Slow News Summer has drifted into Some News September, and pretty soon this space is going to be well and truly in regular season countdown mode. We’ll have the usual previews, oddly specific predictions, and the annual reader contest. Just this morning I took the bizarro-meter out of storage and fired it up, just to see if it would last us another season. We’re almost there.
But not quite yet, so today let’s check one more reader question off our offseason to-do list. This one was first asked about five years ago – yes, sometimes it takes that long for the muse to visit – and was simple enough: Which season produces the best six-man roster of players who played their last game that year?
We can do this. Three forwards, two defensemen and a goalie, based on players who saw their final NHL action in a given season. That’s the sort of question that combines history, research, and remembering some guys, all of which are some of my favorite things.
But I’ll admit I had one concern heading into the project: I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. It would end up being 2003-04, because that was the double-cohort year caused by the lost lockout season that produced one of the greatest Hall-of-Fame classes ever. So we had already had our winner, and any suspense would come from seeing who could come the closest.
Except, spoiler alert, the 2003-04 season makes the list, but doesn’t win. We’ll get to that.
For now, we’ll dig back to the dawn of the expansion era in 1967-68, and try to find the 20 best lineups of players who said goodbye to the NHL. Let’s start with…
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