2026 T25U25: Zac Olsen is #18

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Everyone loves that player archetype that's the hard working, fast skating, hard hitting winger that does the dirty work on his line and pitches in on offense by acting like a wrecking ball. The Leafs took a couple of those kinds of players in this year's draft, but Zac(h) Olsen is the only one to crack this year's T25U25.

Zac Olsen	Vitals
Age as of July 1	18.29
Position	RW
Height	6'1"
Weight (lbs)	203
Shoots	R
Draft Year	2026
Draft Number	73

The Player

A quick reprise for those who want to know more about who Olsen is as a player in more detail:

Slight spoiler: the rankings for Olsen were all over the place, in fact he may have the craziest distribution of votes of any other player on the official rankings this year. And the thing is, I can understand both sides – even though I only ranked him 22nd, he's someone I can see making a big jump next year if he has a good freshman season in the NCAA next year.

It helps that Olsen already has a solid foundation for a depth/supporting winger. I mentioned the speed, work ethic, and physical play already, which makes a somewhat safe bet for him to make the NHL in some kind of depth role – but it's not a guarantee yet. The advantage he has over, say, a Ryan Tverberg who has a somewhat similar kind of game is that Olsen has already been gearing his play to a professional-style role player for the past two years. It honestly does give a bit of a leg up to know who you are, who you're not, and work hard to be the best in those specific ways.

The interesting thing for Olsen now is how he will continue to develop in the NCAA. Colorado College is not a top program, but it is in a pretty good conference and they have a decent amount of NHL draft picks for next year. Mind you, none of them are very high picks. Olsen joining this coming season makes him the youngest by a pretty clear margin – he's the only non-goalie who isn't already 20+ years old, and he's still 18 until next March.

There were three things I mentioned about Olsen in his post-draft profile that I thought were his biggest needs for improvement: passing, puck handling, and discipline. I stand by those, as they are the areas that could have the biggest room for improvement. But honestly, to expand on the improvements, I'd like him to start fine tuning the kinds of skills that work well for a power winger – and he need only look at the development of Nikita Grebyonkin in this regard.

That means specifically being able to make passes and handle the puck in close, around the net, along the boards, and so on. Those are the areas where Olsen will be making his bread and butter, so he needs to be able to not just cause chaos there by being fast and physical, but be able to make some plays with some consistency. He doesn't need to become a dynamic offensive star, he just needs to be able to fish the puck out of a scrum and keep the puck possession moving for his team.

The Votes

Here's how the votes broke down:

Voter	Vote
Cathy	11
Species	13
Hound Line	19
Shinson93	17
Cameron	23
Sclodiggity	15
Brian S	22
Svalbard38	14
Zone Entry	NA
Hardev	NA
Adam	15
Weighted Average	18.27
Highest Vote	11
Lowest Vote	23

Like I said, the distribution of his votes are kind of crazy. As high as 11 with two people who didn't rank him at all. But votes pretty much everywhere between 11 and 25. I wound up being one of the skeptical ones about him, which seems weird but I wanted to see some more certainty from him.

The Opinions

Here's what the other voters had to say about Olsen:

Shinson93: Like Hirvonen and Niemela, it’s probably going to be hard for me to not think of Olsen and Williams together. Honestly, I don’t know a lot about either of them, but I found that Olsen’s jump to NCAA as an 18 year old being the reason that he jumped up my list over a few other players in this range.

Svalbard38: A “good feeling” isn’t real, it’s not measurable or quantifiable, there’s not always a ton of logic behind it. Sometimes it’s from the way a guy plays, sometimes it’s because he has a name you like to say (you won’t convince me that this isn’t at least a little bit of a contributing factor to how quickly the fanbase embraced Miroslav Holinka). But sometimes you have a good feeling anyway. Olsen is a player I feel good about. A lot of that is his playstyle this time. He’s speed, he’s physicality, he’s intensity, not a top scorer but if he had everything going for him he wouldn’t have been available in the third. A guy like Olsen is a guy a coach wants in the lineup. I’m not saying he’ll be a major difference maker in the NHL but he’s the kind of guy who could make a career as a third line energy guy if he can keep developing.

Sclodiggity: Youth is exciting (and legitimately relevant). Olsen is quite young (the 5th youngest on the list) and will switch leagues next year which means exposure to new ideas and coaching which can lead to changes in development trends (hopefully in a good way). The NCAA should be a good place for Olsen to develop as a responsible two-way player as he’ll need those skills to get ice time (and a coach’s praise) there, more so than in the CHL where nifty mitts can take you far. I think the move supports the player he is and will need to be to make the NHL but, like with anyone, we’ll have to see how he does. Speed is hard to teach though so having that helps a lot.

Hardev: I’m going to be honest, I don’t see what the hype is here. He skates well and is a rat, he scored a lot of garbage goals (not necessarily bad) and off the rush. I guess I was expecting more from the stuff he has, like winning puck battles along the boards and setting up plays, creating turnovers, that sort of thing. I like that he doesn’t shoot from everywhere but from the slot in. I’m curious to see how the NCAA is for him, maybe he can develop a cycle game there. Maybe I’m missing something and this article is my chance to learn!

Cathy: I had two anchor players in my voting, one at 15, and one at 10. To put someone over 15, I had to believe that they had some chance to be an NHL-level player of some small value. Not a lot of chance, mind you, just some. I think as usual, my overall take is much lower on everyone than most people. There is no wowie zowie upside for anyone in my 10 to 15 range, and I'm much more likely to believe in complementary skills in this range than anyone who just shoots and scores. To bust 10, they had to be more likely than not to be at least an NHL player. Basically, I think age made me take Olsen more seriously than Landon Sim. We'll see in time!

Zone Entry:
Zac Olsen
Zac Olsen
Are we pining for Zach Hyman?
He’s still young
So who knows?
Maybe we’ll see him in the pros
GOOD LUCK,
Plucky young Zac Olsen

Now it's your turn to tell us what you think!

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