The 10 players that no NHL fan can hate (except for all the ones that do)

We’re into holiday mode, where everything is supposed to be about peace and goodwill. Love thy neighbor and that sort of thing.

That’s nice and all, but it can be tough for hockey fans, who are preconditioned to be mad at just about everything. Pretty soon we’ll hit the Christmas trade freeze, meaning we can’t even sit around and imagine that bum who’s clogging up our team’s salary cap being traded for a ransom of picks and prospects. Now you want us to be nice to the jerks on the other teams too? It’s a rough time of year when you’re a diehard hockey fan who hates everyone.

Well, almost everyone. Because at any given time, there are always a few players who just about everyone seems to like. It’s been a rough few years for that crowd, as we’ve said goodbye to guys like Roberto Luongo, Pavel Datsyuk, Teemu Selanne and Jarome Iginla. But that just creates some extra room on the nice list.

Today, let’s get into the holiday spirit with a list of the ten players in the NHL that nobody can hate. (And then the reasons why maybe you can hate them just a little.)

Connor McDavid

Why almost everyone loves him: First of all, he’s the best player in the league, with maybe the most pure skill since Mario Lemieux. Even in a league with more dominant young talent than ever before, McDavid still occasionally does things that you’ve never seen, or ever thought possible. He’s one of the rare players who’d be worth paying full price just to watch on his own and brings back that pre-Dead Puck Era feeling of excitement you used to get whenever a star player had the puck on his stick.

Second of all, he’s signed long-term in Edmonton, so the sympathy factor is off the charts.

The one group that still kind of hates him: Flames fans get a pass, as they do for any Oiler. Beyond that, nobody really dislikes him, although you get the sense that there’s an undercurrent of aggravation from other fan bases who keep waiting for him to stomp out of Edmonton and demand a trade. Come on, they’re terrible, and he looked vaguely sad at his draft lottery. Surely he wants to play somewhere else. Specifically, for my favorite team. Come on Connor, blink twice if you want us to send in a chopper to airlift you out.

Patrick Marleau

Why almost everyone loves him: He’s been around forever, his speed means he’s been fun to watch over the years and he always seems disturbingly happy. He became the team father figure in Toronto – literally – and then headed home to San Jose to finish out his career. Plus he’s still chasing that elusive Stanley Cup, and everybody loves a good OGWAC story. Uh, please don’t check the standings to see how that quest is going for him.

The one group that still kind of hates him: Nobody right now, although we’ll save a spot for Leaf fans when they miss the playoffs and end up having to send the 11th overall pick to the Hurricanes for getting out of the last year of his contract. Also, it’s going to be kind of weird if he sticks around next year and ends up breaking Gordie Howe’s all-time games played record. See, you didn’t realize that was going to happen, and now you feel just a little conflicted, right?

Marc-Andre Fleury

Why almost everyone loves him: He’s a former first overall pick who’s smiled his way through a very good NHL career, without ever being so dominating that you resented him. He was part of three Cup winners in Pittsburgh, then handled what could have been a tricky Matt Murray situation and eventual exit with class and good humor. That was supposed to lead to him spending his last few years getting shelled for the expansion Knights, but instead, he’s played some of the best hockey of his career while leaning hard into his likable personality to sell the game in a new market.

The one group that still kind of hates him: Man, I’m not even sure. That Sharks/Knights rivalry is pretty solid, so maybe you allow San Jose fans to sneer at him just a bit. Beyond that, his only natural enemy at this point are Canadians who still aren’t over how the 2004 World Juniors ended and Hall of Fame sticklers who’ll be mad when he makes it in on the first ballot.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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The 12 NHL stars who are hardest to hate

One of the common knocks against hockey fans is that we seem to be wired to go negative, always thinking the worst of everyone who takes to the ice. And there’s some truth to that. After all, if you name a star player in today’s NHL, you’ll probably find legions of fans who’ve decided that they just don’t like him.

When Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson went head-to-head for the Norris Trophy, it wasn’t enough for fans to prefer one guy over the other – they had to decide that the other guy was a bum. Alex Ovechkin has a ton of fans, but also plenty who see him as an unrepentant hot dog who can’t come through when it counts. Carey Price is a year removed from a Hart trophy, but he’s a Hab and nobody who plays for Toronto or Montreal will ever be universally liked. And let’s not even get started on P.K. Subban.

