The Final 40 weekend is, by design, a closing argument. Forty players, three days, one roster at the end of it. The Massachusetts CCM Performance Tryout has done its work. The Boys Festival has done its work. What's left is the final cut for USA Hockey's National 16 Team, the step below the NTDP, but the highest age-group flag a 2010 can fly this summer.
Most of the conversation around Final 40, fairly, centers on the players who already wore the badge a year ago. Holdovers from the 2025 National 15 Camp arrive with a track record the selectors trust. They're known quantities. They're also the natural baseline against which everyone else is measured.
But there's a more interesting subplot: the Mass prep players who weren't selected for National 15 last year and who, in the twelve months since, did enough to get drafted in the USHL Phase I Draft. Five of them are at Final 40 this weekend. They walk in with a credential that didn't exist a year ago, a credential that says a parallel pool of evaluators looked at this player and bet on him.
The question isn't whether that credential helps. It does. The question is how much it changes the math at each position, and the answer is genuinely different for forwards than for defensemen.
Scenario OneThe Forwards
The forward openings at National 16 aren't structural. They're vacancies. Jack Queally and Sam Lee were selected to the USA Hockey NTDP, a tier above National 16. Blake Wilichoski didn't try out. He's tendered to Cedar Rapids in the USHL. Three Mass 2010 forwards who would have been on this roster aren't in the room. The three seats they vacated are the seats Walsh, Needham, and Petropoulos are walking into.
This is the cleanest scenario any of these players could have asked for, but it's worth being honest about why. The forward math isn't friendly because the National 16 staff carved out room for new names. It's friendly because three of the players who'd have eaten those minutes a year ago moved up or moved out. Queally and Lee earned the bigger badge. Wilichoski has a USHL contract in his back pocket. That's three specific shifts, three specific roles, three specific pieces of ice, gone from the roster picture before Final 40 even starts.
That's the door. Three USHL-drafted Mass prep forwards have to walk through it.
And here's the wrinkle that makes the forward case interesting: all three of the USHL-drafted candidates played each other in the most important club game of the season. Walsh and Needham played for the Neponset Valley River Rats. Petropoulos played for the Militia Hockey Club. The Rats beat Militia in the state championship final. That means the selectors don't have to project across separate tracks. They have head-to-head tape on all three of these forwards on the same ice, in the biggest club game of the year, with everything on the line.
All three are prep-track players. Needham at St. Sebastian's (NEPSAC) and Petropoulos at Milton Academy (NEPSAC) both played prep hockey at the highest competition level Mass offers. Walsh stayed in Framingham and played MIAA public school, where he was the focal point of his team. All three got drafted in the USHL Phase I Draft. The résumés are more similar than they look at first glance.
What separates them is style, not pedigree.
Walsh and Needham are the bigger forwards in the group, the kind of players who win pucks below the dots, drive through contact in the offensive zone, and create with strength on the puck. Petropoulos is the burner. He's the fastest of the three, and at the National 16 level speed is its own currency, separate from size and production. Three USHL-drafted forwards, three different physical profiles, three different ways to make the selectors say yes.
Walsh is the most interesting case in this whole bucket, and the reason is the Round 4 USHL selection itself. The MIAA production gets discounted on level of play (that's table stakes for any public-school evaluation), and yet Chicago still spent a fourth-round pick on him. The same round Waterloo took Needham, who played prep. That tells you Chicago's evaluators looked at the Rats tape, weighed the apples-to-apples comparison against a state-championship club roster, and concluded the player was a fourth-rounder regardless of where the school season was played. The Framingham numbers are the bonus evidence: what Walsh looks like in a true No. 1 role, carrying a team, every situation, every shift. Most Final 40 candidates don't have that data point in their file. Walsh does. He's the first name through the door Queally and Lee opened.
Needham brings the most conventional file of the three. Same Rats championship, same Round 4 USHL draft slot as Walsh (Waterloo took him in the same tier Chicago took Walsh), and a prep season at Sebs that the selectors saw repeatedly all year. The competition was harder than what Walsh faced at Framingham, but the role was smaller. Needham played his shifts against the best teams in NEPSAC and held up. That's a different argument than Walsh's, and a perfectly good one. Lower variance, fewer questions on the résumé.
Petropoulos brings what Walsh and Needham don't: pure speed. He's the fastest of the three forwards in this bucket, and selectors at the National 16 level pay for speed in a way they don't pay for any other single tool. Add the prep résumé at Milton, the USHL pick from Cedar Rapids, and the state-championship-game tape against Walsh and Needham themselves, and the file is complete on its own terms. The later USHL round is a real data point, not a disqualifier; teams draft for tools and for fit, and Cedar Rapids saw a tool that translates. At Final 40, the question isn't whether he belongs on the same line of conversation as the other two. It's what kind of forward the staff wants in the third seat: another power game, or the burner who can change a shift by himself.
