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Nobody Drafted Martin St. Louis

About one NHL game in eight goes to a player no team picked. That is a little less than in the 1980s, when the share ran from about 12% to 15% and the draft ran as long as 12 rounds. In the late 1990s the share fell to about one game in fifteen. Then it came back, and the smaller seven-round draft doesn’t explain the comeback.

Verdict: Data story

By Edgehalla ResearchPublished 12 min read

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On April 27, 2013, Tampa Bay played Florida in a season finale between two teams already out of the playoffs. Martin St. Louis set up Matt Carle’s goal in the first period and scored one himself in the second. The Lightning lost 5-3.

St. Louis finished with 60 points, three more than his teammate Steven Stamkos. At 37, he was the oldest scoring champion the NHL had ever had. No NHL team had drafted him. Ottawa gave him a tryout in 1997 and didn’t sign him.

He played his first thirteen NHL games for Calgary in 1998-99. That season, players nobody drafted got about one NHL game in fifteen, the fewest since 1980. Today they get about one in eight.

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About one NHL game in eight still goes to a player nobody drafted

There are plenty more like him today. In 2025-26, Artemi Panarin led all undrafted players with 84 points. Darren Raddysh, a Tampa Bay defenceman, had 70, and Mats Zuccarello 54. In goal, Logan Thompson played 58 games for Washington, Jet Greaves 55 for Columbus and Sergei Bobrovsky 52 for Florida. No team ever drafted any of them.

In 2025-26, 155 of the 1,038 players who dressed had never been drafted. Together they played 12.0% of the games, and games are what this story counts. That share has stayed between 11.2% and 12.7% for seventeen straight seasons. Through the 1980s it ran a little higher, between 11.6% and 15.0%.

Undrafted players took 12% of games in 2025-26

Undrafted players took 12.0% of NHL games in 2025-26, down from 15.0% at the 1985-86 peak and up from 6.7% in 1998-99.

Share of games, 2025-2612.0%
155 of 1,038 players
Peak, 1985-8615.0%
Highest since 1980
Low, 1998-996.7%
Lowest since 1980

The high came in 1985-86, Gretzky’s best season. The low came in 1998-99, the season St. Louis arrived. Before trusting either number, you have to decide who counts as undrafted. Gretzky never went through a draft. John Cullen went through one that lasted only nine years.

Gretzky counts as undrafted, and John Cullen doesn’t

Start with Gretzky. He came to the NHL with Edmonton in 1979, when the league took in four teams from the World Hockey Association (WHA), a rival pro league. A special merger rule let the Oilers keep him, and no team ever drafted him. So he counts as undrafted, and every game he played lands on the undrafted side. That matters most in his biggest season, as the next section shows.

Cullen counts as drafted. From 1986 to 1994 the NHL held a second, smaller draft each year, the supplemental draft, open only to college players aged 21 or older. Cullen was picked in the first one, in 1986. He went on to score 550 NHL points, the most of any supplemental pick. Steve Rucchin, taken in 1994, played the most games, 735. NHL Records doesn’t list those picks, so we matched the 178 names on Wikipedia’s year-by-year pages. 38 of them played in the NHL, for 5,543 games. Call them undrafted instead, and the share for 1985-94 goes from 12.6% to 13.4%.

The other rules are simpler.

  • Börje Salming counts as undrafted. He was born in 1951, was old enough at 20 for the 1971 draft, and no team took him. Until 1969, NHL teams paid the way of junior clubs and signed those clubs’ teenagers directly. The 1969 draft was the first open to every amateur player, so it was called the first universal amateur draft, and it took players born before 1950. Everyone born in 1950 or later had at least one such draft to go through. The count starts with them and leaves older players out.
  • A player drafted once stays drafted. If he never signed with the team that picked him, and later signed somewhere else as a free agent, he still counts as drafted. We checked every player against all 13,152 picks NHL Records lists from 1963 to 2026. The draft fields in the NHL’s own player bios match that list exactly.

How sure are we that the starting birth year doesn’t matter? From 1995 on, it doesn’t: a 1955 or a 1961 start matches the main count within 0.1 points. For 1985-94 it barely matters. A 1955 start gives 12.5% and a 1961 start 11.2%, against 12.6% in the main count.

The early 1980s are the exception. The draft age dropped from 20 to 19 in 1979 and to 18 in 1980. Most players in the early 1980s were born before 1961, so a 1961 start drops most of the league. It cuts the 1980-85 share about in half, from 13.0% to 6.7%.

Undrafted players got the most games in Gretzky’s 215-point season

So Gretzky counts. In his biggest season he had plenty of undrafted company.

In 1985-86, Gretzky scored 215 points. Peter Šťastný had 122, Joe Mullen 90, Dino Ciccarelli 89 and Tim Kerr 84. No team had drafted any of them. Undrafted players took 15.0% of the games that season, the most of any season since 1980. Take Gretzky out and the share barely moves, to 14.8%. Through the 1980s, players no team had drafted got a bigger share of the games than they get today.

Undrafted players’ share of games peaked at 15%, then fell below 7%

Players born in 1950 or later, regular season, from 1975-76

Show data
The undrafted share of games rose to 15.0% in 1985-86, fell to 6.7% in 1998-99 and has stayed between 11.2% and 12.7% since 2009-10.
SeasonUndrafted share of games
1975-767.0%
1976-778.4%
1977-789.2%
1978-7910.5%
1979-8011.5%
1980-8111.6%
1981-8212.1%
1982-8312.7%
1983-8413.6%
1984-8514.6%
1985-8615.0%
1986-8713.5%
1987-8812.7%
1988-8913.9%
1989-9014.6%
1990-9113.0%
1991-9212.6%
1992-9311.7%
1993-949.9%
1994-959.4%
1995-968.0%
1996-977.9%
1997-987.2%
1998-996.7%
1999-007.2%
2000-017.0%
2001-028.0%
2002-038.1%
2003-047.9%
2004-05–
2005-069.4%
2006-0710.4%
2007-0810.9%
2008-0911.2%
2009-1012.1%
2010-1111.6%
2011-1211.2%
2012-1312.2%
2013-1412.7%
2014-1511.5%
2015-1611.2%
2016-1711.2%
2017-1811.3%
2018-1912.2%
2019-2011.6%
2020-2112.2%
2021-2211.9%
2022-2312.3%
2023-2411.9%
2024-2512.1%
2025-2612.0%
  • 1979-80: WHA merger
  • 1985-86: Gretzky’s 215 points
  • 1998-99: Gretzky retires, St. Louis arrives
  • 2005-06: First 7-round draft
Games = games played by skaters and goalies. Undrafted = never picked in any NHL entry or supplemental draft. Players born before 1950 are left out; they had all retired by 1987-88. The 2004-05 season was cancelled.

The line climbs to a peak in the mid-1980s, drops into a valley in the late 1990s and runs flat near 12% from 2009-10 on.

The chart starts in 1975-76 because the early seasons are too thin to read. In 1970-71 only 23 NHL players had been born in 1950 or later, and one of them was undrafted, so that season’s 1.9% is one player. By 1980-81, players born in 1950 or later, the first to grow up with a universal draft, played 89% of all games.

After the peak, the share fell. Undrafted players took 13.0% of games in 1990-91 and 6.7% in 1998-99, when 86 of the 899 players had never been drafted. The share stayed below 11% in every season from 1993-94 to 2007-08.

Gretzky played his last game on April 18, 1999, at home to Pittsburgh. He set up Brian Leetch’s power-play goal in the second period for his 2,857th and final point, and Jaromir Jagr won it for the Penguins in overtime, 2-1. Without Gretzky, that season’s share drops to 6.6%. St. Louis played his thirteen games for Calgary that same season.

Then the share climbed back, to 12.1% by 2009-10. It has stayed near 12% since.

Europeans came over unpicked, until teams drafted nearly all of them

Why did the share fall? Start with the Europeans. “Gerry McNamara came down to the Christmas tournament in my last year in Stockholm,” Salming said, in NHL.com’s profile of him among the 100 greatest players. “He came in and asked me if I wanted to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs. That was sort of the first time I ever thought about it.” McNamara was a Leafs scout, and the year was 1972. Salming joined Toronto in 1973-74 and played 1,148 NHL games.

Salming was typical of his generation. Of the players born outside North America in 1950-54 who reached the NHL, 24 of 37 were never drafted. In 1980-81, 48% of the games played by players born outside North America went to undrafted players.

Players born outside North America went from mostly undrafted to almost all drafted, then partly back

Undrafted share of games, players born in 1950 or later, regular season, from 1979-80

Show data
For players born outside North America the undrafted share fell from 48% in 1980-81 to 0.7% in 1996-97, then rose to 12.7% in 2019-20.
SeasonBorn outside North AmericaBorn in Canada or the US
1979-8053.1%8.2%
1980-8148.1%7.9%
1981-8248.5%7.9%
1982-8338.4%9.2%
1983-8434.1%11.0%
1984-8528.6%12.8%
1985-8619.5%14.4%
1986-8711.8%13.7%
1987-888.6%13.2%
1988-897.4%14.6%
1989-907.6%15.4%
1990-915.7%14.0%
1991-925.3%13.8%
1992-933.7%13.4%
1993-942.9%11.5%
1994-951.7%11.3%
1995-961.1%9.8%
1996-970.7%9.9%
1997-980.9%9.0%
1998-991.4%8.6%
1999-001.9%9.4%
2000-012.1%9.4%
2001-022.3%10.8%
2002-031.9%11.2%
2003-041.7%10.7%
2004-05––
2005-062.0%12.6%
2006-073.0%13.8%
2007-083.8%13.9%
2008-094.7%13.8%
2009-105.2%14.5%
2010-114.8%14.0%
2011-125.1%13.4%
2012-137.1%13.8%
2013-147.9%14.2%
2014-158.8%12.5%
2015-1610.1%11.7%
2016-179.3%11.9%
2017-189.8%11.9%
2018-1911.4%12.5%
2019-2012.7%11.1%
2020-2112.4%12.1%
2021-2210.6%12.5%
2022-2310.3%13.2%
2023-249.7%12.8%
2024-2510.0%13.0%
2025-268.3%13.5%
  • 1980-81: Europeans over 20 draftable
North America = born in Canada or the United States. Birthplace is a proxy for where a player developed: Steve Thomas, born in England and raised in Markham, Ontario, counts as born outside North America. Before 1980-81 fewer than 40 players a season were born outside North America (31 in 1979-80), so the start of the line is noisy.

