Hockey fans don’t wait for the season to start. They don’t even wait for the draft. A thread on r/hockey this week asked who wins the Calder Trophy next season — and the answers reveal a prospect landscape so deep that the conversation skips right past the 2025 draft class and into 2026 territory.
The post names five players: Gavin McKenna, Porter Martone, Anton Stenberg, Anton Frondell, and Cole Hutson. The poster tabs McKenna as the favorite, calling him a generational talent with first-unit power-play time waiting for him. Martone gets the “never count him out” label — lower ceiling, but strong postseason performance and projected PP minutes. Stenberg, paired hypothetically with Macklin Celebrini in San Jose, draws a “match made in heaven” assessment. Frondell’s SHL numbers earn him a mention.
Here’s the problem: those players don’t share a rookie timeline.
McKenna, the left wing tearing apart the WHL with Medicine Hat, isn’t draft-eligible until 2026. He can’t win an NHL rookie award before he’s in the NHL, and he can’t be in the NHL before he’s drafted. Martone, Frondell, and Stenberg are all 2025-draft-eligible prospects. If any of them make an NHL roster out of camp this fall, their Calder window opens for 2025-26 — a full year before McKenna’s even arrives. Cole Hutson, the Boston University defenseman and younger brother of Lane Hutson (himself a Calder finalist this season), was drafted by Washington in 2024 and could turn pro at any point.
So the thread is really two conversations stacked on top of each other. One is about which 2025 draftee jumps straight to