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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Building a roster of players whose goals and assists were perfectly balanced, as all things should be

We’ve arrived at what’s often the first lull of an NHL season, with a long way to go to the playoffs but enough games in the bank that we’re not overreacting to every result. We’re past a wild October and the dreaded U.S. Thanksgiving milestone but have a few weeks to the holiday freeze, and still months to wait for the Olympics (maybe) and trade deadline.

In other words, it’s the perfect opportunity to waste some time with a roster-building challenge.

We haven’t done one of these in a while. If you’re new to this, the whole idea is to take a challenge from a reader and use it to construct the best team we can. It’s a chance to dip into history and Remember Some Guys, with no higher purpose than that. Oh, and then you go into the comments and tell me I got it all wrong, and we argue about whether some dude from the 70s was better than your favorite team’s current third-liner. That part’s fun too.

Today’s question comes from reader Rodney:

What’s the best team you can assemble from players who had a year where their total goals equalled total assists?

— Rodney Payne (@gonebeancountin) November 22, 2021

That’s a beauty, because it’s amazingly simple but (as we’ll see) secretly complicated. Thankfully, I can tell you that it’s also reasonably straightforward to answer, unlike some questions we could mention, and it is also not staggeringly dumb, which is a nice change.

Let’s do this. A full roster of players who had a season where their goals total exactly matched their assists. One key ground rule here: We want to build the best roster we can, and we’re getting the player from that year. If we take Jean Beliveau based on his one goal and one assist in two games as a teenaged callup, that’s who we get – the wet-behind-the-ears rookie, not the all-time great. For that reason, we won’t be getting cute with partial seasons for guys that were injured or otherwise limited.

Single-season goals and assists, perfectly balanced, as all things should be. I have a concept, roughly seven dozen open hockey-reference tabs, and too much time on my hands. Let’s do this.

Forwards

The first hurdle we run into is one you’re probably already thinking about: Lots of history’s best players won’t fit well into this concept. That’s especially true for centers, especially playmakers, who almost always have more assists than goals, and usually many more.

For example, Wayne Gretzky doesn’t get anywhere close to our list at any point in his 20-season career; even when he was shattering all the goal-scoring records, his assist totals were way higher. The same is true of other centers you may be hoping to see, like Marcel Dionne, Connor McDavid, Bryan Trottier, Peter Forsberg, Joe Thornton, Mark Messier or Joe Sakic. Great players all, but not ones that will help us here. In fact, as we’ll see in a bit, centers are hard to find for this exercise.

On the other side of the coin, you have the pure snipers who almost always rack up more goals than assists. That problem isn’t quite as pronounced – there can be two assists for every goal, meaning there are more helpers available to be earned. It’s rare to see even a one-dimensional scorer have a very low assist total, although it’s always fun when it happens because we can all make jokes about them winning the Cy Young. (Or as it may be called soon, the Mangiapane.) For our purposes, the best years of guys like Rocket Richard, Steven Stamkos and Pavel Bure are too goals-heavy for this roster.

Then there are the agonizing near-misses, where more-balanced superstars just don’t quite land on the magic number we’re looking for. The worst of those is Mario Lemieux, who had 54 goals and 53 assists in 1986-87. That wasn’t even one of his ten best seasons, but we would have gladly taken it because Mario was awesome. We also just barely miss out on Sidney Crosby (44 goals and 45 assists in 2016-17), Teemu Selanne (48 and 46 in 2006-07), Luc Robitaille (63 and 62 in 1992-93), and Steve Yzerman (50 and 52 in 1987-88, then 62 and 65 in 1989-90). Jaromir Jagr somehow never pulled it off in his three centuries of playing, coming closest with a 47 and 48 in 1996-97. And we need to make a special mention of Mike Bossy, who went 60 and 58 in 1982-83 and then teased us by being one off in each of the last three years of his career.

Still, we have plenty of legendary forwards to choose from, so let’s start building out our roster with guys who did hit the sweet spot. We’ll start with one of the greatest of all-time in Gordie Howe, who had 43 goals and 43 assists in his Art Ross and Hart-winning 1950-51 season. On the other wing, we’ll go with Alexander Ovechkin, who followed up his Calder-winning rookie year with 46 goals and assists in 2006-07.