The line for players born outside North America starts near one half and falls to almost nothing within sixteen seasons.

From 1980 the draft could take players from outside North America who were older than 20, and teams began to use it. By 1996-97 only 0.7% of non-North American players’ games went to undrafted players. Every one of those games belonged to Steve Thomas, a New Jersey forward born in England, who played 57.

Then Europeans started coming over unpicked again. Since 2015-16, about 10% of their games have gone to undrafted players (12.7% in 2019-20, 8.3% in 2025-26). Panarin, Zuccarello and Bobrovsky are among them. Players born outside North America now take 20% of all undrafted games, against 1.8% in 1996-97.

Drafting every European can’t explain the whole dip. Players born in Canada and the US dipped too, by less. Among Canadian- and American-born players, the undrafted ones played 13.6% of the games in 1985-94, 9.9% in 1995-2004 and 13.6% in 2005-14.

The tiny 1979 draft left undrafted players the most games, and the 12-round drafts the fewest

There is one more obvious suspect. A shorter draft leaves more players unpicked, so the size of the draft should matter. It ran 25 rounds in 1974, dropped to 6 rounds and 126 picks in 1979, reached 12 rounds by 1982, went to 9 rounds from 1995 and has been 7 rounds since 2005. Per team, that is about 12 picks a year in the 1980s and 7 now.

The draft shrank from about 12 picks a team in the 1980s to 7 since 2005

Picks in each NHL entry draft (amateur draft before 1979), 1969 to 2026

Show data
The draft ran 12 rounds of 242 to 264 picks from 1982 to 1991. It dropped to 9 rounds in 1995 and to 7 rounds, 210 to 230 picks, from 2005.
YearPicks
196984 picks
1970116 picks
1971117 picks
1972152 picks
1973168 picks
1974247 picks
1975216 picks
1976135 picks
1977185 picks
1978234 picks
1979126 picks
1980210 picks
1981211 picks
1982252 picks
1983242 picks
1984252 picks
1985252 picks
1986252 picks
1987252 picks
1988252 picks
1989252 picks
1990252 picks
1991264 picks
1992264 picks
1993286 picks
1994286 picks
1995234 picks
1996241 picks
1997246 picks
1998258 picks
1999272 picks
2000293 picks
2001289 picks
2002291 picks
2003292 picks
2004291 picks
2005230 picks
2006213 picks
2007211 picks
2008211 picks
2009211 picks
2010210 picks
2011211 picks
2012211 picks
2013211 picks
2014210 picks
2015211 picks
2016211 picks
2017217 picks
2018217 picks
2019217 picks
2020217 picks
2021224 picks
2022225 picks
2023224 picks
2024225 picks
2025224 picks
2026224 picks
  • 1979: 6 rounds
  • 2005: 7 rounds
All picks in each year’s draft, from NHL Records. The 1970s drafts ran until teams stopped picking, so their size varied (247 picks in 1974, 126 in 1979). The supplemental draft is not included.

Look at the dip in 1979. That draft was a little more than half the size of the ones just before and after it.

The 1979 draft also had to absorb players who had turned pro in the WHA. Dino Ciccarelli, born in 1960, was one of the teenagers it skipped. He had broken his leg at 16 and was “considered too small to play in the NHL,” the Hockey Hall of Fame says. Minnesota signed him as a free agent in September 1979, and he went on to score 1,200 NHL points. Players born 1959-61 got their first chances in the 1979 and 1980 drafts. Of all the games played by players born 1959-61, undrafted players played 19.4%, the most of any group. Gretzky, born in 1961, is one of them. Without him it is still 18.4%.

Ten years later the draft was twice as long, and undrafted players almost vanished. Players born in 1971 first faced the 12-round 1989 draft. Of the 126 who reached the NHL, 10 were undrafted, and they played 1.5% of their birth year’s games, the lowest of any birth year from 1955 to 1995. Those ten played 671 NHL games in all. Darren Langdon played 521 of them. He scored 16 goals and spent 1,251 minutes in the penalty box. In Gretzky’s last season, Langdon was his teammate on the Rangers.

One dot per birth year: smaller drafts went with more undrafted games only for players born by 1975

Picks per team in each birth year’s first draft against the undrafted share of that birth year’s games; one dot per birth year, 1955 to 1995

Show data
Across all 41 birth years, smaller drafts go with more undrafted games (−0.46 on a scale where −1 is a perfect match and 0 is no pattern), but the link comes from births up to 1975 (−0.71) and is absent after (0.10).
Picks per team in the first draftUndrafted share of career games
Born 195512.04.7%
Born 19567.511.1%
Born 195710.39.5%
Born 195813.89.3%
Born 19596.017.3%
Born 19606.019.7%
Born 196110.020.8%
Born 196210.021.5%
Born 196310.118.5%
Born 196412.04.3%
Born 196511.510.4%
Born 196612.07.8%
Born 196712.012.4%
Born 196812.02.3%
Born 196912.05.5%
Born 197012.04.1%
Born 197112.01.5%
Born 197212.04.2%
Born 197312.015.8%
Born 197411.06.8%
Born 197511.010.7%
Born 197611.011.2%
Born 19779.05.9%
Born 19789.38.9%
Born 19799.512.9%
Born 19809.610.7%
Born 19819.712.5%
Born 19829.817.4%
Born 19839.610.9%
Born 19849.714.3%
Born 19859.78.5%
Born 19869.713.5%
Born 19877.711.8%
Born 19887.19.0%
Born 19897.09.5%
Born 19907.016.7%
Born 19917.018.0%
Born 19927.07.8%
Born 19937.09.7%
Born 19947.012.4%
Born 19957.014.4%
First draft = age 20 for births to 1958, the 1979 draft for 1959-60, 1980 for 1961 and age 18 from 1962. Undrafted share = undrafted players’ share of the birth year’s career NHL games through 2025-26. Each birth year has 91 to 162 NHL players, and one long career can move a dot several points. Highlighted: 1960 and 1971.

Ciccarelli’s birth year, 1960, sits high on the left. Players born that year met a draft of 6.0 picks a team, and undrafted players played 19.7% of their games. That is 1960 alone; the 19.4% above pools 1959, 1960 and 1961. Langdon’s 1971 sits low on the right. For players born up to 1975, the dots slope the way the theory says: smaller drafts, more undrafted games. The dots for births 1976 to 1995 have no slope.

The undrafted players who came back after 2005 had already been passed over by bigger drafts

If draft size were the whole story, the cut to seven rounds in 2005 should have sent the share up fast. It did rise, from 9.4% in 2005-06 to 12.1% in 2009-10. The players who got those games, though, had almost all gone unpicked in the old, longer drafts.

Over those five seasons, 99% of undrafted games went to players born in 1986 or earlier. Almost every one of those players had sat through at least one draft of nine rounds or more and heard no team call his name. St. Louis led them with 408 games, ahead of Jason Blake (400), Brian Rafalski (393) and Zbyněk Michálek (393). Every team had let these players go by on draft day at least once. A few years later, teams were giving them NHL games. The data doesn’t show why.

Of all the games played by players born 1959-61, undrafted players played 19.4%, the most of any group; for players born 1962-72 it was 8.2%, the fewest (career NHL games through 2025-26, birth years grouped by the drafts they faced)
BornPicks a team (avg)PlayersUndraftedShare of gamesWithout the top career
1955-5810.9433648.7%7.8% (no Joe Mullen)
1959-617.332910819.4%18.4% (no Wayne Gretzky)
1962-7211.614251918.2%7.9% (no Adam Oates)
1973-8610.0186035911.4%11.2% (no Mark Giordano)
1987-957.1128332412.2%12.0% (no Brenden Dillon)

Now look at the last two rows. Players born 1973-86 faced drafts of 9 to 12 picks a team, and undrafted players played 11.4% of their games. Players born 1987-95 faced drafts of 7 picks a team, almost a third smaller. Undrafted players played 12.2% of theirs. A much smaller draft moved the share by less than one point.

More undrafted players get a first game, and fewer of them last

Counting players instead of games makes the undrafted look even more common. In 2025-26 they were 14.9% of the players who dressed, but they played 12.0% of the games.

