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Rookie Issue 2024
In our 2024 Rookie Issue, our cover story focuses on two Minnesota freshmen who are making their marks in Year 1: Brock Faber and Marco Rossi. We also take a deep dive into Connor Bedard's game by speaking with his junior coach/GM and a group of pro scouts, and we profile two other sensational rookies: Connor Zary and Dmitri Voronkov. In addition, we look at what's led to the successful start of the PWHL and preview the NHL trade deadline, with breakdowns for all 32 clubs.
WESTERN HIGH FIVE
YOU DON’T OFTEN GET a tectonic shift in developmental hockey, let alone two in such quick succession. But the January announcement that five of the Alberta Jr. A League’s top franchises would be leaving for the B.C. Jr. A League certainly qualifies as a second, and it comes just one season after the BCHL itself went independent from Hockey Canada’s national structure. The two moves are a major change in the power dynamics at that level, as the BCHL and AJHL have long been the elite class of Canada’s Jr. A leagues. The fact this new super-sized circuit will operate outside Hockey Canada’s purview opens up the issue further and raises the question: what’s next? But let’s backfill for a second. The BCHL left the CJHL in 2021 – and Hockey Canada…
READY FOR THE FIRE SALE
BACK IN HIS TIME at Clarkson University, Craig Conroy was a management major. That’s fitting enough given his career arc, which has seen him transition seamlessly from his 1,000-game NHL job into front-office duty, eventually rising into the big chair when he was named Calgary Flames GM in May. But a quality education is nothing without a bit of diversification, and it seems Conroy managed to find time during his college days to learn that oft-repeated aphorism about history: those who don’t learn from it are destined to repeat it. The history, in this instance, isn’t even all that ancient. It was only 2022 when Conroy, then an assistant GM in Calgary, had front-row seats to the saga surrounding Johnny Gaudreau, who remained a Flame through that season’s trade deadline despite…
THE COUNTDOWN
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM, or at least anecdotal evidence and a general misconception about the way NHL teams have been assembled since the adoption of the salary cap in 2005, has led hockey fans to believe that we’re in the most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed era in NHL history. But that isn’t quite true. In fact, in order to find the youngest roster in NHL history, you need to skip back more than two decades to the 1987-88 Quebec Nordiques. All but seven of those Nordiques, who finished last in the Wales Conference, were in their age-25 season or younger, with 31-year-old Peter Stastny playing the role of elder statesman. And those ’87-88 Nordiques aren’t much of an outlier when it comes to the league’s most youthful era, either. According to eliteprospects.com, there have…
WORTH THE WAIT
CHEERING FOR MARCO ROSSI is easy. The gifted Austrian center was one of the most talented players in the 2020 draft class, and Minnesota did well in plucking him ninth overall. But a brutal health scare during the pandemic, in which he battled the heart condition known as myocarditis, put everything in jeopardy for the youngster. Thankfully, he made it back to athletic form eventually, but his breakout in the NHL took longer than originally anticipated. That breakthrough is now. Recovering from his health shock was hard, but Minnesota was willing to be patient. “Of course it bothered him, and I think it bothered him for a while even when he was back,” said Brad Bombardir, director of player development for the Wild. “It took some time, and that’s all it…
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