First NHL Player To Be Younger Than You

joe dirte

Registered User
Sep 28, 2017
9,430
3,559
Wow. Thanks for this, at a glance I had thought McLaren-Berg were going to be my winners but Dvorak and Doig both have them beat in terms of being older-but-still-younger-than-me. In fact Doig was born the day after me. Assuming you're right that he played on Oct 7 (he only played 15 NHL games that year, and I wasn't about to dive as deep as boxscores to see nightly rosters) he's my winner for "Oldest younger-than-me player to ever play in the NHL" and one of four co-winners for "first younger-than-me player to play in the NHL" .

I would guess based on the later start times, Doig (in Winnipeg) and Berg (in LA) technically started their NHL tenure hours after McLaren (in Boston) and Dvorak (for Florida, in New Jersey) did. I can't find out for certain if one of those two eastern games started at 7:00 or 7:30 though. The New Jersey game was likely a delayed start after a banner raising. :p McLaren was likely the first to skate as an NHLer after all.

Yessir, he did. the game logs are on NHL.com.

Scroll down and take a looksie.

Jason Doig Stats and News
 

PWiz30

I love to hockey!
Jan 3, 2013
2,406
2,304
I would have been one of the younger guys in the 06 draft and Jordan Staal is the only one who's younger than me who made the big club out of camp. There might be others though.
 

tmg

Registered User
Jul 10, 2003
2,734
1,250
Ottawa
as far as I can tell, it's Matt Cullen

thanks to this thread for making me feel old as ****

Same. Chara is slightly younger than me (I'm guessing you too?), so Cullen is the only active player in the league older than me. Unless some geezer unretires, Cullen should be the last player older than me to play in the NHL.
 

VanIsle

Registered User
Jun 5, 2007
12,254
4,720
Comox Valley, B.C.
Joe Thornton for me, born in 78 and a Bruins fan, when he was drafted I was like "holy s***" im getting old as he was born in 79.

Ahh the good old days.
 

SeanVT395

It's Not Even Close
May 15, 2010
3,145
20
Vermont
Spent too long reseaching this. Nail Yakupov is the closest being 9 days younger.... I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this information
 

n00bxQb

Registered User
Jul 26, 2010
3,178
524
First to be younger than me (October 10, 2002): Ales Hemsky (1983/08/13), Jay Bouwmeester (1983/09/27), and Rick Nash (1984/06/16)

My guess is that either Bouwmeester or Nash played first as they played in the Eastern time zone that day, but NHL.com doesn't have game times that far back.

NHL Players still older than me: Matt Cullen, Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Chris Kunitz, Brooks Orpik, Niklas Kronwall, Ron Hainsey, Derek MacKenzie, Matt Hendricks, Justin Williams, Deryk Engelland, Andy Greene, Tomas Plekanec, Jason Pominville, Dan Hamhuis, Mikko Koivu, Ilya Kovalchuk, Chris Thorburn, Jason Spezza, Roberto Luongo, Ryan Miller, Craig Anderson, Henrik Lundqivst, Mike Smith, Peter Budaj, Pekka Rinne, Curtis McElhinney
 

Rebels57

Former Flyers fan
Sponsor
Sep 28, 2014
76,369
122,651
Patrice Bergeron is the first NHL player to be younger than me.

I am 7/21/1985, Patrice is 7/24/1985.

Stefan Meyer is the last NHL player to be older than me, 7/20/1985.
 

LowSodium

Registered User
Jan 4, 2015
1,323
114
Dallas
How do you figure this out easily? Bo Horvat was born a week after me, but I assume a lot of people from the 2013 draft class were younger than me and started playing at the same time
 

Brodeur

Registered User
Feb 27, 2002
25,842
15,232
San Diego
I irrationally get a kick that my birthday (September 16th) is the draft cutoff date. Ie, I had to "wait" an extra year for my draft. It looks like Rick DiPietro would be the first NHLer younger than me, or I suppose a combination of DiPietro and some of his fellow 2000 draftees who made the NHL right away (Gaborik, Klesla, Hartnell).

Not that I'm old, but I'm old enough nowadays where there's current players whose dads I had on my fantasy teams when they were in their primes.
 

sharkhawk

Registered User
Jun 1, 2013
1,933
561
Aurora, IL
Yzerman or turgeon depending whether Hartford or Detroit played first, or Lawton or Barrasso. Someone from the 83 draft who was born after nov 23 1964 or in 65.
 
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