Rorschach
New Member, Must Send First
Please only vote if you know the classes of both...feel free to research it!
So every year we get new rookies in the NHL but anyone who has collected cards for more than five minutes knows that what players actually play and what players actually have cards are two very different things.
Some hype guys get cards ASAP and some guys get their card the next year if they get a late call up and had minimal hype. Our Jonathan Quick is a guy like that, he has no Young Guns RC at all and only has RCs in late products. Not sure why they (UD) just didn't make him a holdover rookie for next year's products... There are multiple reasons for why a guy gets a card and what year he first appears...
This thread/poll is about rookie classes that all appeared on official NHL cardboard in one year. (No Classic Games for 90-91 or ITG H&P for 05-06. ) In other words, had the best crop of RCs in one hockey card season. In my mind there are only two...
So in my somewhat-educated opinion, there two rookie card classes that stand head, shoulders, torso and belly button above all other years:
90-91 and 05-06.
(The sick thing is that both of those years, the year after was also very deep...)
In my estimation, both sets are supported by incredibly deep drafts and contain multiple years' worth of actual NHL rookies.
90-91
90-91 had guys from the 89-90 NHL rookie class, breaking Topps' tradition of only giving a guy a card 99% of the time after playing a full season or two; many of these top rookies came from the 1988 draft. It also was supported by 1989 draft, including top players like Mats Sundin. And of course this was the first year companies put out cards of players just drafted that year, the incredibly deep and amazing 1990 draft. Then UD upped the ante by releasing the Team Canada's World Junior Championship team, so that for the first time, even star players who hadn't even qualified for the draft got cards. Scott Niedermayer, anyone? Three waves of Russians fleeing the Soviet Union for North American NHL hockey appeared in the sets as well...first came the old HOFers like Makarov and Larionov, then came the elite youngsters like Mogilny first and then Fedorov, and lastly more talented Russians came. Guys who weren't elite but found a degree of stardom in the NHL, like Arturs Irbe. All of that crammed into one years' worth of sets!
05-06
Then you have the 05-06 class which just about every collector knows. We have a crazy deep, even more ridiculous than 1990, draft in 2003...the first four picks had cards already along with a few other standouts like Dustin Brown, but the vast majority of future all-stars all got their first cards in 05-06. Then you have the 2004 draft headed by two franchise players and of course the infamous 2005 Crosby lottery. Where as many of the talent pools the 90-91 class draws on have a bunch of players but not necessarily quality players, this class seems to draw heavily on a limited bunch of very talented guys.
Go ahead and vote. But before you do, try this fun exercise. Take the RCs from 90-91 and make a whole All-Star team out of it...four forward lines, preferably the 4th line is epic role players, not just more scorers that are less talented than the guys on the first three lines. Then assemble a seven man defense corps made up of three pairs and spare guy. And of course pick your top three goalies.
Do the same for the 05-06 class.
Then imagine them playing head to head...who wins in 7? Vote for that team in the poll.
Post your teams here and I'll post my teams later tomorrow.
- R
.><.
So every year we get new rookies in the NHL but anyone who has collected cards for more than five minutes knows that what players actually play and what players actually have cards are two very different things.
Some hype guys get cards ASAP and some guys get their card the next year if they get a late call up and had minimal hype. Our Jonathan Quick is a guy like that, he has no Young Guns RC at all and only has RCs in late products. Not sure why they (UD) just didn't make him a holdover rookie for next year's products... There are multiple reasons for why a guy gets a card and what year he first appears...
This thread/poll is about rookie classes that all appeared on official NHL cardboard in one year. (No Classic Games for 90-91 or ITG H&P for 05-06. ) In other words, had the best crop of RCs in one hockey card season. In my mind there are only two...
So in my somewhat-educated opinion, there two rookie card classes that stand head, shoulders, torso and belly button above all other years:
90-91 and 05-06.
(The sick thing is that both of those years, the year after was also very deep...)
In my estimation, both sets are supported by incredibly deep drafts and contain multiple years' worth of actual NHL rookies.
90-91
90-91 had guys from the 89-90 NHL rookie class, breaking Topps' tradition of only giving a guy a card 99% of the time after playing a full season or two; many of these top rookies came from the 1988 draft. It also was supported by 1989 draft, including top players like Mats Sundin. And of course this was the first year companies put out cards of players just drafted that year, the incredibly deep and amazing 1990 draft. Then UD upped the ante by releasing the Team Canada's World Junior Championship team, so that for the first time, even star players who hadn't even qualified for the draft got cards. Scott Niedermayer, anyone? Three waves of Russians fleeing the Soviet Union for North American NHL hockey appeared in the sets as well...first came the old HOFers like Makarov and Larionov, then came the elite youngsters like Mogilny first and then Fedorov, and lastly more talented Russians came. Guys who weren't elite but found a degree of stardom in the NHL, like Arturs Irbe. All of that crammed into one years' worth of sets!
05-06
Then you have the 05-06 class which just about every collector knows. We have a crazy deep, even more ridiculous than 1990, draft in 2003...the first four picks had cards already along with a few other standouts like Dustin Brown, but the vast majority of future all-stars all got their first cards in 05-06. Then you have the 2004 draft headed by two franchise players and of course the infamous 2005 Crosby lottery. Where as many of the talent pools the 90-91 class draws on have a bunch of players but not necessarily quality players, this class seems to draw heavily on a limited bunch of very talented guys.
Go ahead and vote. But before you do, try this fun exercise. Take the RCs from 90-91 and make a whole All-Star team out of it...four forward lines, preferably the 4th line is epic role players, not just more scorers that are less talented than the guys on the first three lines. Then assemble a seven man defense corps made up of three pairs and spare guy. And of course pick your top three goalies.
Do the same for the 05-06 class.
Then imagine them playing head to head...who wins in 7? Vote for that team in the poll.
Post your teams here and I'll post my teams later tomorrow.
- R
.><.
Last edited:
wned:
