the most exciting rookie season of course was bure’s. he also had by far the best run of games, finishing the year with an unfathomable 22 goals and 32 points in his last 23 games. but damn was bure ever ice cold for a huge chunk of his abbreviated first half. colder than boeser in his now abbreviated second half.
by contrast, up to christmas, which is how impressively long he kept his head about a point/game, boes had 21 goals, 38 points in 35 games. a longer run than bure, but even if we adjust for era there is no comparison between their offensive dominance. bure was practically scoring a goal/game, and producing at a pace of 111 points/80 games.
but the other two rookie years that may have been just as good as bure’s are linden’s and ohlund’s. those two were the most complete, and consistent.
ohlund was the best defenseman on the team from day one and played like a veteran. he easily should have won the calder that year (albeit in a pretty weak year), but what can you do? he was only a decently offensive defenseman whose real value was in his own end. and the games are on late. he finished a distant second to sergei samsonov, who scored 47 points (ohlund had 30). what a farce.
and linden, he was the best player on the team, bar none, from training camp on. similar to boeser in that, yeah it was a very crappy team, but still. he didn’t have boeser’s offense, but he had an all-round game that boeser can currently only dream about. i’d say 21 year old horvat is a pretty good comparison for 18 year old linden. led the team in even strength scoring, then followed it up with seven points in the first round to scare the bejeezus out of the presidents trophy winning powerhouse 89 flames, who of course went on to win the cup.
consider also that even though bure won the calder and linden only finished second, linden actually got a marginally higher share of the available votes than bure did. the difference is leetch got all the other votes in 89, while lidstrom’s and tony amonte split the votes bure didn’t get, allowing bure to take the three horse race.
leetch, mind you, had easily the best rookie year of any of these players, putting up 71 points (a higher than point/game pace) and running away with the rookie scoring lead as a defenseman. for comparison, amonte had 69 points playing on the wing of some bald hart trophy winning jackass, lidstrom and bure each had 60, rookie joe sakic had 62, and linden had 59. only one defenseman in the league scored at a higher rate than leetch, not bourque, not macinnis, not housley or chelios or suter, only paul coffey. the fact that leetch only got 2/3 of the first place calder votes while linden got the remaining 1/3 (with tony granato randomly getting one first place vote) should tell you how good linden was beyond scoring stats.
