Best Cards Ever

Who Are the Best Hockey Rookie Cards In Each Set Since 1951?

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Adding the best hockey rookie cards to your sports card collection is like adding ice to your favorite cocktail!

The arrival of Connor Bedard in 2023-24 Upper Deck Series 2 cards signals a new hobby high not seen since Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby joined the NHL! (Patrick Imhoff details in this article where you can buy different Connor Bedard rookie cards.) But Bedard’s arrival has everyone wanting to go back in time to track down other stellar hockey rookie cards, like Crosby, McDavid, and even Wayne Gretzky!

If this is your first trip to this website, then welcome! We’re all about tracking down the best rookie cards from all sports, and now we’re sharing the best hockey rookie cards!

We went through all the hockey card sets dating all the way back to the 1951 Parkhurst set, including many sets produced by companies like Topps, O-Pee-Chee, Pro Set, Score, and finally Upper Deck. We found all the best hockey rookie cards of Hall-of-Famers and NHL All-Stars that roamed the ice over the past eight decades.

I used PSA’s card values to find many of these, and I used several other sources to track down the best hockey rookie cards. This is obviously a subjective list, but it’s also a living and dynamic list, which means – I can change it! So please contact me with players whose cards you think should be among the best hockey rookie cards, and I’ll check them out!

Best Hockey Rookie Cards – Starting Back in 1951

Most of the sports card links on this page will take you to eBay. That means I will get a commission on the sales from this page. If you end up buying from these links, I personally thank you for supporting my website! Even if you don’t buy anything, thank you for reading my article! Enjoy!

I will update this article frequently, as some players ascend in value and some decline. The most recent seasons will have a higher number of rookies to collect because we’re still waiting to see if they will fulfill their promise. As the seasons wear on, I’ll remove the rookies that have fallen by the wayside.

My website is free to use, so I use affiliate links with companies like eBay to help support it. By clicking on the links below, you can help support this site – and I thank you very much!

Most card images provided by BuySportsCards.com.

1951 Parkhurst

1952 Parkhurst

1953 Parkhurst

1954 Parkhurst

1954 Topps Best Hockey Rookie Cards

Topps produced hockey cards for the first time in 1954, but then they didn’t produce them again until 1957. For several years after that, until 1964, Topps produced NHL cards for U.S. teams, and Parkhurst produced hockey cards for the Canadian teams (except in 1960, when Parkhurst also created cards for Detroit Red Wings players.) In 1964, Topps then began to produce hockey cards for all NHL teams.

1955 Parkhurst

1956 Parkhurst

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1957 Parkhurst

1957 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1958 Parkhurst

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1958 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1959 Parkhurst

1959 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1960 Parkhurst

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1960 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1961 Parkhurst

1961 Topps Best Hockey Rookie Cards

1962 Parkhurst

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1962 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1963 Parkhurst

1963 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1964 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

There were no great rookie cards of note from this set.

1965 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1966 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1967 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1968 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1968 O-Pee-Chee

1969 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1970 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1970 O-Pee-Chee Best Hockey Rookie Cards

1971 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1971 O-Pee-Chee

1972 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1972 O-Pee-Chee

There were no great hockey rookie cards of note in this set.

1973 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1973 O-Pee-Chee

1974 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1975 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1976 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1976 O-Pee-Chee

1977 Topps, O-Pee-Chee NHL and O-Pee-Chee WHA

There really weren’t any rookie cards worth owning from these three sets.

