Brady Peddle credits USHL stint for NCAA readiness at Michigan State

Brady Peddle’s 62-game season with the Waterloo Black Hawks gave Michigan State a defenseman who had already proved he could handle a heavy junior workload, stay reliable at both ends and produce when the ice opened up. The 6-foot-3, left-shot blueliner finished his 2024-25 USHL season with three goals, seven assists and a plus-12 rating, and he was one of only three league rookies to skate in every regular-season game.

That durability mattered because Peddle was never brought along as a high-octane scorer. His value came from the details: defending first, moving pucks cleanly and handling bigger minutes as Waterloo pushed through the season. He opened his scoring account against Lincoln on Nov. 23, then added another layer in the playoffs, where the USHL said he scored his first postseason goal in the conference finals against Lincoln and later delivered three assists in Game 5 of the Clark Cup Final against Muskegon, tying the league’s postseason single-game assist high for 2025.

Peddle said the different junior environments he played in sharpened different parts of his game. He viewed the USHL as the more physical league and the QMJHL as more skill-driven, and that blend helped prepare him for the jump to Big Ten hockey at Michigan State. The Spartans already lean heavily on USHL talent, with multiple players across their 2025-26 and 2026-27 rosters arriving from league programs such as Waterloo, Dubuque, Des Moines, Omaha and Fargo, reinforcing why Peddle fit so naturally into that pipeline.

The progression accelerated fast after Michigan State’s April 2024 commitment. Pittsburgh selected Peddle 91st overall in the 2025 NHL Draft on June 28, 2025, then he signed with the Charlottetown Islanders on July 28, 2025 for the 2025-26 QMJHL season. Before that, he took an amateur tryout with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in mid-April and trained alongside AHL players during the Calder Cup playoff run, another step that showed how far his game had already traveled.

Pittsburgh director of player development Tom Kostopoulos saw the same growth at development camp, pointing to Peddle’s improved gap control, stick detail, physicality and puck play. He even scored on a breakaway there, a reminder that the offense can surface when the moment is right. For Michigan State, the payoff was a defense prospect who had already logged a full USHL season, postseason pressure and a look at pro pace before ever arriving in East Lansing.