McGuillicuddy
Registered User
- Sep 6, 2005
- 1,296
- 198
We all know that Gretzky's rookie season, despite i) it was his first NHL season and ii) he was only 18 years old at its start, was not actually classified as a rookie season as per the NHL record books. It completely defies logic since the season before his rookie year Gretzky was only 17 years old and therefore ineligible to play in the NHL even if the WHA never existed. It is bizarre at best to think that one can burn rookie eligibility as a minor. As far as I can tell this was just a matter of revenge-taking by a bunch of old men who wanted to punish players coming from the WHA. But was there any farcical pseudo-logical reason given to attempt to justify this punishment? Did anybody care? Or did people just accept that the NHL was run by a bunch of angry insular old fossils and forget about it?
And secondly, why has this historical wrong not been corrected? I'm not suggesting the Calder should be revisited, but Gretzky should by all rights hold the records for most assists and points by a rookie. Not that he needs more records, but it is disingenous at best to consider Stastny/Juneau and Selanne the holders of these two records, respectively. I would suspect they themselves consider there to be asterisks on these records (not that I think they give them any thought at all). This feels like something that should be quietly corrected in the NHL record book.
The icing on the cake of course is that exactly a decade later a 31 year-old Sergei Makarov who had already played many games against NHL competition is accepted by mostly that same group of fossils as a legitimate rookie and Calder winner. I guess the difference is that the Soviets never impacted NHL owners wallets (and maybe even helped), while the WHA did. Maybe that the root cause of all of this?
And secondly, why has this historical wrong not been corrected? I'm not suggesting the Calder should be revisited, but Gretzky should by all rights hold the records for most assists and points by a rookie. Not that he needs more records, but it is disingenous at best to consider Stastny/Juneau and Selanne the holders of these two records, respectively. I would suspect they themselves consider there to be asterisks on these records (not that I think they give them any thought at all). This feels like something that should be quietly corrected in the NHL record book.
The icing on the cake of course is that exactly a decade later a 31 year-old Sergei Makarov who had already played many games against NHL competition is accepted by mostly that same group of fossils as a legitimate rookie and Calder winner. I guess the difference is that the Soviets never impacted NHL owners wallets (and maybe even helped), while the WHA did. Maybe that the root cause of all of this?
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