2025-26 Upper Deck NHL Star Rookies Box Set Review
In this story:
As the Stanley Cup finals progress, we continue our tribute to Lord Stanley's Cup and the totality of the 2025-26 NHL season by going through some of the best sets of the year. This time on the Rip & Review, we take a look at a collection of 25 rookies, which also includes an additional parallel card with the 2025-26 Upper Deck Star Rookies Box Set.
The 2025-26 hockey season has been filled with fun and excitement, bringing us many fantastic cards and card sets, along the way, including: Upper Deck's SP, SPx, Credentials, MVP, Extended Series, Allure, and National Hockey Card Day!
2025-26 Upper Deck NHL Star Rookies Box Set Rip!
What may feel like a dream come true, this set is made entirely of top rookies in the game, and as you gaze upon the sealed box, with Schaefer, Demidov, and Misa featured on the front, you can feel confident that you will soon be holding one of their rookie cards in your hand. This is part of the appeal of this offering from Upper Deck; it is guaranteed to contain 25 base rookie cards from 25 different players, as well as 1 parallel.
There is one sealed pack in the box and we opened it up.
Included in this set of cards (pictured above), we found Nashville rookies Matthew Wood and Brady Martin, Penguins center Ben Kindel, Minnesota's Zeev Bulum, and Zayne Parekh of the Calgary Flames.
The next collection of featured players (pictured above) includes two from the St. Louis Blues, Dalibor Dvorsky and Jimmy Snuggerud. Michael Brandsegg-Nygard from Detroit, Braeden Cootes from Vancouver, and Artyom Levshunov from Chicago are also included in this photo of five rookies from the Star Rookies box set.
With these five Star Rookies cards (pictured above), we have Nashville's Joakim Kemell, Gabe Perreault from the New York Rangers, Utah's Dimitri Simashev, Chicago's Oliver Moore, and Buffalo center Noah Ostlund.
Our exploration of these Star Rookies continues, with five more cards (pictured above), including Isaac Howard from the Oilers, Easton Cowan of the Male Leafs, Alexander Nikishin a defenseman from the Hurricanes, San Jose's Sam Dickinson, and Detroit Red Wings rookie Axei Sandin-Pellikka.
Wrapping Up the Rip:
Highlights: This set is like being invited to a five-course meal and showing up, sitting down at the table, and finding out that every course is dessert. Now, as we are four courses deep, we have been served our favorites each and every time! That is what this set is like; if you like finding and collecting rookies, this set is all rookies, an absolute thrill. 'What is the fifth course?' you ask, 'Will it be something different?' Well, anything could happen, let's find out together!
This time we feature, (pictured above), the budding superstars of this class! Here we have the rookie of the year, Matthew Schaefer, and the rookie of the year in most any other year, Ivan Demidov. As well as other notable stars from their first year in the NHL, including Beckett Sennecke of the Ducks, the Capitals Ryan Leonard, and the Sharks standout Michael Misa.
There you have it: a set of 25 rookies, as promised and delivered. I think that if I were to buy only one box of cards for the year, I may very well pick up this box. If you were to buy it each and every year, you get a lot for your money, at about $29, which is what I paid. With that, you have a curated offering featuring 25 of the top rookies in the class, and if buying year after year, you would have a nice historical catalog of NHL rookies as they make a name for themselves for years to come.
Oh yes, and I would be remiss if I didn't share the proverbial cherry on top of our five-course dessert meal: the standalone parallel in this box, and I dare say we got a bit lucky!
For our one surprise card in this box (pictured above), we did well for ourselves and picked up the Blue Parallel version of Michael Misa's Star Rookies card from the 2025-26 Upper Deck Star Rookies Box Set.
Until next time, hockey fans!
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D. Allen Thompson is a contributing collectibles writer with eclectic tastes. He provides enthusiastic commentary on the ever-evolving world of trading cards against the backdrop of the broader historical, economic, and societal contexts in which they exist. He is on a journey to find fascinating stories and meet interesting people while using trading cards as the guideposts to lead the way to the American Dream.