The Hockey News (THN) recently released their Top 20 list of players 21 years old and younger. While THN is looking at rankings by value to an NHL team, we are looking at it through the lens of a collector looking for top hockey rookie cards, specifically Upper Deck Young Guns.
Ten of these Top 20 players already have Young Guns cards, from sets between 2023-24 Upper Deck Series 2 and 2025-26 Upper Deck Series 1.
Four other players from the Top 20 are expected to have cards in the 2025-26 Upper Deck Series 2 release (expected in early March of 2026): Zeev Buium, Michael Misa. Matthew Schaefer and Beckett Sennecke.
Of note, these players are from all realms of hockey to include the NHL, College, the AHL and Junior hockey. Also, the way they made their rankings isn’t specific to how these players are playing now (since they play in different leagues around the world), but more about how they project to play when they should begin to peak in the NHL. This means age 23/24 for forwards, age 24/25 for defenseman, and age 25/26 for goalies.
Two other questions to consider when looking at NHL rookie cards — which cards carry value and what are the age demographics of the NHL?
Goals and points carry the most value among card collectors, therefore, Centers and Forwards always will have the most valuable cards, followed by offensive defensemen (known more for scoring than defensive abilities) and goalies who play long dominating careers.
In terms of age demographics, there were a total of 56 players on rosters 21 and under at the beginning of the NHL season:
Here are the rankings as created by The Hockey News. Players with cards have the card series and number listed below their name. Also, check out my article on the Best Young Guns Rookie Cards Under $50 Each!
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As you likely know already, we love player rankings because we can devise our own rookie card rankings off those lists!
Let us know which of these hockey rookie cards you picked up!
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