The NHL has spawned many incredible rookie campaigns throughout its storied history. This season, highly touted draft picks Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel are both having excellent rookie debuts, following in the footsteps of other notable high-profile rookies like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, and Evgeni Malkin. However neither of them really threatened to break into the Top 10 NHL Rookie Seasons of All-Time list that we’ve put together below.
For disclosures sake, in compiling our list we only looked at players who began their rookie seasons after 1967 when the league expanded from 6 to 12 teams (apologies to Terry Sawchuk). We also excluded Wayne Gretzky and Tony Esposito who both played full seasons of professional hockey in North America before their NHL debuts. Gretzky with the Indianapolis Racers of the WHA, and Esposito with the Vancouver Canucks of the WHL.
