Way Too Early: The 2026 PLL Draft Class

If the 2026 draft was tomorrow, who would YOU take???? Just kidding. Please don’t answer that. With the 2025 draft all wrapped up, and supplemental draft picks starting to trickle out, it’s not a bad time to take a look at next year’s class. After all, a great many of these players will be in action in the NCAA tournament, including this weekend in the quarterfinals.

The read on the 2026 class as we sit here now in May 2025 is that it’s not exactly sexy. The top of this class likely won’t have a lot of highlight machines, ankle breakers, or big hitters. Plenty of people will call Joey Spallina the top prospect in the class, which is defensible, but it likely won’t be a consensus opinion at this point. Not in the way that CJ Kirst was clear top pick from this time last year until he went number one last week. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad class. There are pro ready SSDMs, close defenders, LSMs, and even some great attackmen, but it’s a lot of substance over style, do your job and win the matchup types. Players are listed by position, but in no particular order.

ATTACK

Joey Spallina (Syracuse)

Finn Thomson (Syracuse)

Chris Lyons (Yale/Maryland)

Jack Regnery (Tufts)

Silas Richmond (Albany)

The 2026 class is loaded with Cuse players. Joey Spallina likely enters the 2026 season as the top overall prospect for the next PLL draft, and an easy pick to be a Tewaaraton finalist at the minimum. Spallina’s vision and feeding ability is what makes him such an exciting prospect. Pro lacrosse still tends to skew towards drafting players who are ball dominant and best at creating a shot for themselves. Players who seek to get others involved are still incredibly valuable. Spallina hasn’t consistently won off the dodge with speed, he likes to play a leverage game to get to spots and as a feeder from the island he can be deadly. His play indoors has really elevated that aspect of his play. Thomson is also a senior next year and is a future two league pro if he wants to be. Silas Richmond creates goals out of thin air better than any other player in this draft class, and that’s saying something. He’s just never truly covered. He can always find an angle, find a release, find some leverage, and make offense happen. In terms of ceiling, he might actually have the highest in the class on the offensive end. Chris Lyons has more to his game than he gets credit for. He was thought of as a shooter and finisher, primarily offball, for his first two years at Yale. This really was just by virtue of the fact that he shared the field with Matt Brandau. He’s since shown himself to be a serviceable dodger. It’s not with elusiveness or explosive speed, but if his man makes a footwork mistake or takes a bad angle, Lyons will punish him for it. Jack Regnery will be a senior at Tufts next year, and assuredly will have division one interest in the portal if a year is available to him. I have heard from coaches at the D1 level who think Regnery is good enough to start for anyone in America. Not just in D3. ANYONE. He’s a senior next year so technically it’s possible, but a year of ball in the ACC or Big 10 wouldn’t surprise me. 

MIDFIELD (Primary Offense)

Matt Collison (Hopkins), 

Mikey Weisshaar (Towson)

Michael Leo (Syracuse)

Evan Plunkett (Army)

Chad Palumbo (Princeton)

This may be a year where evaluators have to separate the team performance from the individual’s pro prospects. Hopkins was down this year, they can reload in the portal and will have talent, but the Big 10 is just never an easy ride. Don’t let a win loss record distract from the fact that Matt Collison is a wrecking ball with a left hand. Sweeps from the high and low lefty wing, straight downhill dodges, he can win a matchup from multiple spots and he has a hammer of a shot. Weisshaar is not the physical mismatch that Collison is, he’s more elusive and agile, but he is every bit the shooter. He had 48 goals as a junior, moved between attack and midfield, and he has produced consistently despite being the clear and obvious number one threat on the roster. Leo is a quality midfielder with a pro level skill set. He’s not an instant first line option like Collison or Weisshaar might be, but he’s smart, a quality shooter, who makes the right play. He’s best dodging from high wings; he finishes well when he gets underneath or on a sweep. Plunkett does everything at a high level. We’ve seen service academy grabs slide because of availability issues. The same could happen to him. But a team that needs another midfield piece to get to championship weekend would do well to grab him as a short term solution. Chad Palumbo is perfect for the PLL. He’s big and strong, skilled enough to handle the ball, absorbs and handles contact, shoots and finishes well, and punishes defensive mistakes. If you don’t play him physically, he’ll score a goal. Plain and simple. He also doesn’t need the ball to be dominant, he’s smart enough to find space off ball, and is great at a quick dodge off a skip pass against weak closeouts. 

