From the Archive: Calder Trophy Preview

The Hockey News Archive is an exclusive vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 stories for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com. Today, we will revisit a story about Sean Burke and the Calder Trophy. 

Sean Burke made an easy stick save on the question, deflecting it neatly and directing the rebound out of danger. "What do you call a rookie who isn’t really a rookie?” he was asked. “That’s a good question—one you've got to answer," he replied.

The NHL says that to qualify as a rookie, a player may not have played more than 25 games in any single preceding regular season.

The NHL says the winner of the Calder Memorial Trophy goes "to the player selected most proficient in his first year of competition in the National Hockey League.”

Eligibility might be clearer if the league said first full year of competition, but that’s not Sean Burke’s problem. Nor is it a worry for Boston center Craig Janney or his linemate, left winger Bob Joyce. In the league’s eyes, all three are rookies, all Calder-eligible players—even if, counting their playoff experience, each of them has played in at least 30 NHL games.

Of course, the NHL has been inconsistent in distinguishing just what a rookie is. Peter Stastny. 24 and fresh off a 7-7-14 performance in six games for the 1980 Czechoslovakian Olympic team, was considered an NHL rookie in 1980-81. Most would label his considerable Czechoslovakian and international experience more than the meanderings of an amateur. He won the Calder after scoring 39 goals and 70 assists for the Quebec Nordiques. Fellow rookie Denis Savard (28-47-75), Chicago’s 20-year-old first-round draft pick the previous summer, was left out in the cold.

Only a season before, Wayne Gretzky’s odd entrance to the NHL from the World Hockey Association—he didn’t have to be drafted into the NHL, but wasn’t considered a rookie—excluded him from what surely would have been a Calder Trophy win. The 19-year-old superstar tied for the NHL scoring lead with Marcel Dionne only to lose the race because Dionne scored more goals. Interesting that the NHL never considered the WHA its equal, yet for the purposes of the Calder, ruled Gretzky had major-league experience. Ray Bourque of Boston, also 19, was the top rookie that year.

But back to Sean Burke. His 10-1 record in 13 regular-season appearances had a lot to do with the Devils making the playoffs last season. Rookie of the year? Heck, people were touting the 21-year-old Burke for MVP. The netminder played 17 more games in New Jersey’s playoff surge to the semi-finals; thus Burke brings to his rookie season impressive NHL totals of 1,690 minutes played and a 19-9 record with two no-decisions.

"Sophomore slump? I don’t know,” Burke said. “I don’t have to worry about that for a couple of years.”

Neither do Janney or Joyce, each of whom played 38 games overall for the Boston Bruins last spring—Joyce after playing with Burke and Pittsburgh defenseman Zarley Zalapski on the Canadian Olympic team, Janney after teaming with New York Ranger defenseman Brian Leetch on the U.S. entry.

"The speed of the game in Olympic hockey is very fast and very intense, much like in the NHL,” said Janney, who had seven goals and nine assists over the 15 regular-season games of his “non-rookie” campaign. “It was a level above college and it just steps up your play. Then you come into the NHL and you climb up a little more. It’s just that constant climbing of levels.

“It helped me just being in the Olympics, playing against some of the best players in the world—the Russians and the Czechoslovaks,” Janney said. “It made me a better hockey player, made all of us (Olympians) better hockey players, and prepared us for our step into the pros.”

And it prepared them for the step from their rookie seasons into their rookie seasons. Right?

Hey. Them’s the rules, folks. The Rangers had a gripe last year when they missed the playoffs despite having more points than five teams who got to battle for the Stanley Cup, but those eligibility requirements had been on the books for years. The Rangers didn’t squawk when they made the playoffs with 62 points three years ago.

And some player, maybe Vancouver’s 18-year-old Trevor Linden or Quebec’s 19-year-old Joe Sakic, will have a gripe this year if one of last year’s NHL holdovers wins the Calder next June. But that almost certainly is what the future holds in store for them because of the advantages these kids have gained from their NHL head starts.

“Coming in like this, you have less to worry about,” said Joyce, who spent 15 games on Janney’s left at the end of the regular season and went 8-6-14 over the Bruins’ 23 playoff games. “You know a lot of the guys, you feel comfortable with everybody. And, most important, you’re familiar with what you have to do on the ice.