Remember, there’s a difference between merely being popular and not being hated. Sidney Crosby is almost certainly the NHL’s most popular player, but for some reason, lots of fans have painted him as a boring whiner who’s been overexposed by the league. If we can’t get behind Crosby, then who do we like?

Well, there still seem to be at least a handful of exceptions to the rule. So today, let’s take a look at the rare players who have managed to pull it off. Here are twelve NHL stars who’ve proven to be the toughest to hate.

Jaromir Jagr, Florida Panthers

Why we like him: We might as well start with the easy one. In the years since his return to the NHL, Jagr has morphed into one of the league's most beloved players. That's largely thanks to his age – it would just feel wrong to hate a guy who's still going strong at 44 – and the near-legendary work ethic that goes with it. But he's also revealed a fun side, cracking jokes on social media and showing off that rarest of NHL possessions: an actual personality.

Mix in his apparent commitment to play for every team in the league before he retires, and it's become just about impossible to dislike Jagr.

Why it might be OK to hate him just a little: I'm not sure I can come up with a great reason to hate the current-day version of Jagr. But can we at least acknowledge that it's a little weird that we wound up here, given how divisive Jagr was earlier in his career?

When he first broke into the league on an already-stacked Penguins' team, he quickly became the poster child for the flashy European star that so many North American fans had trouble with, all fancy moves and flowing hockey hair. By the time he was doing his own trademark celebration, lots of fans (and at least a few players) had had enough of him. And that was before he bailed on the Penguins, bombed for the Capitals, and bolted for the KHL.

Mix in his weird return in 2011, in which he infuriated Pittsburgh fans by feinting at a homecoming and then scorning them for their fiercest rivals (which a small handful still haven’t forgiven him for), and it wasn't that long ago that Jagr would have ranked high on any list of the most-disliked players. But we all mellow with age, apparently, and now he's become basically untouchable. That's been a pretty cool evolution to watch, but it would have been downright bizarre to suggest it a decade or two ago.

Jarome Iginla, Colorado Avalanche

Why we like him: He's the other obvious choice for this list. While he doesn't quite have Jagr's longevity (yet), Iginla is firmly ensconced in the "beloved veteran" pantheon at age 39. He's a surefire Hall-of-Famer who's done everything short of win the Stanley Cup – and even that lone gap on his resume comes with an asterisk. He's scored 600 goals, won two Olympic gold medals, and he had the loyalty to stick with one team way longer than he probably should have. You can't really ask for more.

Why it might be OK to hate him just a little: As one of the last of the true power forwards, there's a good chance that at some point he's flattened somebody on your favourite team with a shoulder or a fist. But even that's tough to get too worked up over, given that he was probably smiling when he did it.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

The Venn Diagram of Hockey Hatred

There’s an old stereotype that hockey fans hate everyone. And like most stereotypes, it’s simply not true.

For example, we don’t hate Teemu Selanne. And, uh … well, that’s pretty much it, actually. Other than Selanne, yeah, we hate basically everyone else.

But we hate some people more than others. And our hate isn’t random — it’s based on a series of expectations, passed down from generation to generation, that govern how those in the hockey world should behave. Every fan knows them.

They’ve just never been written down … until now.

Here are the four key reasons a hockey fan would hate someone:

They're overexposed

Hockey players are supposed to blend quietly into the background. Anyone who gets too much attention — whether they asked for it or not — eventually becomes a target.

They just won’t be quiet

Much like small children, hockey fans expect our heroes to be seen but not heard. Anyone who makes any noise or (god forbid) actually forms an opinion must be silenced.

They take cheap shots

Hockey has a code. No, nobody has ever seen it or could agree on what it is. But the code is real, and taking a cheap shot violates it. Probably. Sometimes.

They just have one of those faces, you know?

Come on, we all know them when we see them.

Those are the four tenets of hockey hatred. And once you understand them, you can categorize all our hate into one neat diagram. Like this one...

>> View the full diagram on Grantland