Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
When was the last time we had 4 rookies debut at the same time?
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that's a fascinating question to which I have no answer or even guess (it would be easy to hypothesize either the young guns era, or some play out the string game in an injury plagued years) but 4 players making their NHL debut is a pretty remarkable number
the 85-86 team was one that was well recognized (out of quality and necessity) to have a large number of rookies
of these I think the following actually played their NHL debut at some point that season: Mark Lamb, Brett Hull, Gary Suter, Brian Bradley, Dale Degray, Robin Bartel and Marc D'amour. These others were also rookies yet had played some games in prior years: Mike Vernon, Joel Otto, Perry Berezan, Gino Cavallini
it is one of the most remarkable- I would guess rookie crops of all time if you look at it either way:
in terms of actual impact that season- you had Suter as the ROY, Vernon and Otto ended up being the starting goalie and front of roster C on a cup finalist with Berezan also a regular
in terms of eventual impact you have 2 Hall of Famers (Vernon, Hull), the highest scoring eligible D non in the HOF (Suter), an All star (Bradley played in 2 ASGs for Tampa) a elite 3 C (Otto) and a handful of other regulars