Who wins, a roster of players who won the Cup in their first year or their last?

We’re going to build some rosters today, and we’re going to start with a simple question that feels appropriate given the stakes of tonight's game: Who’s better, a team of guys who won the Stanley Cup in their first year in the NHL, or guys who won it in their last year?

That’s it. I don’t even feel like I need some long preamble breaking down how the question works. You get it. But as per DGB by-laws, we do need to say: But first, a few ground rules™.

• The important one: Once he’s on the roster, you get credit for a player’s entire career, not just what they did in that Cup-winning season. We’re dealing with rookies and old guys, those rosters would be pretty bad.
• That said, a player has to have appeared in at least one playoff game for the winning team to qualify. Anyone who has traded, waived or in the press box doesn’t fit the spirit of the thing.
• We’ll start the clock at the Original Six era, which prevents us from having to deal with old-timey players you’ve never heard of, not to mention guys whose “rookie NHL season” came well into their pro career after the arrived from other leagues.
• First and last year means the years they played their first or last NHL game – no WHA or other leagues count – which is not the same as full seasons. Note that a player’s first year isn’t necessarily their rookie season, because they can maintain that eligibility for multiple years. Everyone only gets one first or last season.
• Active players can count for the first year team, but (obviously) not for the last. Also, anyone who won a Cup in both their first and their last year is ineligible for both teams. And also, let’s just say it, kind of greedy.
• We’re building a full roster, featuring two goalies, six defensemen and 12 forwards, but won’t worry about position beyond that.

I’m kind of interested to see where this goes, and I’ve already gone back and forth on which teams I think will win. My first thought is that Team Last Year will take it, because of the Ray Bourque factor –legends who want to go out on a high note and retire immediately after winning a Cup. Then again, the Ray Bourque story is great in part because it’s relatively rare, so maybe there aren’t as many of those guys as you’d think.

As for Team First Year, we know that there won’t be any top draft picks on the team, since those players go to bad teams and have to wait at least a few years for their Cups. So no Mario Lemieux, no Sidney Crosby, not Alexander Ovechkin. But we should still be able to find enough talent to fill out a roster, even if it may not have the elite-level guys that Team Last Year has.

Let’s find out. As always, we’ll start in goal and build from there.

Goaltenders

Team First Year starts off with a pair of agonizing near misses. Patrick Roy won the Cup and the Conn Smythe as a rookie in 1986, but he played a single game with the 1984-85 Habs, so he’s out. We also can’t use Ken Dryden, who memorably won the Cup a year before winning the Calder, because he doubles up by also winning in his last year.

That said, we can still find a Canadiens’ Hall-of-Famer in the criminally underrated Bill Durnan, who was winning everything as the league’s best netminder as soon as he arrived in 1943-44. He’ll be capably backed up by Cam Ward from the 2006 Carolina run, with Jordan Binnington on speed dial if we need depth and/or someone to throw water bottles around.

There’s a lot less to choose from in Team Last Year, partly because old goalies often stick around forever. Luckily, we only need one starter, and we can find that in Dominik Hasek, who didn’t play much for the 2007-08 Red Wings, but still qualifies for the team. That saves us from total disaster, because believe it or not I’m pretty sure our only other option is Cristobal Huet of the 2010 Blackhawks.

So far, Team First Year has better depth while Team Last Year has higher star power. Let’s see if that continues on the blueline.

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Ranking the 50 greatest players from before 1967

After three months of counting down, this week marked the finale of our NHL99 project, which ranked the best players of hockey's modern era (1967 to today). It was a lot of fun, with some great pieces leading to plenty of reminiscing, recollection and debate.

OK, but what about the era that came before?

After all, there’s 50 years of NHL history that didn’t get included in the modern list. While it made sense not to include those decades in our NHL99 list – the difference between eras is just impossible to parse in any meaningful way – we should still recognize it, if only briefly.

So that’s what we’ll do today, as I count down my list of the Top 50 players of pre-1967 era, factoring in both peak performance and longevity. I’ll be considering anyone who wasn’t on our modern list based on everything they did up until 1967. I also reserve the right to nudge a handful of guys up if their career timeline means they ended up “stranded” between the two lists, since this is my ranking and I can cheat if I want to.

One other important note on the process: For the modern era NHL99, we had a panel of voters, each carefully curating their own ballots which were then combined to create a final list based on the wisdom of the crowd. This is not that. This is one writer’s opinion, based on research and analysis but pretty much entirely subjective. If you don’t agree with any of these rankings, you have one and only one person to yell at. (That person, for the record, is Gentille.)

The original premise behind the modern NHL99 was that we all knew who’d end up in top spot. I think that’s the case here too, although you never know. Let’s count it down and see where we end up.

