Pentti Lund, the National Hockey League’s first prominent Finnish-born player and its 1949 rookie of the year, playing at wing for the Rangers, died on Tuesday in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He was 87.

The cause was a stroke, said his daughter Joanne Miller.

More than 160 Finns have played in the N.H.L., but long before the league began attracting many of the world’s best players, Lund won the Calder Trophy as the N.H.L.’s top rookie and turned in a brilliant performance in the Stanley Cup playoffs in his second season.

Lund, who grew up in a Finnish immigrant family in Port Arthur, now a part of Thunder Bay, arriving there at age 6, was the second native of Finland to play in the N.H.L. The first, Al Pudas, played four games for Toronto in the 1926-27 season.

Lund was the first Finnish native to score an N.H.L. goal, on the way to netting 14 goals along with 16 assists as a rookie. He was the star of the Rangers’ upset triumph over the Montreal Canadiens in the 1950 Stanley Cup semifinal series, when he scored five goals, including a three-goal hat trick, and kept the Canadiens star Maurice Richard bottled up with one goal.