The center on our top line will be the greatest season we’ll find in our quest for perfect balance: Phil Esposito and his legendary 1970-71 campaign, which saw him shatter the single-season goals record with 76 and then exactly match that total with 76 assists. Espo always had a flare for the dramatic, and his inclusion here is no different – he was at 76/75 until recording a second assist on the Bruins last goal of the season, which came with two minutes left in their final game.

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Mailbag: Is Marleau a HHOF lock? Plus changing playoff history, banning coaches and more

Welcome back to the mailbag. It’s been a record-breaking week in the NHL and we’re all starting to shift into playoff mode, so let’s argue about some old guys, change some NHL history, laugh at the Canadian teams, and cover other vitally important topics.

Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and style.

With Patrick Marleau breaking Gordie Howe’s games played record, does that make him a lock for the Hall of Fame? He has always been a “Hall of Very Good” player in my mind, but that is a HUGE record to break and it seems strange not to induct the holder of a record like that into the HOF. – Andy S.

I love Hall of Fame debates. We did a bunch on the Puck Soup bonus this week, and I’d do them every week if I could. And Marleau’s a good one, so let’s get into it.

The case for is pretty straightforward. He’s about to hit 1,200 career points, and only a handful of guys who’ve crossed that barrier didn’t make the Hall. More impressively, if you adjust for era he ranks 29th all-time, and every single eligible player ahead of him is in. Now that he’s broken Howe’s record and mixing in the fact that everyone in the hockey world loves the guy, he’s an easy yes.

Except… he never won an award and was never a post-season all-star. He never even came close; in 23 seasons, he’s had just two years where he even finished higher than tenth in all-star voting. He was never in the “best at this position” conversation, and rarely even considered the best player on his own team. Instead, he was a classic compiler, the kind of guy who never feels like a generational star but hangs around long enough to rack up numbers.

Your view on Marleau in the HHOF is going to align closely with your view on what the Hall should be. If you’re a small Hall type of fan, he’s a no. If you’re a little more forgiving, you can find a spot for him. Personally, I lean to the small side of the argument, and I don’t think I’d have him on my ballot, even with the games record. But as I’ve said with guys like Dave Andreychuk and Mark Recchi, sometimes a compiler hangs around long enough and the numbers get so big that you have to give them a look. And in a physical game like hockey, sticking around is a skill worth recognizing. If you have him on your ballot, I get it.

I strongly suspect that this is all moot, because he’s going to get in, and probably on the first ballot. He’s too well-liked, and the games record is a big point in his favor. But Eric Duhatschek didn’t sound so sure, and he knows a little bit about how the Hall voters think. We’ll see, but if you’re a hard no on Marleau, you may as well start preparing yourself now, because I think he gets in.

Who would be better: Gordie Howe on a modern team, or Patrick Marleau in Howe’s era? – Shaun R.

I see what you’re doing here. You’re trying to take my longstanding “anyone from today’s NHL would dominate anything from the 1980s back” and flip it around to make me say something bad about Canadian icon Gordie Howe. It won’t work.

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What’s the best roster you could make from modern NHL history, while only using players who never played together?

For today’s post, we’re going to work through a simple question suggested by a reader.

I know what you’re thinking. The last time we tried the whole “simple question from a reader” thing, it didn’t go especially well for my psychological health. I’m pleased to report that won’t be the case this time; this question was actually a lot of fun to work through. Thank you, Kris B. from the comments section. This didn’t ruin my whole week.

That’s partly because unlike last time, we’re not looking for one right answer. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you might be able to come up with a better answer than I can. But that doesn’t mean the question is easy, because it’s not – it’s deceptively tricky and gets harder as you go.

Here it is: What’s the best roster you could make from modern NHL history, while only using players who never played together?

That’s it. Nice and easy. You’re probably already filling in spots in your head, right?