(*Denotes a player whose career continued past the 1966-67 season that we're using as our "modern" cutoff.)

50. Lionel “Big Train” Conacher, D, 1925-37

Voted Canada’s greatest athlete in 1950, Conacher dominated in multiple sports, including football, boxing and rugby. We can only give him credit for hockey here, in which he was a three-time all-star, a two-time Hart Trophy runner-up from the blueline, and a Hall-of-Famer.

49. Frank Boucher, C, 1921-44

The four-time all-star was a setup man who led the league in assists three times. He was also awarded the Lady Byng seven times, more than any other player in history.

(By the way, you'll see frequent references to being an all-star in this piece. All of those are referring to the league's postseason all-star honors, which include a first and a second team. The midseason all-star game isn't a factor here, in part because it didn't even exist when many of these guys played and mostly because even when it did, it doesn't tell us much about how good a player was.)

48. Bill Cook, W, 1926-37

The best of the three Cook brothers (with Bud and Bun), Bill led the league in goals twice and was Hart runner-up both times.

47. Dickie Moore, W, 1952-67*

The fiesty winger led the league in goals in 1957-58, then assists the following year. He took home the Art Ross in both campaigns, and remains an underrated star of the Original Six era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDe-PiQIKg

46. Harry Howell, D, 1952-67*

Howell’s lone Norris trophy just slips under our cutoff, as he won it in 1967. It was partly a lifetime achievement award, as he’d been the rock of the Rangers’ blueline for 15 seasons, missing just 20 games over that span.

45. Bill Gadsby, D, 1946-66

One of the best defensemen to never win a Norris, Gadsby finished second three times and was named an all-star on seven occasions.

44. Johnny Bower, G, 1953-67*

The beloved Bower was a two-time Vezina winner and nearly won the Hart Trophy in 1961; he had more first-place votes than anyone, but finished just behind Bernie Geoffrion based on total votes. Not bad for a guy who had nearly washed out of the league after one strong season with the Rangers. And of course, he’d go on to give the world the gift of Honky The Christmas Goose.

43. Johnny Bucyk, W, 1955-67*

He's losing almost half of his longevity to our 1967 cutoff, but still deserve a spot on our list. All told, Bucyk spent 21 of his 23 seasons in Boston, and despite playing in the era of shorter season, still ranks in the top 20 for games played to this day. Bucyk rarely posted eye-popping single-season numbers, but was among the most consistent stars the league has ever seen.

42. Auriel Joliat, W, 1922-38

The winger played 16 seasons, all with the Canadiens, and won the Hart Trophy in 1934. This despite apparently playing at just north of 130 pounds, which was tiny even for those days.

41. Ted Kennedy, C, 1942-57

The long-time Leaf was the key to five Stanley Cups, and won a Hart Trophy in 1955. He retired after that season, then returned for one more before leaving the sport for good at the age of 31.

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Chasing the ghosts of history in Montreal

No team celebrates its history more than the Montreal Canadiens, and you can decide for yourself whether that’s a good thing. The franchise has become legendary for reminding us about its legends. That often takes place during inspiring pregame ceremonies that the Canadiens have elevated to a minor art form, thanks largely to no small amount of practice.

It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it works beautifully, as it did before Saturday night’s Game 5 of the Habs’ second-round series against the Lightning. In the moments leading up to puck drop, we were treated to a brief video featuring words of inspiration from Jean Beliveau, the longtime Canadiens captain who passed away earlier in the season. Beliveau remains one of the most universally beloved figures in the hockey world, and his no. 4 is painted on the ice behind the nets at the Bell Centre.

That number loomed over Saturday’s game: four, as in the series-clinching fourth win that the Lightning were chasing for the second straight game. Four, as in the number of consecutive wins the Canadiens would need to string together after having dropped the first three games of the series. Four, as in the number of teams in NHL history that have rallied all the way back from a 3-0 series deficit.

For all their past glory, the Canadiens are not one of those four teams. Not yet. When you put on a Montreal uniform, with all of that history weighing on you, you don’t get many chances to be part of the first Canadiens team to ever accomplish something. By falling behind 3-0 in the series against the Lightning, this year’s team gave itself that chance to write its own chapter in the franchise’s storied history. It took the first step by winning Game 4 on Thursday. And by the end of Saturday night, Montreal was halfway there.

♦♦♦

The Bell Centre opened in 1996, which in today’s NHL means it’s straining the boundaries of what can be called a “new building,” but we’ll allow it. It looks like a new building, which is to say that it looks more or less the same as just about any other building you’ve been in. Its main distinguishing feature is that it seats 21,273, the biggest capacity in the NHL. And unlike so many of the league’s other generic arenas, those fans don’t need the scoreboard to tell them when to get loud. They just need the team to give them something to cheer about.

