Chase Reid has gone from being scratched in the USHL to standing at the center of the 2026 NHL Draft conversation, with the defenseman now likely to go in the first five picks Friday night at Buffalo’s KeyBank Center. After that, he will suit up for Michigan State this coming season.
That climb is what makes Reid one of the draft’s most watched names. He said Thursday in Buffalo that if he could speak to his 16-year-old self, he would say never give up, and he said he loves pressure because he thinks he plays better under it.
Reid is the top-rated defenseman in his draft class, but the path to that standing was anything but smooth. He struggled in 10 USHL games with the Waterloo Black Hawks and never scored, then was healthy scratched and sent down to the NAHL, a move that could have stalled a lesser player. Instead, it became the turning point in a career that has kept forcing him to answer back.
Bismarck Bobcats general manager Niko Kapetanovic said Waterloo GM Bryn Chyzyk called him in 2024, and that phone call helped send Reid to the NAHL. Kapetanovic said the setback could have lingered, but Reid handled it with the kind of mental toughness that separates a prospect from a project. Reid said he has been fighting adversity his whole life, and that line fits the road he has taken better than any ranking does.
Part of that road started long before draft boards and hockey rinks. Reid was the youngest player in his age group because of a late birthday, and he came up through the Michigan AAA ranks with Victory Honda. His family did not have the money or NHL contacts some of his peers had in AAA hockey, and he wound up 1,100 miles from home in North Dakota before his rise fully took hold. His father, RJ, works as a Penske salesman, and his mother, Magyn, is a competitive dance teacher and insurance agent.
Reid said Magyn gave him the clearest lesson of all: if you want it, you gotta get it. He said his mother also taught him to embrace the moment wherever he is, and that the place he is in is where God put him. For a player who went from a stalled junior stop to the edge of the top five, that outlook has become part of the story as much as the ranking.
The next stop is clearer now than the road behind him. On Friday night in Buffalo, Reid is expected to hear his name early, and then he will move on to Michigan State with the kind of momentum that only comes when a player turns the hard part of the journey into proof.