Before we dive in, let’s nail down a few quick ground rules:

• “Playing together” means they were on the same roster at the same time during a season or playoffs. This is NHL only – we don’t care about the minor leagues or the WHA or international play or All-Star games or old-timer rosters.
• Positions matter. We need four centers, four guys at each wing, six defensemen and two goalies. No forwards playing out of position. (We’ll use hockey-reference as the arbiter of who plays where.)
• Because the records of who played on which team can get a little dicey in the league’s early days, I’m only going to go back to the start of the Original Six era. Apologies to “Phantom” Joe Malone.

Makes sense? Then let’s get started. And we’ll start in the obvious place: With the best player the sport has ever had.

Our first pick can be literally anyone from NHL history, so let’s start with Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky is the perfect starting point for this game, for two reasons. For one, every fan would agree that he’s either the best player ever or at least very close. If you get a blank canvas to build any roster you want, of course you’re going to start with Gretzky.

The second reason is that he illustrates the dilemma we’re dealing with here. Gretzky played with a ton of elite players, meaning we can start scratching a whole lot of big names of our list right away.

His Oilers days cost us Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey, not to mention Grant Fuhr and Glenn Anderson. The trade to the Kings wipes out Luc Robitaille and Rob Blake, among others. The Rangers years mean we lose Brian Leetch and Pat LaFontaine. And his stint with the Blues, even though it only lasted a few weeks, ends up wiping out a surprising number of big names, including Brett Hull, Al MacInnis, Chris Pronger and even (by just a few days) Dale Hawerchuk.

Yikes. It’s enough to have us already doubting ourselves. Do we … do we leave Wayne Gretzky off our roster?

There’s a case that we should, since it’s not like we’re going to be hurting for offensive center options. The counterargument is that this is Wayne Freaking Gretzky. He’s the NHL’s all-time scoring leader by nearly 1,000 points. Of course he’s on the team. Don’t galaxy-brain this. Write him in as the No. 1 center and don’t look back.

That’s the camp I’m in, so Gretzky’s on the team. Still, we’re one name in and you can already see how this is going to get tricky.

We’ve still got lots of room to work with for our next few picks. We said Gretzky was probably the greatest player ever, but some fans would argue that. Luckily, we don’t have to pick and choose among the top candidates – none of them ever played together, meaning we can fit them all onto the roster. So welcome aboard Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux.

Those are all easy calls, right? They do come at a cost – Howe means we can’t use an entire generation of Red Wings, including Terry Sawchuk, Ted Lindsay, Johnny Bucyk or Red Kelly. And his brief stint with the Whalers ends up being surprisingly costly, as we lose access to Bobby Hull and Dave Keon. Orr means we can’t use fellow Bruins stars like Phil Esposito or Brad Park, and his stint in Chicago costs us Phil’s brother Tony, as well as Stan Mikita, who was still a Hawk well into the late-70s. Still, I can’t imagine anyone objecting to paying the price to have Orr and Howe on the team.

And then there’s Mario. He ends up being the first addition from what will turn out to be an important subset of players for this game: Guys who only ever played for one team. As we’ll see, guys who move around a lot end up being harder to fit in. Lemieux still costs us, though, because those early-90s Penguins teams were stacked with Hall of Famers, so we’re going to lose access to Ron Francis, Larry Murphy and even Bryan Trottier. Not bad names, but we’re not losing sleep over them.

And yeah, we also lose out on Jaromir Jagr, and that hurts, especially since winger figures to be a tough spot to fill. But come on, this is Mario Lemieux. There’s no way we don’t have him on the team.

Or is there …

Problem #1: The Mario Conundrum

Here’s the thing about picking between Lemieux and Jagr: It’s an easy call. Jagr was great, but Lemieux was legendary. There might be five players in NHL history that you take over Jagr without even thinking about it, but Mario’s one of them.

But then you remember Lemieux’s comeback, and that it stretched all the way into playing a few games in the post-lockout season in 2005-06. And that means he was briefly teammates with Sidney Crosby.

Mario Lemieux … or Jaromir Jagr and Sidney Crosby?

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Which birthday produces the best starting six in NHL history?

Last summer, I wrote a post about which first names could produce the best starting six lineup in NHL history. The response from readers was immediate and overwhelming: OK, great, now do the same thing for birthdays.

