The 50 Most Highly Touted Prospects in NHL History

Every living generation of hockey enthusiasts has its Oshawa Generals alumnus who was slated for super-stardom in the NHL. Multiple puck prodigies have brought repeat familiarity to such towns as Brampton, Ont. and Cole Harbour, N.S.

Before the NHL draft came along and before it evolved to what it is today, there were times when Canada-raised prospects became the property of a franchise before they were driving age. In the United States, the defining characteristic of an exceptional rising star would be skipping college and entering the professional ranks after one’s senior year with one’s high school team.

Any one of those and/or other early accomplishments make up the primordial profiles of the 50 selections for this list of the NHL’s most historically remembered prospects.

Neal Broten

Although he was not chosen until the third round of the 1979 NHL draft, Broten percolated more pre-professional excitement in the subsequent two years.

He took leave from the University of Minnesota for the 1979-80 campaign to join coach Herb Brooks’ eventual gold-medalist Olympians. Upon returning home, he garnered the inaugural Hobey Baker Award and unhesitatingly joined his hometown North Stars thereafter.

Ryan Miller

Not unlike Broten two decades before him, Miller was a later-round draft choice who went back to his college campus and accelerated his promise with an exceptional season en route to the Hobey Baker.

In 2000-01, Miller’s sophomore surge with the Michigan State Spartans was highlighted by a 31-5-4 record coupled with a 1.32 goals-against average and .950 save percentage. He followed that up with an almost equally celestial junior year and then bolted for the pros with an NCAA-record 26 career shutouts and a host of hardware to go with his Hobey.

Petr Nedved

A prolific scorer as an amateur in his native Czech Republic, Nedved defected to North America in 1989 and smoothly translated his production rate to the major-junior ranks. His 145 points in 71 games with the Western League’s Seattle Thunderbirds precipitated his second overall selection in the 1990 NHL draft by Vancouver.

Mike Ricci

Back-to-back seasons in the 50-goal and triple-digit-point range sandwiched a near two-point-per-game output in the 1989 Ontario League playoffs. All of that made Ricci a heavy favorite entering his draft year in 1990, though he would not be selected until the Flyers made him the fourth overall pick.

Chris Pronger

Pronger was the second overall choice in a deep 1993 draft. The move by the Hartford Whalers was doubtlessly a partial reward for Pronger defying his defensive job description and tallying more than an assist per game in the OHL regular season and 40 points in 21 playoff games.

Peter Forsberg

In the 1993 World Junior Championships, Forsberg set single-tournament records of 24 assists and 31 points, 10 and seven more than their respective first runners-up.

An Olympic gold medal highlighted Forsberg’s final year as an amateur in 1994, as did his unprecedented set of back-to-back Swedish league MVP awards.

Evgeni Malkin

While he was a decisive second-best prospect behind Alex Ovechkin in 2004, there was little, if any dispute as to Malkin’s importance in Pittsburgh’s effort to resurrect its franchise.

Daniel and Henrik Sedin

Months prior to the 1999 NHL draft, while still playing in their native Sweden, the Sedin twins split their league MVP award. Upon arriving in North America to learn of their respective future employers, then-Canucks general manager Brian Burke was arguably as keen on getting them under one banner as they were.

Accordingly, Burke traded in order to possess both the second and third overall pick and made the Sedin sweep.

Radek Bonk

Bonk did not turn 18 until he was at the halfway mark of his first season with the Las Vegas Thunder of the IHL, a since-defunct Triple-A pro league.

Nearly all of his fellow Thunder regulars were in their mid-20s or older. Yet by season’s end, he was tied for 10th in the league with 42 goals and a high-ranking NHL draft prospect.

As it happened, he was the third overall choice to Ottawa in 1994 and would play 969 NHL games over the next 15 years. He most recently completed his third straight campaign with Trinec Ocelari in his native Czech Republic.

Nathan MacKinnon

In case anyone has missed it, MacKinnon is the early favorite to go first overall in the 2013 draft. And uncannily enough, he shares a common thread with Sidney Crosby in that he has gone from Cole Harbour, N.S. to Shattuck-St. Mary’s to the Quebec League.