On Saturday, they got it. Even by Montreal standards, the crowd was unusually loud from the start. They roared through the player introductions and national anthems. They buzzed as the two teams traded chances early. And they exploded when Devante Smith-Pelly opened the scoring midway through the first, on a laser beam shot that beat Ben Bishop high and at first glance seemed to hit the crossbar. (Play went on for a few seconds, but replay confirmed the goal.)

In these low-scoring playoffs, one goal often feels like it will be enough, and it was hard to fight that sense on Saturday, as Smith-Pelly’s goal held up well into the game’s second half. But the Lightning eventually started to take over, and by one stretch in the third period they were dominating. The tying goal felt inevitable, and it came from Steven Stamkos, the slumping captain who’s been barely noticeable for long stretches in this series. That quieted the crowd, but only briefly, and soon the fans were screaming and chanting again, almost as if in defiance.

“It was a loud building tonight,” Montreal coach Michel Therrien said afterward. “Even when they tied the game, our fans support the team. And you could see the energy from the players when the fans are behind them. It gave us an extra boost.”

That boost helped set the stage for P.K. Subban’s brilliant feed to P.A. Parenteau, who snapped a one-timer past Bishop with four minutes left. It wasn’t an overtime goal, but it might as well have been. Carey Price was having one of those games — Valtteri Filppula may need therapy after being victimized by a ridiculous glove save — and Tampa Bay couldn’t mount much the rest of the way. There was a minor flurry in the final minute, when Montreal suddenly forgot how to clear its own zone, but this time there’d be no buzzer-beaters for the Lightning.

Game 6 is Tuesday night in Tampa Bay. We’re halfway to history.

♦♦♦

In addition to those 21,273 screaming fans, the Bell Centre also hosts a few more important guests: 19 banners for retired numbers (one is for a Montreal Expos player) and 24 more for the Canadiens’ Stanley Cups.

Depending on who you talk to, it may also be home to the old ghosts of the Montreal Forum. That was the team’s old arena, where the Habs won all but two of those Cups, and where all of those legends made their reputation. You used to hear about how those Forum ghosts could always be counted on to guide the team whenever it needed some extra help.

The ghosts were presumably invited to make the trip to the new arena. In the two decades since, there hasn’t been much evidence that they did.

The 20-minute walk from the Bell Centre to the site of the old Forum involves cutting across to Rue Sainte-Catherine, and the trip is … well, ugly isn’t the right word, but it’s not fun. It’s not much to look at, mostly uphill, and half the route seems to be under construction. As a Saturday stroll it fails miserably, but as a metaphor it works remarkably well. That walk back from the new to the old bridges the gap between almost two decades of Montreal Canadiens hockey, and those years have been not exactly ugly, but not much to look at, mostly uphill, and perpetually under construction.

The Canadiens last won the Stanley Cup in 1993. Since then, they’ve made it out of the second round only twice, in 2010 and last year. Sprinkled around those two minor successes were a few near misses, lots of mediocrity, and some outright misery. That’s not so much a knock on the organization as it is the new reality of the NHL. This isn’t a six-team league anymore, and in the age of parity, teams aren’t supposed to win Cups all that often. The recent history of the Canadiens isn’t all that bad. It’s just average.

But there was a time in Montreal when average was unheard of. From the Original Six era through 1993, a span of 51 years, the franchise never went longer than seven years without winning the Stanley Cup. That held true even as expansion arrived and the league more than tripled in size. They kept winning those Cups because this was Montreal and they were the Canadiens, and they had the ghosts of the Montreal Forum to help them along.

Today, the Forum is a movie theater. I’d describe it further, but I don’t really need to, because if you’ve ever been in a modern movie theater, with its generic popcorn lines and self-serve kiosks and unused arcade games, then you’ve got the picture. On Saturday, if you didn’t feel like watching Game 5 at the Bell Centre, there was always Furious 7 at the Forum.

There are reminders of where you really are. There’s a small memorabilia store where you can pay $149 for “new” bricks from the original Forum, which sounds impressive until you realize that means somebody is still pulling bricks out of the building you’re currently standing in. They’ve painted a faceoff circle on the floor where center ice used to be, and even put a few rows of original seating around it, but the seats are too close, so the view is all wrong. The whole thing is all wrong.

The Forum is a movie theater. That shouldn’t be depressing, but it is. If you’re a hockey fan and you ever have the chance to make that 20-minute walk back through history, I recommend you don’t take it.

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