NHL Rookie Tournaments: San Jose Rout Highlights Openers
San Jose crushed Los Angeles 8-1 and Colorado beat Anaheim 7-2 as NHL rookie and prospect tournaments opened across North America on 13 September 2026.
Rookie tournaments began across the NHL on 13 September 2026, and the sharpest scorelines came out of San Jose's Rookie Faceoff.
San Jose put eight past Los Angeles in an 8-1 win. Colorado were nearly as ruthless against Anaheim, taking that fixture 7-2. Utah kept a clean sheet against Vegas, winning 3-0 on goals from Matikka, Boot and Duda.
Elsewhere in the same round of prospect hockey, Winnipeg beat Montreal 3-1 at the Prospect Challenge in Gatineau, and Toronto edged University of Ottawa 4-3 in overtime at the tournament in Detroit, where Pittsburgh saw off Columbus 2-1 in a shootout and Detroit beat Dallas 4-3, also in a shootout. Philadelphia opened its own series with a 3-2 win over the Rangers, while Vancouver lost 7-3 to Seattle.
These are development-camp fixtures, built around draft picks and other prospects rather than established NHL rosters, and the results carry no weight beyond giving clubs an early look at the players expected to push for jobs once main training camps open.
About this article
Prepared by the editorial team with the help of algorithms, based on the sources listed