Peter Lee

Lee was chosen by the Montreal Canadiens in 1976 on the heels of finishing his major-junior days with an OHL career points record that would remain his until John Tavares surpassed it in 2009.

Pat Lafontaine

LaFontaine eclipsed Mario Lemieux by a whopping 20 goals and 50 points for the 1982-83 Quebec League scoring title.

Lemieux would “rebound” the following year while LaFontaine’s 234-point tear made him a one-and-done in major junior. He was claimed by the New York Islanders with the third overall pick in the 1983 NHL draft and would join them immediately after representing Team USA at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

The 18-year-old LaFontaine was younger than all but three Olympic teammates―David Jensen, Al Iafrate and Eddie Olczyk.

Mike Modano

Modano had already secured the No. 1 overall pick by the Minnesota North Stars and tallied 80 assists for the Western League’s Prince Albert Raiders in 1988 when he took his playmaking penchant to another level.

The Michigan native led all participants in the 1989 World Junior Championship with nine assists, outscoring such fellow future NHLers as Mike Ricci, Rod Brind’Amour, Eric Desjardins, Martin Gelinas, Pavel Bure and Alex Mogilny.

Meanwhile, the only reason he did not tally more than 105 points and did not finish among the WHL’s top 10 producers in 1988-89 was because he missed 31 of Prince Albert’s 72 games. One could only look at the leaderboard and imagine where Modano would be had he played a full season as his final NHL tune-up.

Phil Housley

Housley’s final amateur season before joining the Buffalo Sabres in 1982 was doubly astonishing in that he was an interscholastic high-school defenseman who fell just ice chips shy of averaging three points per game.

Dany Heatley

Heatley set the tone for an NHL draft that would do the U.S. college ranks proud by becoming Central Scouting’s first-ever projected No. 1 pick to come from an NCAA program.

As it happened, the actual draft board had Heatley going second to Boston University goaltender Rick DiPietro. Nonetheless, he was easily viewed as the first key piece of homegrown talent for a fledgling Atlanta Thrashers franchise.

Marian Gaborik

The upper echelon of the 2000 NHL draft pool was particularly competitive and Gaborik was cited as having as good a chance as anybody at going first.

Alex Kovalev

This from Stan Fischler’s profile of Kovalev in the 2003 tome, Who’s Who in Hockey:

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“The first Soviet player ever drafted in the first round of the NHL Entry Draft, Alexei Kovalev was touted as the Second Coming for the New York Rangers. Kovalev’s speed and stickhandling ability were supposed to launch the Rangers straight to the top of the NHL hierarchy.”

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The 15th overall selection in 1991, Kovalev spent one more year in his native Russia, where he elevated his promising persona by tallying a team-leading 16 goals with a league-best Moscow Dynamo. He proceeded to cross continents and amass 428 goals and 596 assists in 1,302 NHL games.

Rick DiPietro

When DiPietro made his own gamble to “opt in” at the 2000 NHL draft, then-Islanders general manager Mike Milbury, whose club owned the first overall pick, was willing to export rookie goaltender Roberto Luongo to make room for a new freshman backstop.

Milbury admitted at the time that his front office was “Rolling the dice here a little bit” but added, in reference to DiPietro versus Luongo, “We think his unusually strong puck handling skills weighed out in his favor.” He also cited DiPietro’s positive differences in “His attitude, his approach to the game, his manner.”

Brian Lawton

During his junior and senior seasons at Mount St. Charles Academy, Lawton fell just short of averaging four points per game. In addition, he was merely 17 years of age when he joined Team USA at the 1982-83 World Junior Championships, where he tallied three goals and an assist in seven games.

Graduating directly to the Minnesota North Stars team that drafted him first overall in 1983, Lawton would muster only a cumulative 483 appearances with six NHL teams in a decade-long career.

Steve Yzerman

When the career Red Wing retired in 2006, former Detroit executive Jim Devellano told Sports Illustrated that, upon drafting Yzerman in 1983, “I said at the time we’d build our franchise around him.”

Jason Spezza

Spezza transferred twice in his major-junior days, first from Brampton to Mississauga and then from Mississauga to Windsor, in hopes of elevating his NHL stock on an OHL contender.