More undrafted players get a chance than the games share shows, but each plays fewer games

Undrafted share of players and of games, players born in 1950 or later, regular season, from 1975-76

Show data
Undrafted players were 14.9% of NHL players in 2025-26 and played 12.0% of games; the gap has been 2.6 to 5.1 points since 2008-09.
SeasonShare of playersShare of games
1975-7611.2%7.0%
1976-7710.9%8.4%
1977-7811.2%9.2%
1978-7912.4%10.5%
1979-8014.4%11.5%
1980-8114.5%11.6%
1981-8215.1%12.1%
1982-8315.4%12.7%
1983-8415.8%13.6%
1984-8515.4%14.6%
1985-8617.2%15.0%
1986-8716.9%13.5%
1987-8816.6%12.7%
1988-8915.5%13.9%
1989-9015.2%14.6%
1990-9113.5%13.0%
1991-9213.2%12.6%
1992-9312.2%11.7%
1993-9410.9%9.9%
1994-959.2%9.4%
1995-969.0%8.0%
1996-978.8%7.9%
1997-988.1%7.2%
1998-999.6%6.7%
1999-009.9%7.2%
2000-0110.0%7.0%
2001-0210.1%8.0%
2002-039.2%8.1%
2003-0410.6%7.9%
2004-05––
2005-0611.3%9.4%
2006-0712.7%10.4%
2007-0813.1%10.9%
2008-0915.2%11.2%
2009-1015.0%12.1%
2010-1114.2%11.6%
2011-1215.5%11.2%
2012-1315.3%12.2%
2013-1416.6%12.7%
2014-1515.5%11.5%
2015-1615.4%11.2%
2016-1715.0%11.2%
2017-1815.1%11.3%
2018-1917.2%12.2%
2019-2015.0%11.6%
2020-2117.1%12.2%
2021-2216.2%11.9%
2022-2316.2%12.3%
2023-2415.4%11.9%
2024-2515.4%12.1%
2025-2614.9%12.0%
Share of players = undrafted players ÷ all players born 1950 or later who played that season.

The players line has sat above the games line in every season since 2008-09, by about 3 to 5 points. That gap means the average undrafted player dresses for fewer games a season than the average drafted one.

They also get more first games than they used to. Undrafted players made 10.3% of NHL debuts in 1990-94 and 26.5% in 2015-19, about one in four. That 2015-19 class had 196 undrafted players. Panarin has played 830 games, Frank Vatrano 695 and Yanni Gourde 684. 48 of the 196 have reached 200 games. 60 played 10 games or fewer.

Undrafted debuts went from one in ten in 1990-94 to one in four in 2015-19, and about a quarter of them reach 200 games (NHL debuts by players born 1950 or later; “reached 200 games” counts games through 2025-26, so recent debuts are still counting)
Debut seasonsDebutsUndraftedUndrafted shareMedian debut age, undraftedMedian debut age, draftedReached 200 games, undraftedReached 200 games, drafted
1980-81 to 1984-8562214523.3%232037%51%
1985-86 to 1989-9055910819.3%232134%48%
1990-91 to 1994-956206410.3%242213%48%
1995-96 to 1999-006259014.4%23.52141%49%
2000-01 to 2004-055738414.7%23.52232%41%
2005-06 to 2009-1080317021.2%242126%50%
2010-11 to 2014-1570216924.1%242125%49%
2015-16 to 2019-2073919626.5%23.52124%53%

Read the last two columns. Since 2005, about a quarter of undrafted first-year players have gone on to 200 games (26%, 25% and 24% by block), against about half of drafted ones (50%, 49% and 53%).

So there is still a place for undrafted players, but they reach it later. St. Louis turned 23 in 1998, the year his first season began, and Raddysh turned 25 in 2021, the year his began. Take any five-year group of undrafted first-year players since 1975 and line them up from youngest to oldest, counting age the same way. The player in the middle, with half the group younger and half older (the median, in the table), turned 23 or 24 that year. For drafted players the man in the middle turned 20 to 22. For how often drafted players reach the NHL, pick by pick, see the draft hit-rate story.

Undrafted goalies play more than their share, and undrafted skaters score less

Undrafted players find more of their games in goal than anywhere else. Undrafted goalies played 16.6% of goalie games from 2015-16 to 2025-26, compared with 11.8% of all games. Cam Talbot and Alexandar Georgiev started for NHL teams in those years without ever being drafted. Logan Thompson won the net in Washington. He, Greaves and Bobrovsky played 165 games between them in 2025-26. Philadelphia signed Bobrovsky as an undrafted free agent in May 2010, and he came into that season with two straight Stanley Cups for Florida.

Undrafted skaters get their share of the games and less than their share of the points. They have taken about 11% to 12% of skater games each season since 2015-16. They scored 7.9% of skater points over those years.

