Part of what’s made the first month of this NHL season so much fun has been the youth movement, with young stars like Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Leo Carlsson all putting up gaudy offensive numbers that place them near the top of the scoring race.
It’s only been a month, so we don’t want to get too far out over our skis here. It sure seems like we’re witnessing a shift in the league, though, with a new generation of forwards staking their claim to superstar status. That doesn’t mean the old guard is disappearing — as just one example, that grizzled old Nathan MacKinnon guy still seems to be doing OK. Yet the next generation appears to have emphatically arrived, and that makes for an exciting time to be a hockey fan.
While we wait to see whether this is a more temporary blip or a seismic shift, I figured it could be a good time to look back at other seasons in NHL history that saw the next generation kick down the door to the league’s top tier. Here are five times we saw what seemed to be a changing of the guard among the sport’s elite players, and whether it stuck.
1979-80: The Gretzky era begins
If you factor in teams and not just players, this may have been the biggest changing-of-the-guard season in NHL history, or maybe a close second to the 1967 expansion. We saw four new teams join the league, the opposition WHA shut down entirely and a four-Stanley Cup dynasty in Montreal giving way to another in New York.
We’re just focused on the players today, but even then, 1979-80 has to get a mention. The 1970s had been the era of Bobby Orr, Guy Lafleur, Phil Esposito, Bobby Clarke and Ken Dryden, but by the start of the 1979-80 season, Orr and Dryden had just retired, Esposito was almost done and Clarke and Lafleur were winding down. In their place, we had Marcel Dionne winning his first scoring title while Mike Bossy, Denis Potvin and Bryan Trottier were capturing their first Cup.
What else, what else … oh right, this skinny kid on the new Edmonton Oilers team showed up.
The dawn of the Wayne Gretzky era changed everything in the NHL, although it didn’t quite happen overnight. After making his pro debut with a 110-point season in the WHA, however, Gretzky’s 137 points in his first NHL season set the stage for him to start shattering records while becoming the most recognizable hockey player in the world. (A title you could argue he still holds today, over 25 years since his last game.)
Did it last? I’d say so. That Gretzky kid turned out OK. If that wasn’t enough, this season also saw the Calder Cup go to a Boston Bruins teenager named Ray Bourque, who dominated for the next two decades and change. The following offseason, the Stastny brothers would arrive, becoming the first stars from behind the Iron Curtain.
1994-95: The next generation (finally) arrives
We’re skipping ahead a decade and a half here, largely because Gretzky dominated the league for so long. Along the way, Mario Lemieux arrived in 1984, and he and Gretzky formed a two-headed monster nobody else could touch. Even other legends, like Steve Yzerman, Ron Francis and Dale Hawerchuk, could barely get a sniff of the Hart Trophy or Art Ross, as Gretzky and Lemieux passed it back and forth with an occasional cameo from third wheel Mark Messier.
None of that is a complaint, by the way — the years from 1980 through the early 90s are arguably the single greatest stretch we’ve ever seen as far as true pantheon guys all being in their prime at the same time. The torch wasn’t being passed, but it was burning as brightly as it ever had.
By the mid-90s, however, Gretzky was finally slowing down, as age and a bad back did what a generation of defenders never could. Lemieux was still completely unstoppable when he played, but his own health problems were keeping him out of lineups more frequently, including for the entire 1994-95 season. Messier was still very good, but he was well into his 30s and his MVP days were behind him. That finally opened the door for other stars.
The shift started in 1993-94, when 24-year-old Sergei Fedorov became the first center to earn first-team All-Star honors outside the big three since 1980, and only the second Hart Trophy winner. (Brett Hull had won in 1991.) Then in 1994-95, Eric Lindros won both the Hart and the Ted Lindsay at the age of 22, in just his third NHL season. Meanwhile, the prospect he was once traded for, Peter Forsberg, won the Calder in a near-unanimous vote. Fellow rookie Paul Kariya was a year away from a 108-point sophomore campaign, Teemu Selanne was in year three, Pavel Bure had hit the 60-goal mark and Lemieux’s absence in Pittsburgh meant Jaromir Jagr could emerge from his shadow.
For the first time in a decade, you started to see the phrase “young guns” show up in NHL coverage.
Meanwhile, another shift was happening in goal. Patrick Roy’s time was running out in Montreal, and 1980s stalwarts like Grant Fuhr, Tom Barrasso and Ron Hextall were moving into their veteran phases. That opened the door for a gangly weirdo named Dominik Hasek to go from backup to Vezina winner in 1995, while 21-year-old Jim Carey won it the next year in his first full season and Martin Brodeur started to build his resume after a 1994 Calder win.