As it happened, when his first shot at the draft was approaching in 2001, he was in a feverish footrace for the first overall selection.

Ilya Kovalchuk

Spezza ended up going second in that 2001 pool, losing only to Kovalchuk, who would soon be drawing parallels to radiant Russian countryman Pavel Bure.

Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews

A 145-point season as an OHL rookie in 2006-07 all but presaged Kane’s first overall selection by the Chicago Blackhawks the subsequent summer.

With that pick, Kane joined Toews―Chicago’s top choice with the third overall pick the year prior―as the instantaneous presumptive copilot of the Blackhawks’ rise from irrelevance as both debuted in 2007-08.

Paul Kariya

Kariya’s trophy case continuously elongated with every amateur level he entered.

He enrolled at the University of Maine for the 1992-93 season on the heels of being named the top player in all Canadian Junior A leagues. Once in college, he unhesitatingly corralled the 1993 Hobey Baker Award, along with an NCAA championship, to cap off an unthinkable 100-point season.

In the middle of that year, he took a few weeks abroad to represent Canada at the World Junior Championship.

The expansion Mighty Ducks of Anaheim rewarded Kariya that summer by making him their first-ever homegrown draft choice. He joined in a year later after a sophomore season with the Black Bears that was shortened by his participation in the Winter Olympics at the age of 19.

Steven Stamkos

Shortly before Stamkos was selected first overall by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2008, the Toronto Star recounted his seven-year stay with the Markham Waxers travel program.

In his final year with the Waxers, before graduating to a not-so-shabby two-year stay with the OHL’s Sarnia Sting, Stamkos tallied 105 goals and 92 assists in 66 games.

Stamkos’ longtime coach, Paul Titanic, told the Star, “He’s always been the most highly skilled player that we saw throughout North America in that age group and we played most of the best teams in our country and the U.S. over those years.”

Taylor Hall

The only two-time recipient of the Stafford Smythe Trophy as Memorial Cup MVP, which he won with the Windsor Spitfires in 2008-09 and 2009-10, Hall was being hyped by Don Cherry as early as 2007 and Sports Illustrated in 2008.

Bryan Fogarty

Fogarty’s tragic rise and fall was thoroughly and poignantly captured in an ESPN The Magazine story six months after his March 2002 death.

Hailing from Wayne Gretzky’s hometown of Brantford, Ont., he captivated onlookers throughout his amateur career in a manner somewhat similar to that of the Great One. In addition, as was noted in the ESPN story, the rising defenseman eclipsed Bobby Orr’s output in the Ontario League.

But the story’s dense smattering of quotes hailing his hockey skills was accompanied by ones noting his problems controlling his emotions and nerves.

Fogarty’s professional career, which began at the 1987 NHL draft, was virtually over in 1995 after only 121 NHL games. He spent six more seasons with a dozen minor pro teams, his final competitive game taking place less than a year before his passing at the age of 32.

Phil Kessel

In December 2004, Kessel was on the United States’ World Junior Championship team at the unripe age of 17. Four months later, a USA Today headline hailed him the “king of hockey prospects.”

The prolonged prediction among many observers was that he would be the top choice in the 2006 NHL entry draft. His stock ultimately slipped to No. 5, though he has since led two different teams in goal-scoring over his first six seasons in the pros.

Angelo Esposito

Esposito was a media magnet during his first few months in the Quebec League, where he tallied a 39-59-98 scoring log in 57 games as a rookie in 2005-06.

His output and stock, however, exponentially declined after the calendar had gone deeper into 2006. His sophomore totals in Quebec were 27-52-79 and his final third-year transcript read 30-39-69.

In between, he was surprisingly selected 20th overall in the 2007 draft and has been a minor-league journeyman since leaving the major-junior ranks.

Alexander Ovechkin

A month before he was selected first overall by the Washington Capitals in 2004, an Associated Press report made this note about the rising Russian:

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“Ovechkin is so coveted that the Florida Panthers drafted him in the ninth round last year, citing a leap year technicality they argued made him eligible. The NHL disagreed.”

