at last week’s NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo that the rest of the league believes the Islanders will take Schaefer. Opposing team personnel, including a GM or two, were not shy in whispering that loudly.

Of course, only time will judge who should have been taken first this year. As an exercise, think back to 2009, the last time the Islanders had the No. 1 pick. Almost everybody had John Tavares pegged for the Islanders and that, of course, is how then-GM Garth Snow picked.

But if Snow and the Islanders had a 20/20 hindsight re-do, even given all that Tavares contributed to the organization before leaving for his hometown Maple Leafs via free agency in 2018, defenseman Victor Hedman, who went second overall to the Lightning, might have been the better pick. 

Hedman, who won the Norris Trophy in 2018, has been a finalist for the award six times. He also was crucial in helping the Lightning reach three straight Stanley Cup Finals (2020-22), including victories in 2020 — when he was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the playoff MVP — and 2021.

The 6-2, 183-pound Schaefer patterns his game, in part, after Colorado's Cale Makar, the Conn Smythe winner in 2022 when his Avalanche won the Cup.

Consider this: Central Scouting ranked Schaefer first despite playing only 17 games this season for Erie. He was limited by an illness at the start of the season and then broke his collarbone playing for Team Canada in the IIHF World Junior Championship in December.

Schaefer could have well separated himself from the other prospects had he played a full season, his second of junior hockey.

“There’s a lot of great players in the draft class,” Schaefer said on Friday in Buffalo. “I think a lot of people [are thinking], ‘You only played 17 games, why are you at the top of that list?’ In those 17 games, I took it as an opportunity and I worked as hard as I could. I left it all out there. Where, maybe if I didn’t, maybe it would be otherwise. But I think I really showed what I was capable of in the 17 games.”

The uber-competitive Schaefer burns to be the first overall selection, as does the equally competitive Hagens.

Comparing a defenseman to a center and projecting their career trajectories is sometimes apples to oranges. But the organizations who select Schaefer and Hagens will be salivating over their strong playmaking abilities.

Hagens makes no bones that hearing the Islanders call his name would be a boyhood dream come true.

He’s become well aware that other Long Islanders share his dream.

“The first time I saw [a bumper sticker] was driving home from a workout,” Hagens said on Friday in Buffalo. “Seeing somebody’s bumper sticker, it was pretty funny. It gives you a good smile. It’s cool when you see something like that. When you see people on Long Island supporting you, it’s special.”

It would be a special story for the Islanders to draft the hometown kid.

But Darche’s mandate is to make the right hockey decision. And that almost certainly means taking Schaefer.