There wasn’t much mystery to the decision about next season that was facing James Hagens based on logic and a proper development path, but the 18-year-old hockey wunderkind confirmed this week that he’s headed back to Boston College for his sophomore season.
Hagens made it official while speaking to the media out in Minnesota for Team USA at the World Junior Summer Showcase, a festival that also included B’s second round pick and fellow Boston College forward Will Moore among hopefuls for the World Junior roster.
Guess who's back⁉️
— Everything BC Hockey (@contecast) July 30, 2025
James Hagens is returning for his sophomore season at BC!!
📸 @bc_mhockey | #nhlbruins | #forbostonalways🦅 pic.twitter.com/qjwj8tejxp
"I want to be able to win a Beanpot, be able to win a national championship," said Hagens to NHL.com after notching four assists in the first two games of the summer showcase for Team USA. "Everyone has their roles, but our team goal is winning. That's what we want to do. We fell short last year, but it's hopefully going to happen this year."
Clearly the New York native is getting used to the whole winning thing after leading Team USA to a gold medal at last winter’s IIHF World Junior Championships, and now he’s got his sights set on a sophomore season at The Heights where the No. 7 overall pick is expected to be the focal point for the Eagles offensively. Hagens was the top line center for the Eagles last season as well, but pretty clearly deferred a bit to his older, more established linemates (first round picks Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault that jumped to the NHL right after their college hockey seasons) while playing the role of distributor rather than goal-scorer in most instances.
Still, the 37 points (11 goals, 26 assists) in 37 games as a true 18-year-old freshman in Hockey East is impressive on its own, even if the good-not-great numbers might have contributed to him falling from chatter a year ago that had him being the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. It’s easy to see moments last season where Hagens folded his game into a talented roster of older, similarly gifted peers as they tried to make it a successful season at BC by spreading the puck, and offense, around.
"James had an unreal year. I can't speak to the pressure he faced as a top pick in the draft, but I know it's got to be a lot," said Teddy Stiga, Hagens’ roommate at Boston College and another talented BC player at the summer showcase in Minny. "I was his roommate, so I know what he was going through. It's hard but I think he handled it well.
"He was a point per game player in college, and that's hard to do playing with guys like Perreault and Leonard, who are really high skilled. Sometimes you saw him deferring to 'Lenny,' but you know he can score with the puck, he can pass the puck, do everything."
That will change this season with Hagens leading a phalanx of B’s prospects at Boston College that includes Dean Letourneau, Andre Gasseau, Oskar Jellvik and Moore along others, but with the same expectations as always for winning and a lot of national championships on the. Chestnut Hill campus.
The expectation from the Bruins is that Hagens’ game will take a big step up this season in the dominance category, and that he will be ready to turn pro in the spring after a potentially long run for Boston College. That would leave the game-breaking teenager as an option for the Bruins toward the end of the regular season and a possible push for the playoffs if everything goes as planned along his development track.
It all seems like a very realistic scenario after Hagens looked every bit the budding superstar at Bruins development camp last month, and left fans hungry to see more based on his eye-popping edgework, deft stickhandling, and rocket shot that go right along with a high-speed processing hockey brain.
James Hagens scores on a wraparound, and it's 4-3. #WorldJuniors pic.twitter.com/RlUMlFC4D6
— Steven Ellis (@SEllisHockey) July 30, 2025
"The things he does well, he'll be able to carry and translate for BC but also right into the NHL," said Boston College head coach Greg Brown to NHL.com. " Like any young player going to the NHL, you have to bring your floor up, and that means getting bigger, stronger and faster. But then it's about the details you need to play with to be successful, and again, that just takes time. He has a great hockey brain. He reads things quickly and clearly, so I think just the evolution of his game will be more of that this year.
"He'll make decisions that are either going to be good or they're going to be neutral. They're not going to be negative."
The positive thing about the current Bruins situation is that there isn’t going to be a huge amount of pressure either way to rush Hagens at a key stage in his hockey development. A couple of seasons ago the B’s fast-tracked Matt Poitras to the NHL because there was a gaping need at center on a team that still had high playoff aspirations, and that partially pushed back his development because of injuries and bouncing between the NHL and AHL.
There’s obvious a difference between Poitras and Hagens in terms of NHL readiness, talent level amongst peers and hockey resume as well, but the point is that the B’s aren’t in a spot where they need to rush Hagens in any way, shape or form. And there may have been some lessons learned from the Poitras experience that served as a reminder that deliberate pacing and patience is a smart way to go in hockey player development.
“I think in some ways it’s going to benefit him,” said Bruins Player Development Coordinator Adam McQuaid, of Hagens returning to the college ranks for his sophomore season. “Continuing to ramp up the commitment level and consistent impact that he’s capable of having, that’s the big thing for a lot of young players, bringing the consistency night in and night out. It’s not always going to be perfect. But it’s just [about] bringing the effort and wanting to be a driver and a difference maker like he wants to be, will help him along in that process.”
The best news of all, of course, is that Boston hockey fans will have a front row seat to Hagens’ development this season while playing at Boston College where people can keep close tabs on his progress into the electric offense provider that he’s expected to be soon at the highest levels of hockey.