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From his introduction to the limelight through his introduction to an active NHL roster, there was also emphasis on the fact that Ovechkin came from a dense athletic bloodline.

When the 2004-05 lockout delayed his debut, Ovechkin only amplified the anticipation of Capitals fans with a 7-4-11 scoring log at the 2005 World Junior tournament.

Dale McCourt

In back-to-back Ontario League seasons, 1975-76 and 1976-77, McCourt tallied 139 points in 66 games.

In between, he helped his Hamilton Fincups to the 1976 Memorial Cup and piloted his Team Canada to gold in the 1977 World Junior Championship. His 18 points in that tournament still hold up as a program record for a single WJC.

The buildup culminated in McCourt’s first overall selection by the Detroit Red Wings in the 1977 draft and his debut with the club that autumn.

Henri Richard

While his brother Maurice, his senior by 14-and-a-half years, was piloting the dynastic Montreal Canadiens in the early half of the 1950s, Henri Richard was lighting up his own ranks with the Jr. Canadiens. His Hockey Reference profile has him tallying an average north of one goal and two points per night in the 1953-54 season.

Naturally, the comparisons and expectations were inevitable, but the one they called the “Pocket Rocket” would do more than enough to be his own Richard. The two brothers played with each other for five seasons, all Stanley Cup banner campaigns, before Henri played an additional 15 and delivered six more titles to their hometown.

Tom Barrasso

Barrasso’s habit of prioritizing pucks over pencils and paper paid off when he went directly from high school to the Buffalo Sabres in 1983. At the time, he was the youngest NHL netminder in four decades, but he was granted the exceptional opportunity because Scotty Bowman saw his exceptional potential and because he already had some international seasoning on his transcript.

Bobby Carpenter

An unprecedented phenomenon of professional scouts joining the flocks of college recruiters at U.S. high school games was owed to the one known as the “Can’t-Miss Kid” from greater Boston.

As it happened, Carpenter was fresh out of school in 1981 when he debuted with the Washington Capitals and proceeded to post back-to-back 32-goal seasons, setting the tone for a sound 18-year career.

Mark Howe

A boyhood spent hanging around with and emulating his father, Gordie, and his colleagues led the younger Howe to a spot on the 1972 U.S. Olympic team. A second-place finish for the Americans made him the youngest medalist in Olympic hockey history.

That season was sandwiched by two triple-digit-point campaigns (did I mention he played defense?) in the Canadian junior ranks, culminating in MVP accolades at the 1973 Memorial Cup shortly before his 18th birthday.

Along with his father and older brother, Marty, Mark Howe went on to spend six seasons in the WHA before his hype, on the whole, materialized in the form of a 15-year Hall of Fame career in the NHL.

Howie Morenz

Nearly a century before the “Ovechtrick,” a nine-goal game by a single scorer, was created as a humorous marketing tool, Morenz tallied one in real life as an amateur representing his hometown Stratford. He was still in his teens at the time, but was the subject of a sweepstakes among all of the teams in the fledgling NHL.

The Canadiens ultimately won his rights after an aggressive push and the hype proved to be justified. Morenz virtually inaugurated the NHL’s most exclusive pantheon, later joined by Maurice Richard, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.

Dale Hawerchuk

As he was preparing to break in with the Winnipeg Jets in 1981, Hawerchuk’s employers were citing his similarities to then-third-year NHLer Wayne Gretzky. His surge from 103 to 183 points between his first and second season in major junior did nothing to hamper that hype.

Vincent Lecavalier

With a 6’4” posture and prolific output in the Quebec Major Junior League, particularly 41 points over 18 games in the 1998 playoffs, Lecavalier all but looked like another Mario Lemieux in the making.

Then-Tampa Bay executive Art Williams, upon choosing him first overall, even went so far as to anoint Lecavalier “the Michael Jordan of hockey.”

Alexandre Daigle

The pre-NHL Daigle was supposedly the reason the league adopted a draft lottery, allegedly because the 1992-93 Ottawa Senators passively played their way to a 10-70-4 record and the No. 1 pick they would use to nab his rights.

The following year, Daigle would place second on an only-slightly-improved Senators team with 51 points. He would twice match, but never exceed that as an NHL career high.

