What NHL Superstar Rookie Seasons Tell Us About Future

There is a funny thing about young hockey players. We see one great season and immediately start trying to figure out what comes next.

That is especially true in Toronto, where Gavin McKenna is about to begin his NHL career. The Maple Leafs selected McKenna first overall this summer, and there is already plenty of discussion about how quickly he can become a star. He has earned the attention. McKenna had 51 points in 35 games at Penn State last season, after putting up 129 points in 56 games with Medicine Hat the year before.

But predicting greatness is a tricky business. Sometimes the numbers are obvious. Sometimes they aren't. So I went back and looked at the rookie seasons of some of the biggest stars of the NHL's salary-cap era.

ROOKIE SEASON POINTS — FUTURE NHL SUPERSTARS

106 — Alex Ovechkin
102 — Sidney Crosby
72 — Patrick Kane
69 — Auston Matthews
63 — Nathan MacKinnon
63 — Macklin Celebrini
61 — Connor Bedard
48 — Connor McDavid*

*45 games played

The first thing that jumps out is obvious. Ovechkin and Crosby were ridiculous.

They entered the league and immediately scored more than 100 points. There wasn't much mystery there. If you were watching those seasons, you didn't need a spreadsheet to tell you that something unusual was happening.

But then look a little further down the list. Matthews scored 69 points as a rookie. That puts him fourth here, behind Ovechkin, Crosby and Kane. Yet Matthews' rookie season also included 40 goals, which tells a different story about the kind of player he was becoming.

And then there is McDavid. His 48 points look almost modest beside the other numbers. Except McDavid played only 45 games. His points-per-game rate was 1.067, which means the raw total doesn’t really capture what was happening when he was actually on the ice. That may be the most useful lesson in the whole exercise.

Rookie point totals tell us something. They don't tell us everything.

Celebrini and MacKinnon finished with identical 63-point totals. Bedard had 61. Matthews had 69. Those numbers are useful benchmarks, but they aren't career forecasts.

Celebrini has already shown how quickly things can change. Matthews developed into one of the league's premier goal scorers. MacKinnon eventually became one of the NHL's dominant offensive forces. Bedard's story, meanwhile, is still being written.

And that brings us back to McKenna. It would be easy to look at this chart and decide he needs to score 70 or 80 points as a rookie to prove he is going to be a superstar. I don't think that's the right lesson.

Can McKenna get better as the season progresses?

The better question for the Maple Leafs is whether McKenna's game keeps telling the same story as the season progresses. Does he become more comfortable? Does he create offence against better competition? Does he make plays that weren't available to him a month earlier? Does the speed of the NHL game begin to slow down for him?

Those things may tell Toronto more about McKenna's future than whether he finishes his rookie season with 61, 69 or 75 points. The history is useful, but it isn't a formula.

Ovechkin and Crosby made greatness look immediate. McDavid's rookie numbers were distorted by injury. Matthews' 69 points didn't fully capture the significance of those 40 goals. That's probably the sensible way to look at McKenna, too.

What kind of player will McKenna become?

The Maple Leafs don't need him to recreate somebody else's rookie season. They need to find out what kind of player Gavin McKenna will become. And history suggests that answer may not be sitting neatly inside the points column.