Friday night’s Mikko Rantanen blockbuster was such a monster trade that the inclusion of a Hart Trophy winner felt like a footnote. But there was Taylor Hall, heading to Carolina and his seventh NHL team.
That led to what I thought was an interesting question from a reader:
What’s the record for most teams played for by a first-overall pick? Hall’s gotta be getting close if he doesn’t already have it, that’s seven teams now
— Jay (@JRTW1206) January 25, 2025
Spoiler alert: Hall isn’t in a league of his own… at least, not yet. And you might be surprised how many No. 1 picks ended up building resumes worthy of a journeyman.
Let’s go back to the start of the entry draft era in 1979 and see how many top picks can compete with Hall’s growing jersey collection.
Zero stops
We’ll start our journey with a question: Has anyone ever been the first pick in the entry draft without ever making it to the NHL at all?
The short answer is no. The longer answer is that it did happen three times in the first five years of the amateur draft, which is what the league had from 1963 to 1978. Back then, players who’d already signed with teams weren’t eligible, so the pool was much thinner, and top picks Claude Gauthier (1964), Andre Veilleux (1965) and Rick Pagnutti (1967) never made the big leagues.
But in the entry draft era? It’s never happened, and short of some career-ending injury, it’s hard to imagine that it ever could.
One stop
This is the outcome you’re picturing when you imagine a first pick – the guy who becomes a lifer, retiring without ever playing with any other team. And as you’d expect, there are plenty of players in this category, including every pick dating back to 2013 plus other active players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin.
Obviously, any of those guys could theoretically play elsewhere before their career ends, so maybe you don’t want to count them quite yet. That brings us to the list of retired first picks who only played for one team, and it’s a smaller list than you might expect, not to mention a bit of a weird one.
The first name is the one you’re already thinking of: Mario Lemieux. But that’s it for the Hall of Famers, at least for now. One of the other three names is Ottawa’s Chris Phillips, which you might have known if you paid attention to this post a few weeks back. Boston’s Gord Kluzak had his career shortened by injury, but only ever played for the Bruins. And the only other name on the list is one that’s often called a bust: Rick DiPietro, who spent all 11 of his NHL seasons with the Islanders (and remains on their payroll to this day).
That’s it. Only four retired No. 1 picks spent their entire career with one team. So how many made just one other stop?
Two stops
The one-stop group was a short list, once we ruled out the active players. Believe it or not, this one is even shorter.
There are two active first picks who are on their second stop: John Tavares and Steven Stamkos. Among players who are retired, we find only two more names, and they cover both ends of the career success spectrum.
One of them is Mike Modano, who spent 20 seasons with the Minnesota North Stars and Dallas Stars, who for our purposes count as the same team. After that, he spent one year in Detroit, where he played for his good pal Mike Babcock. That wasn’t exactly a storybook ending, but it didn’t stop Modano from going into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
It’s fair to say that Modano won’t be joined in the Hall by our only other two-team pick. That would be Patrik Stefan, the 1999 top pick whose career lasted just seven seasons thanks to injuries and a lack of production. He spent the first six of those with the Atlanta Thrashers before spending one last year, somewhat ironically, in Modano’s old stomping grounds in Dallas. Hey, at least that season gave us Stefan’s most memorable NHL moment.
Just a few entries in, and I’ve already learned that first picks don’t stick with their teams anywhere near as much as I would have assumed. Let’s see how many three-timers we can find.
Patrick Kane is on his third team so far. (Tim Fuller / USA Today)
Three stops
The answer: Six, including one guy who’s still active. Feel free to take a moment to see if you can figure out who they are.
We’ll start with the active player, who’s probably our easiest call. That would be Patrick Kane, who’s gone from the Blackhawks to the Rangers to the Red Wings. It’s possible that his tour of the Original Six might continue at some point down the line, but for now he’s in some decent company.
There are two more names I’m betting most of you will get: Mats Sundin (Nordiques, Leafs and Canucks) and Rick Nash (Blue Jackets, Rangers and Bruins). Vincent Lecavalier is a bit trickier, going from the Lightning to the Flyers to a forgettable half-season with the Kings. And there’s also Ed Jovanovski, who had stops with the Canucks and Coyotes in between beginning and ending his career with the Panthers.
There’s one more player to go in this category, and we’re back to the list of notable draft busts to find him. That would be Nail Yakupov, whose six-season NHL career was the shortest of any first pick in the entry draft era. He spent four of those in Edmonton before moving on to single seasons with the Avalanche and Blues.
Fun fact: If you let Yakupov combine his entire career total of 62 goals into one season, he’d still rank behind the best years of fellow No. 1 picks Mario Lemieux, Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid and Ovechkin. He’d have Stamkos beat by two goals, though.
Four stops
You’d think we’d start hitting some diminishing returns here, but nope – there are five more first picks in the four-team club, two of whom are still active.
The good news is that we’re going to run at an 80 percent success rate for getting these guys into the Hall of Fame. Three are already there, with Joe Thornton (Bruins, Sharks, Leafs, Panthers), Eric Lindros (Flyers, Rangers, Leafs, Stars) and Dale Hawerchuk (Jets, Sabres, Blues, Flyers) sitting among the all-time greats. Marc-Andre Fleury is a near-lock to join them three years after he retires, and he’s gone from the Penguins to the Knights to the Blackhawks to the Wild.
Our last name in this group may not be done moving around. Erik Johnson was the first pick in 2006 by the Blues. He also had stops in Colorado and Buffalo before his current stint in Philadelphia. He’s not playing much for the Flyers these days and will be a UFA at the end of the year, so maybe he sets his sights on five-teamer status.