Gordie Howe

In the NHL’s pre-draft era, Howe was granted a pair of tryouts by the New York Rangers and Detroit Red Wings at the unripe ages of 15 and 16, respectively.

One of the unique features that promptly caught the eye of Red Wings’ boss Jack Adams was the fact that Howe could freely switch from a left- to right-hand shot.

Bobby Hull

The Blackhawks had Hull’s rights by the time he was 15 years old, a good three-plus years before his NHL debut. He maxed out the waiting period in 1956-57, when he led the OHA’s St. Catherine’s Teepees with 33 goals in 52 games.

John Tavares

Tavares inspired the OHL’s “exceptional status” clause that has allowed promising players under the age of 15 to be drafted into the major-junior league.

In both his second and third season with the Oshawa Generals, Tavares tallied an average of two points per night (134 in 67 games and 118 in 59 games), virtually cementing his No. 1 selection in the 2009 NHL draft a full year ahead of time.

Guy Lafleur

Appearing in 56 games during his first season in the Quebec Major Junior League, Lafleur broke triple digits in the goal column and threw in 67 helpers for a total of 170 points.

The next year, still only 19 years of age, he accelerated his output to 130 goals and 209 points in 62 games. In the midst of that campaign, a feature in Sports Illustrated was anointing him the next Maurice Richard and also likening him to Jean Beliveau.

Lafleur, who had begun his junior career at a lower level as a 14-year-old competing with players four or five years his senior, was expectedly chosen first overall by Montreal in 1971. His peak years in the late 1970s included four triple-digit point campaigns concomitant with four straight Stanley Cups.

Eric Lindros

Around the halfway mark of Gretzky’s super-celestial career, Lindros was being dubbed “Next One” as his services were coveted by Ontario League teams.

He set a pace to justify that moniker with a 71-goal, 149-point MVP season in 1990-91, but a lengthy trek of injuries and tensions with both would-be and established OHL and NHL employers barred him from ever equaling Gretzky’s impact.

Bobby Orr

Orr’s talent was first spotted at the age of 12, circa 1960, with as many as four of the NHL’s six teams actively pursuing his rights. By the time he was 14, he had a pact with the Boston Bruins and went on to three-plus productive development years with the Oshawa Generals.

In his final major-junior season of 1965-66, the two-way defenseman was his team’s scoring leader and among the league’s top three in assists and overall points.

Sidney Crosby

Crosby was 14 years old when he played against aspirants up to three years his senior and still garnered the tournament MVP laurel at the 2002 Air Canada Cup. He was 15 years old playing against 16- and 17-year-olds when he led a USA Hockey national champion Shattuck-St. Mary’s team with 72 goals and 162 points in 2002-03.

Having spent one otherworldly year apiece on each side of the 49th parallel, Crosby had unyielding continental attention when he was still two years away from NHL eligibility. While he passed the time throttling through the Quebec League, he had everyone from Gretzky downward directly or implicitly dubbing him “The Next One.”

Mario Lemieux

The aforementioned Fischler wrote this of Lemieux in Who’s Who In Hockey:

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“Up to 5,000 fans would show up to watch him play in youth hockey games at the tender age of six. When Lemieux was 12, Scotty Bowman was calling him the greatest prospect he’d ever seen.”

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Imagine the agony of more seasoned NHL fans at the time, who must have wistfully recalled the days when the likes of Howe, Hull and Orr could make deals with teams in their mid-teens. Those days were no more, and when these phenomena were occurring circa 1971-72 and 1977-78, everyone was stuck with waiting until the 1984 draft to see if their team could nab Lemieux.

When finally given the chance, the Penguins picked the prized prospect after he had stamped a 133-goal, 282-point season in the Quebec League.

Wayne Gretzky

Competing with, let alone mortifying players almost twice as biologically mature as he was brought an unwavering fixation of attention Gretzky from his first endeavor in organized hockey.

That flabbergasted following stuck right through his valedictory NHL game in 1999. Gretzky needed only one full season with the Soo Greyhounds at the age of 16 to catch the attention of Sports Illustrated and prove himself ready for the WHA the next year.