The day Keaton Verhoeff committed to the University of North Dakota last June was a pretty memorable one for the team’s staff.First-year head coach Dane Jackson had to work through more than a dozen changes on his roster after his predecessor Brad Berry’s departure, and the team needed some strong prospects to come on board.Jackson and North Dakota general manager Bryn Chyzyk were on a golf trip in Tampa, Fla., with other members of the school’s last national championship team (2016) — the one that had Brock Boeser and Nick Schmaltz. The group was having lunch when Verhoeff — the 6-foot-4, 208-pound prized defense prospect — called and said, “I’m coming.”Five minutes later, Verhoeff’s Victoria (OHL) teammate Cole Reschny, the 18th pick by the Calgary Flames that month, gave the same commitment.“It was a fun day,” Chyzyk said.“A big deal,” Jackson said.Verhoeff, who’s from the small town of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, appreciated the Grand Forks campus. He loved the resources the program provided and the experience of the coaching staff. So in that sense, choosing North Dakota over the other school he visited (Michigan) felt right. But it wasn’t without some deep thought, as Verhoeff — who entered his draft year a consensus top defense prospect — knew he was risking affecting his stock with a transition into college hockey.“Going into my draft year, there was a little bit of worry coming into college in a new situation,” Verhoeff told The Athletic. “But coming to North Dakota, the coaching staff had the belief, and I had the trust, too, that it was going to help make my decision right. In the end, I don’t regret the decision, and it was best for me.”Verhoeff played a top-four role as a freshman for North Dakota, and he and Reschny helped the program make its first Frozen Four appearance since that 2016 championship run. That was a valuable experience.And Verhoeff still heard his name called pretty high in Friday’s first round of the NHL Draft in Buffalo, N.Y., going No. 9 to the San Jose Sharks, with around three dozen family and friends expected to attend.Top 6 defensemen in the NHL DraftCorey Pronman, Scott Wheeler and moreBut in a stacked cluster of top defense prospects expected to go at the top of the first round, it’s clear Verhoeff dropped from the beginning of the year. He was the fifth defenseman off the board.The decision Verhoeff faced is one that many college hockey-eligible players will be making in the coming years: whether to come over from the CHL/OHL and play against older, stronger, faster competition, or stay and dominate at the junior level.Despite any slipping draft stock, though, Verhoeff and those at North Dakota believe he’ll be better in the long run, even after some growing pains.“It’s the safe and easy thing,” Jackson said of staying in junior. “Like I had one agent say to me, ‘I would not sometimes have a guy come in early, bringing in that risk a little bit.’ But I think Keaton physically was ready for the challenge. He’s 6-4, 212 pounds, so he could deal with it. But going against men, I think one thing you kind of worry about a bit as a coach when you bring these really high-end guys is they’re going to have some entitlement or kind of a big baller in them, like they’re different than the rest of the guys. Keaton had a lot of just humility and his feet on the ground, a blue-collar mentality.”Verhoeff was an anchor in the top four for North Dakota and was key on its power play with his booming shot. He didn’t have nearly the same offensive production as he did in Victoria the year before, when he had 21 goals in 63 games: He finished with six goals in 36 games for the Fighting Hawks.But Verhoeff, who didn’t play defense full-time until he was 12 after starting as goalie, felt there were a lot of little details in his game he got better at as a result of moving up in competition. This is a defense prospect who modeled his game after Victor Hedman and Thomas Harley.“I came into it and was expecting it to be tough and really competitive, and it was,” Verhoeff said. “But the way I rounded out my game is something I really took pride in. I wanted to improve. Coming into the year, there were areas I wanted to develop, work on in the defensive zone and my 200-foot game. I wanted to improve and am happy with the way I did this year.”It was interesting, however, how the narrative changed on Verhoeff a little bit. He went into the year as the consensus top defenseman in his class. In Wheeler’s recent story paneling a dozen scouts anonymously on draft prospects, not one picked Verhoeff as the best in the defense class. There were questions about his speed and hockey sense.Another scout, granted anonymity to speak freely with The Athletic, felt Verhoeff would have benefited from another year in junior, partly in helping him process the game more quickly.“Playing NCAA didn’t progress his game for me and definitely hurt his draft ranking,” the scout said. “Huge kid, good at everything but not great at anything. A very safe bet to play NHL. Future development will determine how high up a lineup he can slot. If rushed by the team that drafts him, he might not reach his potential. Needs to play at a level that he can have success and improve. I felt right from the first time he was considering NCAA, he needed another year of Jr. Everyone is in a hurry.”A lot of this can seem like splitting hairs when you’re talking about a top defense prospect that is still likely to go in the top 10, and Verhoeff said after the Frozen Four he intended to come back for his sophomore year. Matt Smaby, a North Dakota assistant and former NHL defenseman, said there are so many other variables in playing the position that take time to fully grasp.“When you talk about draft guys and you talk about analysts, playing forward is pretty easy compared to playing D,” Smaby said. “There is a lot of nuance in playing defense at a high level. You’ve got to know the game well to be able to read the game well. It’s a really hard position. I don’t think I fully understood the game until I was 30, and then it became easy for me.“So if you look at Keaton, he’s playing against guys that are sometimes 24, 25 years old, and he’s under the microscope of all the draft stuff going on, and he’s still growing and getting better. Looking back at his regional (final), it was one of the best games of the year. He didn’t do anything sexy, but he’s learned and is learning how to be a rock-solid defenseman. People on the outside, the draft, they want points, they want whatever. But there’s so much more to playing the game of hockey than that, and it takes a pretty keen eye to see the little things he’s doing.”Teammates and coaches pointed to a moment in the season when the Fighting Hawks were coming off a bad loss and Jackson had the team go through a tough practice, filled with one-on-one battles at center ice. Verhoeff was among the first to take on the challenge and face captain Bennett Zmolek, 24.“He’s unreal, love him,” Zmolek said. “Very mature for a guy his age. He doesn’t act like a 17-year-old. He’s a very special player. He’s going to make one NHL team very happy.”“He’s a young leader. He’s driven,” added Reschny. “He wants bigger things. It’s exciting to have players like that.”“He’s grown so much,” said fellow defenseman E.J. Emery, a New York Rangers first-round pick in 2024. “He started the year, didn’t get a lot of points. But toward the end of the year, he grew his game so much on the defensive side. The little things. How far he’s come is incredible.“He’s a one-of-one person and will be a one-of-one player, too.”What Jackson also liked was seeing the maturity and growth in his game, figuring out what he could and couldn’t do at that level versus junior. At the junior level, he could challenge guys one-on-one, play with the puck and roll off a guy to make a breakout. Early on with North Dakota, he was holding onto pucks too long, trying to beat defenders individually, Jackson said.Verhoeff figured out there were times he just had to hit the first option with a clean pass or chip pucks out. So Verhoeff can still be dynamic offensively, but he is better with his puck management, which is important at the next level.“You watch good defensemen from the NHL, I know you’ve got guys like (Cale) Makar and (Quinn) Hughes that go all the time,” Jackson said. “But it seems like there’s a lot of guys that — I watch Victor Hedman play, and he makes good plays, solid play, solid play, then he makes a great one. He’s not trying to make a great play every time. He just takes what the game gives him, and he’s got such a maturity. But, at the end of the night, he also makes some great plays, too.”