The Best NHL Players Drafted in the 4th Round

The best NHL players drafted in the 4th round include five Hall of Famers, and the striking thing isn’t that there are five. It is where they were taken. Mark Recchi went 67th overall; Jari Kurri and Glenn Anderson both went 69th; Rob Blake went 70th; and Sergei Fedorov went 74th. Every inducted fourth-round pick in NHL draft history came out of an eight-pick window.

The best 4th round NHL draft picks all time, ranked by points

Every player in this table has a completed career, so none of these figures can move.

Player	Draft	Overall pick	Games	Points	Nationality
Mark Recchi	1988	67	1652	1533	CAN
Jari Kurri	1980	69	1251	1398	FIN
Bernie Nicholls	1980	73	1127	1209	CAN
Sergei Fedorov	1989	74	1248	1179	RUS
Glenn Anderson	1979	69	1129	1099	CAN
Tony Amonte	1988	68	1174	900	USA
John Ogrodnick	1979	66	928	827	CAN
Milan Hejduk	1994	87	1020	805	CZE
Rob Blake	1988	70	1270	777	CAN
Johnny Gaudreau	2011	104	763	743	USA
Alexei Zhamnov	1990	77	807	719	RUS
Marc Savard	1995	91	807	706	CAN
Kent Nilsson	1976	64	553	686	SWE
Anton Stastny	1979	83	650	636	SVK
Robert Reichel	1989	70	830	630	CZE
Esa Tikkanen	1983	80	877	630	FIN
Keith Yandle	2005	105	1109	619	USA
Syl Apps Jr.	1964	21	727	606	CAN
Al MacAdam	1972	55	864	591	CAN
Fredrik Olausson	1985	81	1022	581	SWE
Joe Juneau	1988	81	828	572	CAN
Dave Ellett	1982	75	1129	568	USA
Bengt-Ake Gustafsson	1978	55	629	554	SWE
Mike Knuble	1991	76	1068	548	USA
Gustav Nyquist	2008	121	914	543	SWE
Jere Lehtinen	1992	88	875	514	FIN
Shawn Horcoff	1998	99	1008	511	CAN
Mark Johnson	1977	66	669	508	USA

Mark Recchi’s 1,652 games and 1,533 points make him the most productive fourth-round pick ever by a clear margin, and the fourth round’s top five all finished above 1,000 points. No other round outside the first three can say that.

Bernie Nicholls is the name most likely to surprise. He scored 1,209 points from pick 73 and is not in the Hall of Fame, which puts him among the highest-scoring players in league history without induction.

Why the best 4th-round NHL draft picks cluster at picks 67 to 74

The eight-pick window is real, but it needs an explanation, not a mystery.

Those five Hall of Famers were drafted between 1979 and 1989, when the league had 21 teams, and the draft ran ten to twelve rounds. With 21 picks per round, the fourth round covered roughly picks 64 to 84, so the top of the fourth round sat in the high sixties. The window is where the fourth round began in that era, not a magic range.

Read the full table and the point becomes clearer: the fourth round has covered picks from 21st overall, where Syl Apps Jr. went in the four-round 1964 draft of 24 selections, to 121st, where Gustav Nyquist went in 2008. The round label describes a team’s place in its own order of preference. It does not describe a fixed depth.

The 4th round NHL draft picks who played in goal

The fourth round is the only late round with no Hall of Fame goaltender, and it is not for lack of careers.

Goaltender	Draft	Overall pick	Games	Wins	Shutouts
John Vanbiesbrouck	1981	72	882	374	40
Braden Holtby	2008	93	513	299	35
Mike Liut	1976	56	663	293	25
James Reimer	2006	99	540	232	32
Ron Tugnutt	1986	81	537	186	26
Daren Puppa	1983	74	429	179	19
Bob Essensa	1983	69	446	173	18
Tim Cheveldae	1986	64	340	149	10
Ray Emery	2001	99	287	145	16
Clint Malarchuk	1981	74	337	141	12
Vesa Toskala	1995	90	266	129	13
Murray Bannerman	1977	58	289	116	8

John Vanbiesbrouck won 374 games from pick 72 and Braden Holtby 299 from pick 93. Four more are still playing and are left out of the table because their totals keep moving: Juuse Saros has passed 230 wins, Igor Shesterkin more than 180, Philipp Grubauer more than 180, and Jeremy Swayman more than 140.

16 fourth-round goaltenders have won 100 NHL games. Not one has been inducted, which is the clearest difference between this round and the third round, where three of the seven Hall of Famers were goaltenders.

How many 4th round NHL draft picks reach the NHL

560 skaters and 60 goaltenders taken in a fourth round have played an NHL game. Of those 620 players, 43 skaters reached 400 points.

Five are in the Hockey Hall of Fame, all of them skaters.

The best NHL players drafted in the 4th round came from everywhere

The fourth round is the most international of the late rounds, and the pattern runs through the whole table rather than sitting at one end.

Four Swedes appear: Kent Nilsson at 64, Fredrik Olausson at 81, Bengt-Ake Gustafsson at 55 and Gustav Nyquist at 121. Three Finns: Kurri at 69, Esa Tikkanen at 80, and Jere Lehtinen at 88. Two Czechs, two Russians and a Slovak in Anton Stastny at 83. That is twelve of the 28 names born outside North America, in a round where teams worked with less information than in the first.

Draft positions and career totals are from the NHL’s own statistics service, and all career figures are regular season. Hall of Fame membership is as recorded by the Hockey Hall of Fame’s year by year roll call.