1978 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1978 O-Pee-Chee

1979 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1979 O-Pee-Chee

1980 O-Pee-Chee

1981 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1981 O-Pee-Chee

1982 O-Pee-Chee

  • Grant Fuhr (HOF) 105 – View on eBay!
  • Ron Francis (HOF) 123
  • Joe Mullen (HOF) 307
  • Dale Hawerchuk (HOF) 380

1983 O-Pee-Chee

  • Phil Housley (HOF) 65
  • Scott Stevens (HOF) 376

1984 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1984 O-Pee-Chee

1985 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1985 O-Pee-Chee

1986 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1986 O-Pee-Chee

1987 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

  • Luc Robitaille (HOF) 42
  • Adam Oates (HOF) 123

1987 O-Pee-Chee

  • Luc Robitaille (HOF) 42
  • Adam Oates (HOF) 123
  • Ron Hextall (HOF) 169
  • Mike Vernon (HOF) 215

1988 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1988 O-Pee-Chee

1989 Topps Best Hockey Rookie Cards

1989 O-Pee-Chee

1990 Pro Set Hockey

  • Mike Modano (HOF) 142
  • Sergei Fedorov (HOF) 604

1990 Score Canadian

1990 Score Rookie/Traded

1990 Topps Hockey Rookie Cards

1990 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

The first hockey card set from Upper Deck brought us the inaugural edition of their Young Guns subset, which has now signaled the best hockey rookie cards most people want to collect year after year, over three decades later. In more recent years, Upper Deck started limiting how many Young Guns are available per box. While they’re still part of the base set, they are not as common as the rest of the set.

1990 O-Pee-Chee Premier

  • Sergei Fedorov (HOF) 30
  • Jaromir Jagr 50
  • Mike Modano (HOF) 74

1990 Score Hockey Rookie Cards

1991 Upper Deck

1991 Parkhurst

1992 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

1993 Parkhurst

1993 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

1994 Upper Deck SP Hockey Rookie Cards

1995 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

1996 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

1997 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

1998 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

1999 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards

  • John Madden 81
  • Jochen Hecht 116
  • Patrik Stefan 161
  • Roberto Luongo 163
  • Daniel Sedin 165
  • Henrik Sedin 166
  • Brian Campbell 189

2000 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • Marian Gaborik 229
  • Rick DiPietro 411

2001 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • Ilya Kovalchuk 211
  • Pavel Datsyuk 422

2002 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • Rick Nash 232
  • Henrik Zetterberg 234
  • Tim Thomas 429
  • Jason Spezza 443

2003 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • Patrice Bergeron 204
  • Brent Burns 221
  • Marc-Andre Fleury 234

2004 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2005 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2006 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • Phil Kessel 204
  • Anze Kopitar 216
  • Shea Weber 222
  • Kristopher Letang 240
  • Evgeni Malkin 486 – View on eBay!
  • Joe Pavelski 487

2007 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2008 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • Blake Wheeler 202
  • Drew Doughty 220
  • Claude Giroux 235
  • Alex Pietrangelo 241
  • Steven Stamkos 245 – View on eBay!

2009 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

  • John Tavares 201 – View on eBay!
  • Victor Hedman 202 – View on eBay!
  • Matt Duchene 203
  • Erik Karlsson 210
  • Jamie Benn 212
  • Brad Marchand 452
  • Logan Couture 487
  • John Carlson 497
  • Braden Holtby 499

2010 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2011 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2012 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2013 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2014 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2015 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2016 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2017 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2018 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2019 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2020 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2021 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2022 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

2023 Upper Deck Hockey Rookie Cards – Young Guns

If you love rookie cards, here are some more articles tracking great cards from the past and present:

As I mentioned at the start of this article, we’ll be updating this page often. Some rookie cards will be removed as players decline in value, and some rookie cards will be added as they bloom later than expected. Either way, feel free to comment below and share some of the players you think should be among the best hockey rookie cards by year from each hockey card set.

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David Gonos
David Gonos spent 5 years as a CBSSports.com Senior Fantasy Writer and three more years writing with SI.com. Over the past 17 years, his work has been published on NFL.com, MLB.com, FanDuel, FoxSports.com and USA Today. Since 2001, he has been tracking down the Top 50-plus Free Fantasy Football Draft Tools online. You can contact David Gonos here.
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