Puck Lists: 8 NHL teen rookies that scored like Laine, Matthews

Patrik Laine has 17 goals in his first 32 NHL games. That’s really good.

It’s actually third in the NHL as I write this, which is a good place for anyone to be, let alone a kid who won’t even turn 19 until April.

But the thing is, Laine isn’t even a lock for rookie of the year, because Auston Matthews, who’s several months older and went one spot earlier in June’s draft, is also having an historically good season for the Maple Leafs. And he’s arguably doing it with less help than Laine. In all, Matthews has 13 goals in his first 28 games, and that puts him a tie for ninth in the league, which is also very good for a teenager.

How good are these numbers both guys are putting up? So good it almost never happens. Simply put, the vast, vast, vast majority of teenagers in the NHL don’t score this many goals or even come close.

Let’s set the baseline here: Matthews is trailing a little bit in terms of goals per game, at 0.46 (what a bum!), which currently puts him on a pace for 38. The number of teens who put up at least that many goals per game and also broke 35 for the whole season — indicating they stayed healthy — is just eight. And you’ve heard of almost all of them.

And keep in mind the environment these guys are playing in. At no point in league history have goaltenders across the league been better than they are right now. And only eight guys have ever done what they’re likely to do at this point. Amazing.

Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?

8 – Sidney Crosby, 2005-06

You all know this fella. One of my favorite stats ever is that Crosby — who scored 39-63-102 in 81 games as a rookie — is the only guy ever to break both 100 points and 100 penalty minutes in his first season.

That rules. Sidney Crosby rules.

Anyway, I think it’s safe to say neither Matthews nor Laine are Crosby-level good, because like three players ever are. But if the most recent guy to do something that two players this season are heading toward is Sidney Crosby — in a season when the league-average save percentage was really low (.901) because of all the power plays refs were giving out, that tells you an awful lot about how well today’s two big rookies are doing.

7 – Eric Lindros, 1992-93

Before Crosby you had to go back 13 years to find another player who scored like these two as a teenaged rookie, and once again, it’s a Hockey Hall of Famer. Here’s how dominant Lindros was at 19: He scored 41 goals and 75 points. In 61 games.

On a list of guys who needed to be healthy to get anywhere close to Laine and Matthews’s pace, Lindros did not need to be healthy. Amazing. But here was a big help: a league-average .885 save percentage. Lindros, for his part, shot 22.8 percent.

And the 0.67 goals per game Lindros scored back then obliterates almost this entire field.

6 – Jimmy Carson, 1986-87

This is the first of three, “Who?” guys on the list. The rest are also Hall of Famers.

Carson is legit a guy I didn’t know much about other than he was in the Gretzky trade. But he was the No. 2 overall pick in ’86 and went 37-42-79 in 80 games on a very bad team.Then the next two seasons, he scored 55(!) and 49, the latter of which was after the big trade. I’m assuming he got a lot of time with Luc Robitaille those first two years with the Kings.

After that, he never again cleared 69 points, and had just one more 30-goal season, but he always seemed to be on teams with legendary players. Two years in Edmonton with Messier and Co., a handful in Detroit behind Yzerman and Fedorov, then back to LA to play with Gretzky.

The ’80s were weird, man.

And oh yeah, the league save percentage Carson’s rookie year was .880.

5 – Mario Lemieux, 1984-85

Ah yes another guy who was really good: 43-57-100 in 73 games. Pretty good. Save percentage when he did it, though, was .875. Lemieux himself shot 20.6 percent.

As with Crosby and Lindros, you don’t really need to sift through a whole hell of a lot here: Lemieux was basically one of the two best forwards ever, and Laine and Matthews aren’t that good. But the fact that they’re doing something right now that even puts them in his neighborhood is pretty amazing.

4 – Sylvain Turgeon, 1983-84

This is the other non-HHOFer on the list, and like Carson, Turgeon was the No. 2 pick in the draft before his rookie season. He’s also Pierre Turgeon’s older brother.

The 40 goals he scored in 76 games that season for a terrible Hartford team was the second-highest total of his career, and he finished third in Calder voting. Two years later he scored 45 but then seemed to have a lot of problems staying healthy.

His is another career to which our two nice young boys should not try to aspire.

3 – Steve Yzerman, 1983-84

Another guy you’ve heard of, I think. Pretty good GM. Not sure about his cred as a player.

Yzerman scored 39-48-87 in 76 games as an 18-year-old — perhaps you’d say he was the Laine to Turgeon’s Matthews, since he’s a little younger — and that was good enough for him to finish second in Calder voting. Tom Barrasso won it because he had an .893 save percentage, 20 points above the league average.

So yeah, league save percentage was .873 in 1983-84. And that was also the first year they ever tracked that number league-wide, so we can stop worrying about it now. Rest assured opposing goalies for these next two games had almost no idea how to make a stop.

2 – Dale Hawerchuk, 1981-82

My man scored 45-58-103 in 80 games as an 18-year-old, so if Laine breaks 40 this year — very possible! — he will become the second guy to ever do that. Pretty weird coincidence that they’re both playing in Winnipeg, too (albeit for different franchises).

1 – Wayne Gretzky, 1979-80

This is the third, “Who?” guy on the list. Never heard of him, but he’s the only teenager to ever score 50-plus in his rookie season. He went 51-86-137. How does no one bring this guy up all the time? Sounds like he was great!

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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