Worst NHL Player in NHL History

noah juulsen, vincent desharnais, tyler myers most of the time (but not this week, omg), riley stillman, erik gudbranson, matt bartkowski, adam clendening, luca sbisa, andrew ahlberts, shane o’brien, kevin bieksa in even-numbered years, brent sopel, ed jovanovski sometimes, dana murzyn, take your pick
 
Cam Janssen.

I saw him play in EIHL (UK league) and he was the worst player on the ice... In Britain. 51 games and 8 points, again.. In Britain.
 
The real answer is someone who played <10 games long before I was born.

I will say the worst player I've ever seen play at least half a season in the league was Shane Endicott. There was not a single thing he could do/think at the NHL level aside from being 6'4". At least a goon could fight, Endicott just took lazy hooking penalties because he had goon speed and goon hands. He couldn't pass the puck, he couldn't receive the puck, his shot was woefully weak and hilariously inaccurate, his positioning was lousy, his awareness was non-existent, he wore a puka shell necklace...

You know he was good because he went from playing in the NHL to playing in Japan in little more than a year.
How do this guys find in to NHL? What was his calling card?? He must have been extremly good at just ONE thing. Like face offs or anything. Positioning? Stay at home extreme. Big big heart? Like in 60-70s.
And so on
 
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For a guy who played 256 NHL games, Rod Pelley was pretty bad.

Every time I watched Devils games, I always wondered why he was out there. Apparently he's now a development coach for the Islanders.

Pelley - 256 NHL games, 0.11 ppg, 556 AHL games, 0.26 ppg

Cam Janssen was probably the worst Devils player ever. Thank god he could fight because he couldn't do anything else.

Peter Harrold is another name that comes to mind. Devils fans had the pleasure of watching him for too long....
 
How do this guys find in to NHL? What was his calling card?? He must have been extremly good at just ONE thing. Like face offs or anything. Positioning? Stay at home extreme. Big big heart? Like in 60-70s.
And so on

He was big in an era where 'you can't teach size.' He was a former 2nd round pick and his stats outside of the NHL show a base-level competency. This was a guy who would dominate each and every one of us positing on this board, but just didn't think or act at a NHL-level speed and thus was little more than a pilon when just being 6'4" wasn't an advantage on its own, especially given that he was not even slightly physical (16 hits on the season). The Penguins were weak at center, so that bought him some time. Then there were season-long injuries, which bought him some time. Next on the depth chart was a fully busted Rico Fata, which bought him even more time. The Penguins were absolute ass out of the gate so paying an asset to upgrade wasn't an option, which bought him even more time. It was a mess of a season for the Penguins and a lot of that had to do with a rookie Sidney Crosby being the only healthy center on the roster for the length of the season. Endicott had one vaguely NHL caliber skill and that was that he was competent at faceoffs, and him hovering just north of 50% was enough for him to be shoved out there as a penalty killer on a team with a putrid 78.8% PK.

Every team from this era had prospects in the Shane Endicott mold, you just rarely get a perfect storm allowing them to stay up for the bulk of a season. His deficiencies were also far easier to take advantage of in that first season after the lockout, as skating became so much more important and just grabbing said faster skaters in an attempt to slow them down actually began being penalized.


I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Tanner Glass yet. He's the worst and it's not even F close.

As a core member of the f*** Tanner Glass Society...Tanner Glass was 100x the player Shane Endicott was. At least Glass would hit somebody after they walked around him. Endicott just olé'd them and skated through quicksand back to the bench.

2003-04 Kelly Buchberger

I've never seen a player be so clearly too old to still play as Buchberger was in that season...but you gotta give him credit; he fought 15 times, gleefully getting the shit beaten out of him each time. In many ways that may make this a prime answer, at least as far as individual seasons go. He sure as shit wasn't a 'true' enforcer, he just played that role and was putrid at it. You have to appreciate his willingness to get his face caved in for any teammate, though.
 
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It’s hard to answer this about skaters, because the truly worst ones barely get on the ice before they’re booted back out of the league.

Easier to answer about goalies, because even a short term in the league leaves a statistical mark and often an imprint on the fanbase’s memory.

So with that said, shamelessly myself from several years ago:
Gary Laskoski>Garret Sparks
 
Gary Laskoski>Garret Sparks

At least Sparks has had some good seasons at the AHL/ECHL level. There’s little evidence that Laskoski was even a pro level goalie. He wasn’t even the better goalie on St Lawrence in his senior year of college. He had barely-better-than-David-Ayres level credentials to be an NHL goaltender.

As best I can piece together, Laskoski managed to get a Kings camp invite as an undrafted FA and somehow survived the cuts until he was the last man standing. Inexplicably, instead of finding an actual NHL goalie the Kings went with the hot hand and gave Laskoski the crease to start the season — paying him game-by-game rather than on any contract. He had a little run of about 4-5 games where he looked alright, at which point they mind-bendingly declared him the #1 and gave him a multi-year contract. It seems he was still kind of hanging in there after about 20 games, at which time the bottom fell out and he started getting lit up in historic fashion. In the latter half of the season his save% was an astonishing .830. That’s eight-three-zero — not a typo.

Then he went to the AHL, got lit up there as well, and retired from pro hockey at 24.

FWIW, when people talk about Marcel Dionne getting a bum rap for his lack of playoff success, this is what they’re talking about. Imagine an NHL team in 2025 taking an undrafted UFA camp invite who was the #2 at St Lawrence and rolling him out as their starter with a multi-year contract. And this wasn’t in 1938 or something, this all happened when Joe Thornton and Zdeno Chara were learning to skate.
 
Tongue in cheek answer - Micki DuPont, father of 2027 presumptive #1 pick Landon DuPont.

Played like 3 games with the Penguins after after bouncing around in the DEL for a little bit. I don't think he was actually the worst, he was a pretty good skater with with decent production in the minors and Europe, just clearly not any NHL level traits.

I was shocked when I heard his son was considered a top prospect, I was like, "THAT guy's kid???".
 
Back in the early days of adv stats, there was a "Crosby to Glass" scale. I'm gonna say Tanner Glass.
 
Anyone that dares besmirch the name of Tanner Glass should be shunned.

You tell me, would the worst player in NHL history EVER be able to do this:



Checkmate
 
Oilers Defenseman of the Year 2001/02, as well as 12th in the league All-Star vote ahead of Chára, MacInnis, Stevens, Niedermayer. Really sucked in Edmonton.
He's a living meme. I know he had his moments but some of his plays were just beyond atrocious.
 
Posts like this are disgusting. Every player that has played a single NHL game is in the top .01% of hockey players in the world. The worst NHL player is still better than every person on these boards, aside from those lurker accounts, who would be players who have been I'm the league.

What kind of names are you hoping to see? Players who had their life long dream come true by playing a few games? Are you looking to mock them?

By the way, Justin Dowling has over $3 million in career earnings. Not bad for the worst player to ever play.
While mostly true, there have been some enforcers who 100% were no where close to the top 0.01% of hockey players
 

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