The Hockey News Rookie Issue 2022

TEEMU SELANNE’S 1992-93 ROOKIE season remains unchallenged as the greatest in hockey history. The 76 goals? The 132 points? Come on. But ‘The Finnish Flash,’ in hindsight, had it easy. The Winnipeg Jets drafted Selanne 10th overall in 1988. Over the next four seasons, he completed his military service, lit up the Finnish League with Jokerit and, no joke, taught kindergarten during the day. North American hockey fans didn’t recognize the teenaged Teemu Selanne on the street. They didn’t watch highlights of his games on YouTube. They didn’t follow him on Instagram. By the time he arrived in the NHL, he was 22. He carried a degree of hype given his first-round draft status, but he was overshadowed by the feverish obsession over fellow rookie Eric Lindros. The rookie Selanne didn’t live…

JAN. 27 MARKS MY four-year anniversary as the owner of The Hockey News, and the present I was afforded was that I got to sit down and talk with the great Willie O’Ree, who turns 87 years young this year. Starting on page 88, you can read some of my Q&A with him as we sat down to talk at the beginning of Black History Month on everything from growing up in New Brunswick as the youngest of 13 to his life in San Diego today. For the full interview go to THN.com/P2P. Having been the chairman of Bauer and the owner of The Hockey News and many other hockey companies, I have had the honor and privilege of meeting scores of great people in the hockey industry over the past…

PICTURE IT: THE FIRST Stanley Cup final game in Montreal in 28 years, minutes away from commencing at the raucous Bell Centre, the roof about to blow. The players psych themselves up, listen from their dressing room and hear…nothing. Faint buzzing at best. That’s because Game 3 of the 2021 Cup final was, of course, played before 3,500 fans. As Habs right winger Tyler Toffoli would later recall, Brendan Gallagher turned to some of his newer teammates in that moment and said, “If the building was full, our whole dressing room would be shaking right now.” That Habs team had rookies Cole Caufield and Alexander Romanov on it. All they could do was picture how “normal” would’ve felt. And so it goes for any current NHL sophomores or multi-year rookies who have…

STADIUM SERIES | TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING WHEN YOU’RE PLAYING IN a Stadium Series, you gotta go bold. That’s what Tampa Bay has done with its entry into the pantheon of special sweaters for the outdoor tilt against Nashville on Feb. 26. There are folks who don’t like when a team uses a nickname on a jersey, and I respect that, but I’m on board with the ‘Bolts’ wordmark here, especially with the unique font used by the Lightning. The fact this is a maximalist design with the big swath of blue at the bottom (in lightning bolt form, of course) is pretty fetching, too. Bringing that blue onto the cuffs also helps accent the otherwise clean white look.…

WILLIE O’REE BECAME THE NHL’s first Black player when he made his debut with the Bruins on Jan. 18, 1958. But he didn’t get his own hockey card with the B’s until almost 40 years later. O’Ree had a Beehive photo that fans could mail away for in the late 1950s and early ’60s, and a card in the 1956-57 Quebec Aces team set. Sharp-eyed card collectors can also spot O’Ree on the 1961-62 Topps Hockey card picturing the 1961 Bruins team. O’Ree finally got his own “rookie card” in the 1997-98 Pinnacle Beehive set, an oversized set of cards named after the old mail-away photos.…

1. ZAMBONI by Gear Daddies Zamboni by Minnesota group Gear Daddies is about one man’s desire to drive the ice-resurfacing machine at his local rink, only to be denied because it’s expensive and takes practice to operate. The song’s slow, lackadaisical tempo mirrors the hypnotic pace of a Zamboni gradually making its way around the ice. It was originally a hidden track on the Gear Daddies’ second album, “Billy’s Live Bait,” but later appeared on the soundtracks for D2: The Mighty Ducks and Mystery, Alaska. 2. 50 MISSION CAP by The Tragically Hip This song by Canadian rock group The Tragically Hip is about Maple Leafs defenseman Bill Barilko’s heroics in the 1951 Stanley Cup final, his mysterious disappearance and the eerie coincidence of the Leafs not winning the Cup again until 1962 – the…