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Rookies score goals, get assists, and we count them up

Once every random period of days we check in with the rookie points totals and marvel at the exuberance of youth.

By CathySquires
NHL: San Jose Sharks at Toronto Maple Leafs Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

This is the NHL version of rookies, so Nikita Zaitsev is in even though he is hardly a baby like the others.

That’s his ecstatic face, by the way.

Rookie Scoring February 17, 2017

Name Team Position Games Played Goals Assists Points Points per Game
Name Team Position Games Played Goals Assists Points Points per Game
Patrik Laine WPG R 52 27 21 48 0.92
Mitchell Marner TOR C 56 15 33 48 0.86
Auston Matthews TOR C 56 27 19 46 0.82
William Nylander TOR C 55 15 23 38 0.69
Matthew Tkachuk CGY L 54 11 25 36 0.67
Zach Werenski CBJ D 57 8 25 33 0.58
Sebastian Aho CAR R 54 17 15 32 0.59
Anthony Mantha DET R 42 13 16 29 0.69
Mikko Rantanen COL R 51 12 15 27 0.53
Brady Skjei NYR D 56 2 25 27 0.48
Nikita Zaitsev TOR D 56 2 24 26 0.46
Connor Brown TOR R 56 12 12 24 0.43
Devin Shore DAL C 59 9 15 24 0.41
Ivan Provorov PHI D 58 5 18 23 0.4
Zach Hyman TOR C 56 8 15 23 0.41
Ryan Hartman CHI L 52 13 10 23 0.44
Jimmy Vesey NYR L 56 14 8 22 0.39
Travis Konecny PHI C 51 7 15 22 0.43
Christian Dvorak ARI C 52 9 12 21 0.4
Brayden Point TBL C 42 7 13 20 0.48

I picked the points cutoff of 20 which handily gives us 20 names, and I did that for only that reason and that reason alone.

What can we learn from this?

Power play time gets you points. Points gets you power play time. It’s the great möbius strip of hockey.

Zach Werenski is amazing, and leads all rookies in power play points as well.

Zach Hyman leads all rookies in penalty kill minutes and in shorthanded points. He has less than ten total minutes on the power play the lowest by far of anyone on this list. The closest is Ryan Hartman with more than double.

Mikko Rantanen is doing the same thing in the NHL he did last year in the AHL: coming on very strong in the second half and chasing down William Nylander’s point pace. He scored the winning goal in overtime last night, and he plays on the worst team in the NHL according to the standings. He deserves notice for his efforts.

Jimmy Vesey is a shooting percentage and not much else compared to the much younger forwards who get assists as well as goals.

Toronto has six players on this list. No other team has more than two.

But three sure do stand out:

Terrifying graphic used during a recent game.

The baby on the right should be back in the lineup soon, multiple reports say he’s not badly hurt, so he can keep putting up points.

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