The Dreaded #2 RC

[RGM81]

interesting observations but i'd argue Steve Mason was arguably fighting for the #2 spot after Stamkos in 08-09.

Great point - I totally forgot about Mason...and that's as much a reflection of his play after his rookie year as anything else. I said it at the time that eventually people were going to realize that they were shelling out top dollar for the goalie for the Columbus Blue Jackets. The reality has set back in on that one - you can get a rookie year Cup parallel /25 for under 10 bucks now, a YG went for a buck, and there a lot reds in the completed listings. A good kid that's going through some growing pains and will hopefully find his game again soon. Hmmm where have I heard that before, about 8 months ago?

[thesnake87]

If Seguin and Subban keep up their performances, I believe they will be the tie for 1st this year IMO

[afholmes87]

I think Jeff Skinner and Eberle will round out a very solid top five rookies for this year(Hall, Seguin, Subban, Skinner, Eberle). Skinner is my dark horse Calder candidate, the kid can play, too bad he plays for Carolina.

[edthesandwich]

There really is no comparison to this class, I don't think...at least not from a contemporary standpoint. I can't recall the last time there was this much hobby attention paid to rookies on Canadian teams in the same year -- Hall, Eberle, Paajarvi, Subban, Kadri...that's an impressive list for hobby purposes. Toss in the second overall pick and early ROY favourite, along with another fantastic prospect in Skinner and the emerging Derek Stepan and Sergei Bobrovsky, and wow...so hard to say what's going to happen from a price perspective, but I'd say you will likely see a rather robust list of A-level RCs this season. Which can only mean good things for the hobby!

[guiltypetit89]

do you remember when a team had 3 hobby-hyped rookies like the oilers have ?

Hall , Eberle and Paajarvi .... all 3 certified jsy-auto worth at least a 100 $ :)

[skyride39]

man collecting the upcoming spa fw auto set is going to kill me if every rookie this year is going to be expensive!

[xirxious]

I started collecting Mueller (07/08) as he played juniors here. He had a better than expected rookie year and it drove the prices up. Now he's hurt and hasn't been heard of lately, so my collection is a bit 'over paid for'.
On the same note, in 02/03, no one had really heard of Zetterberg. He was the top wings prospect so I picked up his stuff for a great deal now. The downside was this was the first year I found out about 'photoshoot' jerseys. When I got his SPx jsy/AU, I read the back and was abhorred the piece wasn't even game used. I paid like $25 lol. At that point, I didn't want to spend $80-100 for his premier patch/AU seeing it wasn't 'real' at the time. It's an $800 card now.
I hear the argument that some people collect cards, not memorabilia. I'm backwards, I got back into cards because I collect memorabilia, but its so expensive, cards are a good way to scale it down.

[dahabsfan]

There really is no comparison to this class, I don't think...at least not from a contemporary standpoint. I can't recall the last time there was this much hobby attention paid to rookies on Canadian teams in the same year -- Hall, Eberle, Paajarvi, Subban, Kadri...that's an impressive list for hobby purposes. Toss in the second overall pick and early ROY favourite, along with another fantastic prospect in Skinner and the emerging Derek Stepan and Sergei Bobrovsky, and wow...so hard to say what's going to happen from a price perspective, but I'd say you will likely see a rather robust list of A-level RCs this season. Which can only mean good things for the hobby!

I'll take 05-06's class over anything in this generation by a landslide. Crosby, Ovy, Carter, Richards, Getzlaf, Perry, Parise, Vanek, Ward, Seabrook, Koivu, Lundqvist, Franzen, etc.

Sure it was a product of circumstance with the strike but it's head and shoulders above any other.

Darren

[edthesandwich]

I'll take 05-06's class over anything in this generation by a landslide. Crosby, Ovy, Carter, Richards, Getzlaf, Perry, Parise, Vanek, Ward, Seabrook, Koivu, Lundqvist, Franzen, etc.

Sure it was a product of circumstance with the strike but it's head and shoulders above any other.

Darren

I simply said "there is no comparison", not "this is the greatest rookie class of this or any other generation."

The lack of comparison stems from the fact that there are an unprecedented number of rookies with the potential of making a major and immediate hobby impact playing for Canadian teams. For that reason, I can see values for Hall, Eberle, Paajarvi, Subban and Kadri rookie cards holding strong for a while. It has absolutely nothing to do with 2005-06, and not a single sane person would ever argue about the strength of that rookie class and how it relates to past or future rookie classes.

The other point of contention is that 2005-06 had Crosby and Ovechkin WAY ahead of everyone else, whereas the 2010-11 class could conceivably belong to Hall, or Eberle, or Seguin, or Subban. It's literally a four-guy race, with a handful of others (Skinner, Stepan, Kadri, Ekman-Larsson, Letestu, Fowler) making up a solid B group. I wasn't trying to say it was better overall, but in my mind, it'll make this the most interesting year of rookie collecting ever -- even moreso than 2005-06.

[Marko]

one way to get to know the popularity of a certain player is Facebook.
on NHL.COM you can hit the "i like"-Button for players.

right now it looks like that:

Taylor Hall - 952 people like him
Tyler Seguin - 1110 people like him
Jordan Eberle - 1044 people like him
Magnus Pajaarvi - 627 people like him
PK Subban - 2338 people like him
Jeff Skinner - 363 people like him

this isn't exactly telling you which rookie is worth the most, but it's definately Subban who is hot like a rocket.