Undrafted goalies get more than their share of games, and undrafted skaters score less than theirs

Undrafted players’ share of goalie games, skater games and skater points; players born in 1950 or later, regular season, from 1980-81

Show data
In 2025-26 undrafted goalies played 17.6% of goalie games, while undrafted skaters played 11.7% of skater games and scored 7.8% of skater points.
SeasonGoalie gamesSkater gamesSkater points
1980-8113.9%11.4%10.1%
1981-825.3%12.5%12.4%
1982-839.0%12.9%13.0%
1983-849.4%13.8%13.8%
1984-8512.9%14.7%14.2%
1985-8614.3%15.0%14.9%
1986-8713.5%13.5%13.0%
1987-8817.8%12.4%12.1%
1988-8920.2%13.5%13.0%
1989-9017.8%14.4%13.4%
1990-9116.6%12.7%12.1%
1991-9211.1%12.7%11.4%
1992-9313.1%11.6%10.8%
1993-9413.1%9.7%8.7%
1994-9513.0%9.2%8.5%
1995-966.9%8.1%6.1%
1996-979.5%7.8%6.4%
1997-9810.5%6.9%5.6%
1998-9910.7%6.5%4.5%
1999-0012.3%6.9%5.1%
2000-019.3%6.9%5.0%
2001-028.3%8.0%5.9%
2002-039.6%8.0%6.4%
2003-047.6%7.9%5.9%
2004-05–––
2005-068.4%9.5%7.4%
2006-0711.0%10.4%8.2%
2007-088.2%11.1%8.5%
2008-0914.5%11.0%8.6%
2009-1011.8%12.1%9.4%
2010-1113.7%11.5%9.0%
2011-1214.9%11.0%8.6%
2012-1315.1%12.0%9.8%
2013-1416.5%12.4%9.6%
2014-1517.6%11.1%8.2%
2015-1617.4%10.9%7.6%
2016-1716.5%10.9%7.7%
2017-1818.3%10.9%7.7%
2018-1917.6%11.8%8.2%
2019-2015.3%11.4%7.9%
2020-2114.9%12.0%8.4%
2021-2213.3%11.8%8.4%
2022-2317.6%12.0%8.0%
2023-2418.0%11.5%7.7%
2024-2516.0%11.9%7.8%
2025-2617.6%11.7%7.8%
Goalie games = games played (appearances), so a relief appearance counts. Only 58 to 119 goalies born in 1950 or later play each season (1980-81 and 2021-22), so the goalie line is the noisiest.

Watch the skater-games and skater-points lines. Through the 1980s they run together, partly because the undrafted group included Gretzky, Šťastný and Salming. Since 2005-06 they have run about 2 to 4 points apart every season, with points below games each time.

Gretzky leads the undrafted scorers, and the next five are in the Hall of Fame

Some of the best careers in NHL history belong to players no team drafted, and Gretzky tops the list. He got there without ever going through a draft. He came to the NHL with the Oilers from the WHA in 1979. “Wayne Gretzky was a special case,” Wikipedia’s account of the 1979 expansion draft says: under the rules of the day “he would have been removed from the Oilers and placed into the NHL entry draft.” But Gretzky had no standard player contract. He had a personal services contract, signed with the man who owned the Oilers, Peter Pocklington. Each incoming WHA team could keep up to two goalies and two skaters, and the league called those protected players priority selections. It let the Oilers keep Gretzky as one of theirs. In return they picked last in each round of the entry draft. So no team ever drafted him. As an undrafted player he led the league in points eleven times, once in a tie with Marcel Dionne.

Gretzky leads the undrafted scorers, and the next five are all in the Hall of Fame (undrafted skaters born 1950 or later, most NHL regular-season points through 2025-26)
PlayerBornBirthplaceSeasonsGamesPoints
Wayne Gretzky1961CAN1979-80 to 1998-991,4872,857
Adam Oates1962CAN1985-86 to 2003-041,3371,420
Peter Stastny1956SVK1980-81 to 1994-959771,239
Dino Ciccarelli1960CAN1980-81 to 1998-991,2321,200
Joe Mullen1957USA1981-82 to 1996-971,0621,063
Martin St. Louis1975CAN1998-99 to 2014-151,1341,033
Artemi Panarin1991RUS2015-16 to 2025-26830954

Continues below

Rows 8–10 of 10
PlayerBornBirthplaceSeasonsGamesPoints
Steve Thomas1963GBR1984-85 to 2003-041,235933
Geoff Courtnall1962CAN1983-84 to 1999-001,048799
Borje Salming1951SWE1973-74 to 1989-901,148787

After Gretzky come Adam Oates, Šťastný, Ciccarelli, Mullen and St. Louis, all Hall of Famers. Oates, Mullen and St. Louis came up through American colleges. Mullen played four seasons at Boston College and signed with St. Louis in 1979. Oates played three seasons at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a college in Troy, New York, and joined Detroit in 1985. St. Louis played four seasons at Vermont, signed with Calgary in 1998 and won the scoring title in 2003-04 with 94 points and again in 2012-13. Those are the only two seasons since 1994 in which an undrafted player led the NHL in points.

Panarin “entered the league as a 24-year-old rookie,” The Hockey News wrote, and won the Calder Trophy in 2016. He has been the top undrafted scorer in every season since 2015-16. His 120 points in 2023-24 are the most by an undrafted player since Gretzky’s 130 in 1993-94.