Look, I know when I’m being mocked. And yes, rummaging through 366 days’ worth of player data just to build a few imaginary teams full of stars and also-rans who’ve never played together or met or (in some cases) been alive at the same time, all seems like a gigantic waste of several days. But gigantic wastes of days are kind of my beat, so I was tempted.

I initially held off for two reasons. The first is that I figured I wouldn’t have the time to even consider such a weird concept until the offseason. That offseason came early this year, and it might last a while, so every crazy idea is back on the table.

But the second reason felt like the deal-breaker: There wouldn’t be any suspense. We all knew which date was going to win. It wasn’t even worth digging into.

It’s obviously going to be Team Oct. 5.

That’s pretty much the greatest date in NHL superstar birthday history. Specifically, Oct. 5, 1965. That’s the day that two of the very best players in the sport’s history were both born, just a few hours and about 100 miles apart: Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy.

It’s a great bit of NHL trivia that also kind of ruins this whole “best birthday” concept. You start with two guys who have plausible cases as the best to ever play their positions, and it’s over.

Or is it? When I finally got around to confirming my suspicion, I realized that the rest of Team Oct. 5 isn’t going to be quite as unbeatable as you might think. In fact, it ends up looking something like this …

Oct. 5

Forwards: Mario Lemieux, Roy Conacher, Dean Prentice

Defence: Fredrik Olausson, Bob Whitelaw

Goaltender: Patrick Roy

Conacher won an Art Ross and made the Hall of Fame, while Prentice was a decent winger who played forever. Olausson was fine, but Whitelaw is a name from the 1940s and he barely played.

It’s still a pretty intimidating group, if only because Lemieux and Roy alone would dominate most lineups. But it doesn’t seem invincible. With 365 more days to work with, there could be a challenger lurking out there somewhere.

Screw it, I don’t have anything better to do. Let’s make this happen.

As always, we start with a few quick ground rules:

• We want three forwards, two defencemen and a goalie. Beyond that, positions or handedness won’t matter.
• Let’s assume everyone is alive and healthy and you get the player at the peak of their powers.
• If you can’t fill out a full lineup, you’re out of the running. The goalies will trip a few teams up, but that’s life in the tough world of imaginary roster-building.

We’ve set the bar high with Team Oct. 5. We’ll run through this chronologically, so let’s see who wants to step up and challenge them for the crown.

(Birthday data comes from hockey-reference.com. And special thanks to the NHL front office denizen who helped with the research but wishes to remain anonymous because he doesn’t want people to know he talks to me.)

Jan. 3

Forwards: Bobby Hull, Rick MacLeish, Mike Walton

Defence: Ryan Ellis, Cory Cross

Goaltender: Jacques Cloutier

This date features some big names like Bourque and Lemieux, but unfortunately, that would be Ryan and Real. We do get the real Bobby Hull, and he has some decent support, but this team isn’t giving Mario and Patrick any real worries. It’s a decent proof-of-concept, the equivalent of a light warmup stretch, but that’s about it. We can do better a bit further into the month.

Jan. 18

Forwards: Mark Messier, Syl Apps, Brian Gionta

Defence: Alex Pietrangelo, Dean Kennedy

Goaltender: Jason LaBarbera

Man, this team was feeling at least mildly frisky right up until we got to the goaltender, with two Hall-of-Famers up front and an All-Star on the blueline.

Jan. 21

Forwards: Dany Heatley, Doug Weight, Ulf Dahlen

Defence: Ryan Suter, Moe Mantha

Goaltender: Jonathan Quick

We don’t have any surefire Hall-of-Famers here, but we do get four modern-day All-Stars as part of a solid six-man lineup. Quick has a Conn Smythe, Heatley had multiple 50-goal seasons and Suter is definitely not on a bad contract. That’s not awful, but we can probably do better.