Scenario TwoThe Defensemen
National 16 carries 6 defensemen. All six from the 2025 National 15 Camp are at Final 40. Four added USHL credentials in the last twelve months, two did not. But the file Fishbone is bringing into Final 40 isn't just stronger than the two without USHL picks. His prep season outproduced every returning National 15 D-man, including the three USHL-drafted ones and the tendered one. That puts every returning seat in play.
This is the harder math, and it's harder than it looks at first glance. The forward analysis is about claiming open space left behind by Queally, Lee, and Wilichoski. The defense analysis is about the opposite: everyone from the National 15 D group is back. Nobody graduated up. Nobody opted out. The selectors aren't filling vacancies on the blueline. They're choosing whether to swap any of last year's six for someone new, and Fishbone's case isn't aimed at the two softest seats. It's aimed at the depth chart.
The Returning Six
Before talking about the pushers, here's the full credential picture for the six returning National 15 defensemen at Final 40.
| Player | School | Club | USHL Tender | USHL Draft | Final 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logan Cotter | St. Mark's | Militia HC | Green Bay | Yes | |
| Brodie Anderson | Cushing Academy | Minutemen Flames | Dubuque, Rd. 9 | Yes | |
| Brendan Martin | St. Sebastian's | Neponset Valley River Rats | Sioux City, Rd. 11 | Yes | |
| Nicholas Ware | Belmont Hill | Neponset Valley River Rats | Omaha, Rd. 8 | Yes | |
| Alex Guo | Belmont Hill | Minutemen Flames | Yes | ||
| Shaun Farrell | Catholic Memorial (MIAA) | Neponset Valley River Rats | Yes |
That's the room Fishbone, Porter, and Poti are walking into. All six returning. One tendered. Three drafted. Two leaning on the National 15 badge alone. Now look at what the three pushers bring against that.
The Pushers
The three USHL-drafted Mass prep defensemen who weren't on the National 15 roster have to make their case against the returning six. One of them is making a case the selectors will have a hard time waving off.
This is where the math gets uncomfortable for the selectors. Fishbone was the #1 scoring defenseman in Mass prep at the 2010 level this season. 29 points, more than any of the six returning National 15 D-men, including the three USHL-drafted ones. He then got drafted in Round 5, earlier than Anderson, Martin, or Ware. That's a case the selectors have to weigh against the entire returning six, not against the two softest seats. The conversation in the selectors' room shouldn't be "is he good enough to bump someone?" It should be "on what grounds does any returning D-man stay ahead of the prep season's #1 scoring defenseman and a Round 5 USHL pick?" That's a different conversation, and Fishbone has done the work to force it.
Porter's path is narrower than Fishbone's because his prep season was. Quieter point production, fewer eye-test moments that put him in the same conversation as the top-scoring prep D. The Round 7 USHL pick says Sioux Falls saw projectable tools, and that matters, but he's pushing into a depth chart where the returning six all have last-summer track records of their own. The realistic outcome is a strong Final 40 weekend that puts him in the next-up conversation. The badge is harder.
Round 15 is the deepest USHL selection of any Mass prep D-man in this group, and the prep season behind it was a step below where Fishbone played and a step below where Porter played. Poti's argument has to be made entirely on Final 40 ice: what he shows the selectors over three days, not what they already know from the season. NEPSAC Champion with Winchendon is real. It's just not the percentage play against this depth chart.
It's which returning D-man's seat is actually safe.
The ReadWhat This Weekend Actually Decides
Two tracks, two stories. The forwards in this bucket are working with the math: three vacancies, three USHL-drafted candidates, a clean path. The defensemen are working against it: six returning National 15 D-men, all back, with three USHL-drafted pushers trying to break through. Same external credential on the résumé, completely different selection environment waiting for them.
If Walsh plays to the version of him that earned a Round 4 selection despite the MIAA discount, he's on the roster. If Needham plays the steady, hard-minutes prep game that got Waterloo to take him in the same round, he's on the roster. If Petropoulos plays to his speed, the staff has a real decision about what the third seat looks like, another power forward or a true burner. On defense, the question stops being about whether Fishbone can bump someone. Fishbone outscored every returning National 15 D-man this prep season and got drafted earlier than three of them. The Final 40 ice is where the selectors decide where he slots on the depth chart, not whether he's on it. For Porter and Poti, the most likely outcome is that they walk out of the weekend with the credit they came in with intact, and a 2027 case that's a year ahead of where it was.
What we'll be watching: Whether the selectors treat the USHL draft as a tiebreaker or a baseline. Treated as a tiebreaker, it lifts the forwards into the open seats and forces a real reshuffle on the blueline depth chart. Treated as a baseline ("we already expected this from these players"), the holdovers keep their grip. The first read shows up in line combinations and D pairings on Day 1.
Final 40 runs May 16–17. The National 16 roster announcement follows.