Three undrafted goalies have played 800 or more NHL games (undrafted goalies born 1950 or later, most regular-season games through 2025-26)
GoalieBornBirthplaceSeasonsGames
Ed Belfour1965CAN1988-89 to 2006-07963

Continues below

Rows 2–6 of 6
GoalieBornBirthplaceSeasonsGames
Curtis Joseph1967CAN1989-90 to 2008-09943
Sergei Bobrovsky1988RUS2010-11 to 2025-26806
Dwayne Roloson1969CAN1996-97 to 2011-12606
Cam Talbot1987CAN2013-14 to 2025-26567
Martin Jones1990CAN2013-14 to 2023-24466

In goal, Ed Belfour played 963 games, Curtis Joseph 943 and Bobrovsky 806, and Bobrovsky is still adding to his.

What this can’t tell us

So a player no team drafted can still find a place in the NHL. Our numbers show who got those games, but five things are beyond them.

  • Why a player went undrafted. The data shows who was never picked. It can’t show whether teams passed on him, he was too old or small, or he played in a league nobody scouted. The reasons given here for St. Louis and Ciccarelli come from the Hall of Fame, not from our data.
  • Why the share came back after 2005. We can show who played those games: players the bigger drafts had already passed over. The data has no contracts, collective-bargaining terms or scouting records, so it can’t show why teams signed them.
  • Where the undrafted players came from. Amateur leagues are not recorded for undrafted players, so the college free-agent route can’t be measured here.
  • Recent careers are unfinished. Players born after about 1990 are still adding games, so their shares can still move. Raddysh’s 70 points are one season.
  • Name matching for the supplemental draft. The 1986-94 supplemental picks were matched by name, birth year and debut. Matches had to fit the age rule (21 or older) and debut on or after the draft year, but a missed spelling variant would leave a player counted as undrafted. Picks the Wikipedia pages mark as invalid claims (Ian Kidd in 1986, for one) are left out, so those players count as undrafted.

Thirteen seasons later, Tampa Bay had another one

So is there still a place in the NHL for a player no team drafted? St. Louis was 23 when he played those first thirteen games, in the season undrafted players got the fewest games. Thirteen seasons after his second scoring title, Tampa Bay’s top-scoring defenceman was another player no team had drafted.

Darren Raddysh played four seasons in the American Hockey League before his first NHL game, in December 2021, and spent most of the next two seasons back there. In the first weeks of 2025-26 he went nine games without a point, and at one point he was a healthy scratch, The Hockey News reported. He finished the season with 22 goals and 70 points, 41 more than any other Lightning defenceman. “His shot, it’s lethal,” his coach, Jon Cooper, said that January.

Ranking that summer’s free agents, Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin wrote, “Raddysh has never even earned $1 million in a season.” Larkin also called him “a Toronto native.” In June 2026 the Maple Leafs traded for him and signed him for eight years.

In 1998-99, when St. Louis broke in, undrafted players got about one NHL game in fifteen. Raddysh got his eight years in a league where they get one in eight.

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Tests written down
Not in advance (exploratory)
Results computed

Every NHL regular-season player from the NHL stats API (8,776 players, 6,851 born 1950 or later), checked against all 13,152 NHL draft picks from NHL Records plus the 1986-94 supplemental draft. Shares are of games played. The draft-size test compares 41 birth years, with each half of the range checked separately. Added for the 2026-10-27 rewrite, from the same cached tables: season points leaders and their ages on each season’s last regular-season date (schedule table), the share without Gretzky in each of his seasons, who played the undrafted games in 2005-06 to 2009-10 by birth year, named player lines, and the two finale games (Tampa Bay 2012-13, the Rangers 1998-99) from our cached play-by-play.

Every test we graded
TestResultVerdict
Undrafted share rose from about 2% in 1970-71 to 11-14% every season since 19801970-71 is 1 of 23 players. Since 1980 the range is 6.7% to 15.0%, below 11% in every season from 1993-94 to 2007-08Does not hold

More tests below

Rows 2–6 of 9
TestResultVerdict
About 12% now12.0% in 2025-26; 11.2-12.7% since 2009-10Holds
The 1985-86 peak is Gretzky15.0% with him, 14.8% without; 1998-99 6.7% / 6.6%Does not hold
Europeans were rarely drafted before about 199039% of their games undrafted in 1980-85, 1.6% in 1995-2004Holds
A smaller draft leaves more games to undrafted playersRank correlation -0.706 for births 1955-75 (n 21; -0.567 without 1959-61, n 18), 0.098 for 1976-95 (n 20)Does not repeat
The seven-round draft opened the door after 200525,169 of 25,356 undrafted games in 2005-06 to 2009-10 (99.3%) were played by players born 1986 or earlier, all but one of whom (a December 1986 birth, first eligible in the 7-round 2005 draft) went unpicked in at least one draft of 9+ roundsDoes not hold

Continues below

Rows 7–9 of 9
TestResultVerdict
St. Louis is the oldest scoring champion37 (37.86 years on the season’s last regular-season date); oldest points leader of all 108 seasons since 1917-18, ties includedHolds
Panarin’s 120 points (2023-24) are the most by an undrafted player since GretzkyTop undrafted scorer each season: 130 (Gretzky, 1993-94), then nobody at 120+ until 2023-24Holds
Result survives the eligibility ruleBorn 1950+, 1955+ and 1961+ agree within 0.1 points from 1995; entry-draft-only adds 0.8 points to 1985-94Holds

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of NHL players are undrafted?