Five stops
Only two names here. Some of you might come up with Ilya Kovalchuk, who went from Atlanta to New Jersey in his first NHL stint and then covered off the Kings, Canadiens and Capitals in his brief comeback years later.
I’ll be more impressed if you had Doug Wickenheiser. He was the Canadiens’ somewhat infamous pick in 1980, when they passed over a Quebec kid named Denis Savard. He lasted parts of four years in Montreal before heading on to stops with the Blues, Canucks, Rangers and Capitals. (He was also very briefly Hartford Whalers property during the 1987 waiver draft, but we’re not counting that as he never actually played for them.)
So after seeing a somewhat surprising number of names show up among the three and four-team groups, we’re down to just two here. Surely that means we don’t have many names left, he said, ironically foreshadowing the next group.
Pierre Turgeon spent time with the Blues among the six teams he played for. (Getty Images)
Six stops
Six different teams for one player seems like a lot. For someone who was once so highly regarded that they went No. 1, it seems like too much. But this isn’t going to be a short list.
Let’s start with a Hall of Famer. Pierre Turgeon started with the Sabres, then went to the Islanders, Canadiens, Blues, Stars and Avalanche. Even weirder, at least to me, is that he played more games in St. Louis than anywhere else, even though I barely remember him there.
But OK, that’s one guy. Let’s stay in the 1980s to find a few more. We can start with Brian Lawton, the first pick in 1983 who managed to pack six different stops into a career that only lasted nine seasons. The last of those was the Sharks, who traded him to his seventh team, the Devils, in 1993 but he never played there. There’s also Wendel Clark, who’s listed as playing for six teams on Hockey Reference even though we all know he was only ever a Maple Leaf.
(A bit of side trivia: The trade that sent Clark from Toronto to Quebec for Sundin was the only time in NHL history that two first picks have been traded for each other. It was also the first time it had happened in major North American pro sports history, although it’s since happened in the NBA and in the NFL.)
Moving onto the 1990s, we start with Owen Nolan, who went first in 1990 and spent 14 seasons in Quebec and San Jose before bouncing around Toronto, Phoenix, Calgary and Minnesota. Alexandre Daigle’s NHL career lasted only 10 seasons, but he had enough time for stops in Ottawa, Philadelphia, Tampa, New York (Rangers), Pittsburgh and Minnesota. And there’s another Senators first pick, Bryan Berard. He never played for Ottawa, but managed stops with the Islanders, Leafs, Rangers, Bruins, Blackhawks and Blue Jackets and then back to the Islanders, all in just 619 games over an injury-shortened career.
Add it up, and that’s six players who were No. 1 picks and then played for six different teams. If we take out the active players, that means that six teams is our magic number – there are more first picks who played for six teams than any other number. A top pick playing for a half-dozen teams by the end of his career is more common than him playing for only one or two. That’s… weird, right? I think it’s very weird.
And we know it’s not even the record because we still haven’t got to our old pal Taylor Hall.
Seven stops
We know Hall slots in here. The question is whether anyone joins him. And yes, a pair of guys do.
The first is Joe Murphy, who became the first college player to go first when he was taken by Detroit in 1986. He went from the Wings to the Oilers in a 1989 blockbuster before further stops in Chicago, St. Louis, San Jose, Boston and Washington spelled the end of a troubled career. And there’s also Roman Hamrlik, the top pick in 1992 who spent 20 years in the NHL while playing for the Lightning, Oilers, Islanders, Flames, Canadiens, Capitals and Rangers.
So no, Hall isn’t the only first pick to ever play for seven different teams. And he doesn’t hold the record because we still have one name left…
Eight stops
I’ll pause here while you rack your brain to see if you can come up with the name. But it’s a tough one, and you have to go way back.
The 1979 draft is often referred to as one of the best ever, partly because the age of eligibility was lowered by a year to create a double-cohort. Mike Gartner and Ray Bourque were top-10 picks, with fellow Hall of Famers Michel Goulet and Kevin Lowe going later in the first round. Mark Messier was picked in the second, and other stars who heard their name called that day include Glenn Anderson, Dale Hunter, Guy Carbonneau and Pelle Lindbergh, among many others.
But none of them went first. That honor belonged to London Knights defenseman Rob Ramage. He went to the Colorado Rockies, where he lasted three years before being dealt to the Blues. His most famous transaction came at the 1988 deadline, when St. Louis sent him to Calgary in the deal that landed them Brett Hull. Ramage won a Cup with the Flames, then went to Toronto where he became captain. From there it was on to Minnesota, Tampa, Montreal and finally Philadelphia.
Add it up, and that’s eight teams – the record for most teams played for by a first pick. For now, at least, because at 33 years old and with plenty of apparent road ahead of him, Hall seems like a good bet to catch Ramage as soon as this summer. From there, who knows. Could double-digits be in play? We can’t rule it out.
I’ll leave you with some numbers. There have been 46 players taken No. 1 in the NHL entry draft, and by my math they’ve combined to play for 141 teams, an average of just over three each. But that’s counting active players, including guys like Macklin Celebrini and Juraj Slafkovský whose careers have barely started. If we only look at players whose careers are over, that gives us 26 players who had stops with 108 teams, an average of 4.15 stops per player. And as we noted, the most common number of teams that shows up is six.
That’s way higher than I would have expected, and it means that Hall’s vagabond career path isn’t as much of an outlier as you might assume. And it also means your dream of seeing Connor Bedard wind up on your favorite team isn’t quite as far-fetched and you might think. (Just don’t get too attached — he may not stay long.)
(Top photo of Hurricanes left winger Taylor Hall: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