Did it last? Hit-and-miss, as you’d expect with that many names. Hasek, Brodeur and Jagr became legends who dominated for the next decade and beyond, and Forsberg emerged as the league’s best two-way player. Lindros, Bure and Kariya all ran into injury trouble, however, and Carey was out of the league completely within a few years, ending one of the weirder career arcs in modern memory.
2005-06: Crosby and Ovechkin
We don’t need a ton of detail here, as I’m guessing this may be the first season you thought of when you saw the premise here. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby were the consensus top picks in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and thanks to the lockout, they ended up debuting together in 2005-06. What followed were arguably the two greatest rookie campaigns ever recorded by someone who isn’t named Teemu, with both players topping 100 points and Ovechkin also hitting 52 goals.
The Calder race went to Ovechkin in convincing fashion, but it was clear that both players had the potential to be all-timers. Meanwhile, the double-cohort rookie class also featured names like 20-goal blueliner Dion Phaneuf and 23-year-old Vezina finalist Henrik Lundqvist, while 21-year-old sophomore Eric Staal had 100 points and led the Carolina Hurricanes to a Stanley Cup.
Did it last? Yep. Phaneuf and Staal never quite reached those peaks again, but both have long careers. Lundqvist built a Hall-of-Fame resume. Crosby and Ovechkin came to define the era, with Ovechkin breaking Gretzky’s untouchable goals record while Crosby earned a place in the all-time Mount Rushmore conversation.
Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid quickly became the faces of their respective franchises. (Codie McLachlan / Getty Images)
2016-17: The dawn of the Three M’s
(Yes, I know nobody has ever called them that, leave me alone.)
In 2016, Connor McDavid became the most heavily hyped draft pick since at least Crosby (and maybe even Lemieux). He lived up to the hype as a rookie, but an injury limited him to half a season. No such luck for opposing goaltenders the following year, as a healthy McDavid shredded the league, winning his first scoring title and Hart Trophy.
While that was going on, Auston Matthews was debuting with his four-goal opening night, going on to win the Calder over Patrik Laine. It’s hard to remember now, but this was all happening as another No. 1 pick, Nathan MacKinnon, was spinning his wheels as a 50-point player. That would end the following year, when MacKinnon blew up for 97 points and was Hart runner-up.
That’s three top picks, three centers, and three players who’d define the next decade or so. Though we didn’t quite realize it at the time, a couple of guys named Leon Draisaitl and Nikita Kucherov were about to break out, too.
Did it last? Apart from Laine, absolutely.
2019-20: The dawn of the young blue-line stud
For just about as long as anyone could remember, the elite tier of NHL defensemen had been the domain of the veteran.
It hadn’t always been that way – in fact, between Harry Howel in 1967 and Ray Bourque in 1991, not a single defenseman in his age-30 or older season had won the James Norris Memorial Trophy. Once Bourque broke the seal, though, the veterans grabbed the trophy and barely let go for three decades. The era of Bourque, Chris Chelios, Paul Coffey and Al MacInnis gave way to Nicklas Lidstrom, Zdeno Chara, Scott Stevens and Chris Pronger.
Younger stars like Erik Karlsson, Dion Phaneuf and P.K. Subban would occasionally break through, but for the most part, they were the exception. If you wanted to contend for the Norris, you had to at least be able to grow a grizzled playoff beard like Brent Burns or Shea Weber. In 2019, the award went to 35-year-old Mark Giordano.
Then came 2019-20, and everything changed, with the arrival of arguably the single greatest blue-line rookie class of all time. This was the year of Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes going toe-to-toe for the Calder Trophy all season long, a battle Makar eventually won. Meanwhile, Adam Fox was the only other rookie to get a first-place vote, finishing in fourth place and falling just short of making it an all-blueliner group of finalists. As it was, it marked the first time two defensemen had topped Calder balloting since Orr’s rookie campaign in 1966-67.
Makar, Hughes and Fox would go on to win four of the next five Norris Trophies, and counting. Fox was actually the first to do it, narrowly beating out Makar in 2021. Makar would go on to win 2022 and 2025, while Hughes got the nod in 2023. It took a 101-point season from Karlsson, now representing the over-30 crowd, to get the old guys back in the running.
Did it last? It’s early, but it sure seems to be. Makar and Hughes are generally viewed as the two top defensemen in the world, and Fox isn’t far behind. Meanwhile, Mortiz Seider and Lane Hutson have won Calders, while young blueliners like Miro Heiskanen and Rasmus Dahlin established themselves as stars. Now, we’re all living in Matthew Schaefer’s world.
Go back even a decade and tell a hockey fan that most of the league’s top defensemen would be in their mid-20s, and they wouldn’t have believed you. Things can change quickly, though, and sometimes it only takes one year for it to happen. Maybe we’re seeing that with the young forwards this year, or maybe it ends up being a temporary trend.
That’s half the fun of this sort of season — you never quite know what will stick.