About 15% of players and 12% of games. In 2025-26, 155 of 1,038 players had never been drafted, and they played 12.0% of the games.

Who is the best undrafted NHL player ever?

By points, Wayne Gretzky, who joined the NHL from the WHA in 1979 without going through a draft. After him come Adam Oates (1,420 points), Peter Šťastný (1,239) and Dino Ciccarelli (1,200); Martin St. Louis has 1,033. The undrafted goalie with the most games is Ed Belfour (963).

Was Wayne Gretzky ever drafted?

No. He joined the NHL with the Edmonton Oilers when the WHA merged with the league in 1979. Under the merger rules he would have gone into the 1979 entry draft, but he was signed to a personal services contract with the Oilers’ owner, Peter Pocklington, and the league let the Oilers keep him as a priority selection (one of the players each WHA team could protect) in the expansion draft. In return they picked last in each round of the entry draft.

Who is the oldest NHL scoring champion?

Martin St. Louis, who led the league with 60 points in 2012-13 at 37. In our data he is the oldest points leader of any season since 1917-18. No NHL team ever drafted him.

Are there more undrafted players since the NHL draft went to 7 rounds?

Slightly. Players born 1987-95, who faced 7-round drafts, have an undrafted share of 12.2% of their games, against 11.4% for those born 1973-86. Across birth years since 1976, draft size and undrafted share are not related. The rise after 2005 was mostly players born in 1986 or earlier, whom bigger drafts had already passed over.

Were European players drafted in the 1970s?

Rarely. Of the 37 players born outside North America in 1950-54 who reached the NHL, 24 were never drafted (Börje Salming among them). From 1980 teams could draft non-North American players older than 20, and by the mid-1990s almost all of them were drafted.

More in Bodies

All How Hockey Changed research

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Sources and method

  1. NHL Records: draft history API, every pick since 1963 (2019 draft shown)
  2. NHL stats (NHL.com), every season since 1917-18
  3. NHL stats API: skater bios (birth date, birth country, draft fields)
  4. NHL API reference (community documentation of the stats endpoints)
  5. Hockey Hall of Fame: Martin St. Louis, 2018 inductee (undrafted, the Ottawa tryout, Calgary)
  6. Associated Press via Fox News: St. Louis has goal and assist to win scoring title in Lightning’s 5-3 loss to Panthers (2013)
  7. NHL.com, Tom Gulitti: Wayne Gretzky’s final game, 18 years ago (April 18, 2017)
  8. NHL.com, Bob Duff: Borje Salming, 100 Greatest NHL Players (2017)
  9. Hockey Hall of Fame: Dino Ciccarelli, 2010 inductee
  10. The Hockey News, Andre Leal: The best active NHL players who were never drafted (July 13, 2025)
  11. NHL.com: Calder Memorial Trophy winners, complete list
  12. The Philadelphia Inquirer: Don’t rule out Russian goalie making Flyers (Sept. 17, 2010; Bobrovsky signed as an undrafted free agent)
  13. Daily Faceoff, Hunter Crowther: Leafs acquire Darren Raddysh from Lightning; signed to eight-year deal (June 19, 2026)
  14. The Hockey News, William Espy: Confidence is the key to Darren Raddysh’s success (Jan. 5, 2026)
  15. Wikipedia: NHL entry draft (eligibility rules and rounds by year)
  16. Wikipedia: NHL supplemental draft, 1986-94 (eligibility rules)
  17. Wikipedia: 1986 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  18. Wikipedia: 1987 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  19. Wikipedia: 1988 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  20. Wikipedia: 1989 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  21. Wikipedia: 1990 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  22. Wikipedia: 1991 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  23. Wikipedia: 1992 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  24. Wikipedia: 1993 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  25. Wikipedia: 1994 NHL supplemental draft (selections used for the supplemental picks)
  26. Wikipedia: 1979 NHL expansion draft (WHA priority selections, Gretzky)
  27. Hockey Draft Central: 1969 draft facts (first universal amateur draft, born before 1950)
  28. Wikipedia: Adam Oates
  29. Wikipedia: Martin St. Louis
  30. Wikipedia: Joe Mullen (Boston College, signed by St. Louis in 1979)
  31. Wikipedia: Steve Thomas (born in Stockport, England, raised in Markham, Ontario)
  32. Wikipedia: Darren Raddysh (AHL seasons, NHL debut December 30, 2021)
  33. Wikipedia content above is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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