How do you think players feel who win the Stanley Cup very early in their career and never get back?

[Pablo El Perro]

Probably better than players who never win the cup

 

[PolishPrince21]

Win it early and never winning again I would be totally ok with , make the millions and have no pressure on yourself

 

[Voight]

I think they're super thankful they got to win it so "soon" compared to guys like Bourque who played 22 years and finally won the damn thing.

Recchi won it his sophomore year, then didn't make the finals again until his 16th season. Bookended his career with a third cup after 22 years

Chelios won it his third season (only his second 'full' season), made the finals again three years later and lost, made the finals again three years later and lost and then won a second cup in his 19th season. Overall he made the finals in three of his first 8 full seasons, and twice in his last 7 seasons.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

marty gelinas is another one

traded as part of the gretzky deal and won it as a rookie with the oilers, on a “kid line” with young adam graves and joe murphy.

a weird career after that. he has a good second year, hitting 20 goals and 40 pts, but then regresses in years three and four. traded to quebec for a busting scott pearson in what at the time looked like a bust for bust trade, then waived after half a year, picked up by the canucks where he catches on as a fast, gritty third liner and goes to game seven of the finals.

then a couple years later he establishes himself as an actual scorer, putting up back to back 30 goal seasons and hitting the top 20 in goals (still disappointing considering the 1988 draft went gelinas, roenick, brind’amour, selanne to close out the top ten but he was a legit top line guy for a spell) before running afoul of mike keenan and getting himself given away to carolina. there, he puts in half a decade as a valuable top six swiss army knife/dirty work guy (the alex burrows role) and in year thirteen of his career makes it to his third finals.

then he signs with calgary and in year two of his UFA contract scores four three series winning goals in his fourth run to the finals, third finals loss, second SCF game seven.

in the end he was in the NHL twenty years, counting his audition as an 18 year old right out of the draft and the lost lockout year, and he got tantalizingly close several times but only had that one cup as a teenage rookie.