MIDFIELD (Defense)

Aidan Maguire (Duke)

Eric Kolar (Maryland)

Blake Eiland (OSU)

Jack Pilling (Richmond)

Maguire is a top five player overall in the draft. Excellent in coverage, excellent doing D to O, and can run for days. He has the build of a prototype pro SSDM, 6’1 and 205 lbs. Maguire can walk onto a PLL field today and be a starting SSDM for every team in the league. He is built for the pro field game. Kolar emerged this year to form one of the most formidable rope units in the country. He’s a bit smaller than some other pro SSDMs but even with that considered, he’s been effective from all parts of the field this year. Blake Eiland was a two sport star in high school. His athleticism pops. The Ohio State rope unit in 2025 emerged as a major strength, with players like Eiland as a major reason why. From a transition perspective, he’s a very good PLL fit. Pilling would have likely been drafted this year if he was in the draft. Stats catch your eye with Pilling; 17 CTs as a shorty is no joke. Like the poles on Richmond he can play mean and come after you. He’s only listed at 175, which is light by PLL shorty standards, but he played his way into All American consideration this season and warrants consideration by PLL clubs. 

DEFENSE/LSM

Bobby Van Buren (Ohio State)

Will Donovan (Notre Dame)

Will Schaller (Maryland)

Hunter Smith (Richmond)

Billy Dwan III (Syracuse)

If players leaving early for the pros was a thing in lacrosse, BVB would have been a high draft pick every year he was in college. He is the best lockdown defender in the draft. He’s great on loose balls. He is strong enough to step in and guard matchups like Zed Williams and Matt Rambo, he’s fast enough to guard matchups like Michael Sowers and TJ Malone. He is plug and play. I am likely higher on him than most, some will point to tape of his offball play as a concern (just burn the tape of the Utah game already). I consider Van Buren to be can’t miss. Will Donovan will be the top targeted LSM in the next draft. Donovan is an all substance, no style LSM. He won’t be throwing BTB feeds in transition or playing cat and mouse sub game so he can rip a shot from 18. You give him an assignment, he does it. A Belichick-style, do your job type LSM. He’s outstanding on faceoff wings. He’s a little undersized, but that hasn’t kept him from being an All American and one of the best LSMs in lacrosse for the last two seasons. Will Schaller got the spotlight at Maryland this year and ran with it. No preseason accolades for him at all, but by midseason he was a 1st team All American caliber defender. Schaller and Hunter Smith will be far from consolation prizes for teams that miss out on BVB. Schaller is all footwork, plays angles well, and wins at the point of attack. He’s not the aggressor that some others in the class are though. Smith plays mean. He wants to beat you up, it’s a style Richmond used with all their close defenders to success this year. Dwan played his way into the Cuse lineup as a freshman and has been a mainstay of it ever since. Dwan is the best close defender at running in transition in this group. He’s a legitimate scoring threat. He actually doesn’t always drop the top matchup for Cuse; Riley Figueras and Dwan tend to split the duty. It’s not because Dwan isn’t good enough, Cuse just can be specific about styles and matchups because they have two elite cover men. Dwan is great against bigger bodies that want to play the physical game, so he draws that match up more often. Figueras will be in next year’s draft; he missed his freshman year with an injury and redshirted. 

FACEOFF

Henry Dodge (Vermont)

Dodge was the national leader in faceoff percentage this year and a player to watch in 2026. Matt Chandik reported he has entered the portal, where he will assuredly have interest from ACC and Big Ten teams who need specialist help. Dodge hasn’t just been feasting on low level players, he went 12/18 against Johnny Mullen in the dome this year. Jack Cascadden is a senior next year and will be a pro prospect, but he has an additional year as a result of a redshirt season

GOALIE

Sean Byrne (Army)

Ryan Croddick (Princeton)

If you need players on the defensive side of the ball, Army always has them. It’s in the DNA of the program. As noted, availability will be limited with a service academy grad. Byrne had a great year as a junior. And he didn’t just feast on weak teams. He went .842 against Yale with 16 saves, .643 against BU with 18 saves, and had a .650 with 13 saves against Colgate. Those are teams with some pro level offensive players. Croddick stepped in for Michael Gianforcaro this year and has been very good. His worst games came against Duke, UNC, and Cornell. He was solid against Maryland, but really, these are the teams full of guys you see at the next level. .828 on the stat line is great, but it came against Rutgers. More consistent play and save totals against the best of the best from outside the Ivy will drive his stock up.