“When we (Joyce and Janney) came in, we were playing in pretty tough situations—the playoff stretch, then the playoffs. We know what it takes now, what level of intensity you have to have to compete in an important game. The Stanley Cup finals, it doesn’t get any more intense than that; if we can play there, if we can keep that kind of level up for the regular season, we should have great years.”

Great years that might result in a Calder Trophy. It often follows that the top overall pick of the prior draft is the leading Calder candidate. Pittsburgh’s Mario Lemieux was the No. 1 choice in 1984, a Calder winner in 1985; Winnipeg’s Dale Hawerchuk was the top draft in 1981 and the top rookie the next campaign. Other players to pull off the double include Bobby Smith, claimed in 1978; Denis Potvin (1973) and Gil Perreault (1970). But this year’s top pick. Minnesota’s Mike Modano, is a training-camp holdout—further jeopardizing his already slight chances of ousting his more experienced classmates.

The Bruins won’t have to spend all kinds of time finding proper linemates for Janney and Joyce. Cam Neely was on their right last year and he will be back with them again, a factor that will help their rookie-of-the-year chances.

“Bobby (Joyce) is just such a hard worker, such a hard grinder in the corners, and he’s got that gift that a lot of people don’t have, which is the knack around the net," said Janney, 21. “In the playoffs, in the important moments at the end of the game, he was out there defensively. He is a well-rounded, outstanding young hockey player.”

Joyce, 22, returns the compliment to the player he complements.

“Craig has such great awareness. He’s almost like a Gretzky in the way he’s aware of what’s going on around him,” Joyce said. “Coupled with the fact that he’s got tremendous puck-handling skills, it makes him a tremendous playmaker. You don’t even have to yell on the ice; he knows if you're coming from behind.

“Against New Jersey in the semi-finals, there was one time when he and Cam broke away on a two-on-one, and the (Boston) Garden was just louder than anything,” Joyce recalled. “You couldn't hear anything, and I wasn’t even yelling, really. He pulled up, hit me coming in late and I scored. And I was just amazed he knew I was coming from behind.”

Janney played it like a true veteran, which he virtually had become by the time the playoffs ended. Often, the two used their skills against Burke, another who had become a veteran by the time the playoffs ended.

They make New York Ranger blueliner Brian Leetch, 20, another ex-Olympian, seem like a babe in the woods.

“I’d just come off the Olympics, which were disappointing, then I went right in and did the best I could for the Rangers, and we came up short at the end, too,” Leetch said. "That was also disappointing, but it didn't hurt me as much as it hurt some of the other guys—the older ones who are used to playing in the playoffs and who get pumped up for that.

“I wouldn’t say it was that much more helpful to me (to learn about disappointment),” Leetch said, “but it did help me to see how much the guys really want to make the playoffs and how hard everyone works for it.”

There’s another advantage this group holds over the "pure” rookies, the players who were drafted last June—or were drafted earlier but who still have not faced NHL pressures.

This year, with his NHL feet wet. Leetch can enjoy being a face in the crowd.

“I had that focus on me the last few years—in college, the Olympics, even in high school,” he said. "But now, a lot of good players are here at training camp. Guy Lafleur has been here, taking most of the headlines. And we have such a good defense that hopefully I can just sit back and try to play like Brian Leetch can play and let things take care of themselves—let other people take care of the spotlight.”

That also will be a help to such players as highly-regarded Pittsburgh defenseman Zalapski, 20, Chicago defenseman Trent Yawney, 23, or Hartford forward Scott Young, 21, all Olympians who got a taste of the NHL last spring.

The bottom line, though, is that the 1988-89 rookie of the year probably won’t really be a rookie at all. Did someone mention Ken Dryden, the ex-Canadian national team goalie who won the 1972 Calder Trophy? The rookie-of-the-year award was his second NHL honor. The previous spring, he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP with the Montreal Canadiens.

So, what do you call a rookie who isn’t really a rookie? You call him Craig Janney, or Bob Joyce or Brian Leetch or Sean Burke.

Or you call him "Baldy.” If the rules qualify Burke as a first-year pro, then certain traditions must be upheld.

"I don’t think people really think of him as a rookie,” said Devil captain Kirk Muller, "but when it comes to the shaving room, we’ll still consider him a rookie.”