While we’re still in January, let’s check in on an entry some of you are probably wondering about …

Jan. 26

Forwards: Wayne Gretzky, Frank Nighbor, Dale McCourt

Defence: Fred Barrett, Vic Lynn

Goaltender: Daniel Berthiaume

Yeah, that’s what we’d call a top-heavy lineup. The Great One is at least joined by a fellow Hall-of-Famer in Nighbor, and McCourt was a first overall pick, but that’s about all the support this date can offer. Gretzky vs. Lemieux makes for a great debate most of the time, but not when Mario has Roy in net and Wayne has to rely on The Bandit.

Feb. 7

Forwards: Steven Stamkos, Ryan O’Reilly, Peter Bondra

Defence: Aaron Ekblad, Lee Fogolin

Goaltender: David Aebischer

This team starts strong but fades as we go. Still, that’s a hell of a forward line. And our depth includes a WJC hero in John Slaney and a former first overall pick in Alexandre Daigle. It’s not a bad group, but let’s skip ahead a week and see if Valentine’s Day can warm our hearts …

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Could an all-time team made up of NHL brothers beat one made up of NHL fathers and sons?

Cayden Primeau made his NHL debut last week, playing goal for the Montreal Canadiens two years after being drafted in the seventh round. It’s a great story, especially when you remember that Primeau’s father Keith was a longtime NHLer. Keith’s brother Wayne also played in the league, which was nice for them except for that time that it wasn’t.

Battling brothers. Proud fathers and sons. It feels like there’s a story idea in there somewhere. And luckily, one reader found it for me:

Now that Primeau has started as an NHL goalie, @DownGoesBrown what is your best complete father-son team vs the best complete sibling team? Dick Irvine Sr is the father-son coach with JR calling the game and a Sutter can coach the sibling team. And who would win?

— Dr. Lee Skallerup Bessette (@readywriting) December 6, 2019

Oh hell yes, we’re doing that. Thank you, Lee. (And thanks to everyone else who takes the time to send me weird YouTube clips, obscure trivia and ideas for bizarre stories nobody else would write. You are all the greatest.)

Team Father/Son vs. Team Brother, from all of NHL history. Which side can build the best team? Let’s do this.

But first, as always, some ground rules:

• We’re going to build lines and defense pairings, but we’re not going to get too caught up in who plays where. We might have some guys switch wings or move around a bit. They’re stars, they’ll figure it out.
• We’re using Peak Production rules here, which is to say that if you get a player, you get them at their very best. They’re healthy, motivated and at the height of their powers.
• Most importantly, and maybe most controversially: We’re going to institute a rule that everyone on this roster has to have played at least 250 NHL games as a skater or 100 games as a goalie. Call it the Brent Gretzky rule. Yes, we could build out a pair of rosters that were front-loaded with mega-stars and then pad them out with a fourth line of guys like Alain Lemieux, Paul Messier and Brett Lindros. But that’s not fun. That’s just naming superstars who happened to have relatives who played hockey, and that’s most of them. We want our rosters to feature guys who made their own name in the game. Or at least came close enough that we can squeeze them in without feeling guilty.

OK, let’s make this happen. We’ll start up front with the top lines, which means both sides are breaking out their big guns.

First lines

Team Brother: Phil Esposito, Maurice Richard, Frank Mahovlich

Team Father/Son: Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Peter Stastny

Yikes. Good luck to anyone trying to shut down either unit; you could make a good case that we’ve got four of the top ten players in hockey history here. That includes Howe, the single greatest player we’ll find on either roster, which gives Team Father/Son a strong start. Mr. Hockey and the Golden Jet together would be close to unstoppable, with a combined 1,400 NHL goals between just two guys (and nearly 500 more if we count the WHA). But they’re facing a killer trio from Team Brother, with the first 50-goal scorer, the first 100-point player and the Big M there to feed them both.

Stastny is notable for a few reasons. For one, he’s the weak link on Team Father/Son’s top line, which isn’t exactly an insult given who he’s playing with. But more importantly, you may be questioning why he’s even on Team Father/Son at all. You could absolutely put him on Team Brother instead, on a line with Anton and Marian. Having run through the various combinations, he ends up fitting a bit better on Team Father/Son, but there may not be a player in league history who presents a tougher call.

Second lines

Team Brother: Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Henri Richard

Team Father/Son: Brett Hull, Zach Parise, J.P. Parise

Both teams have some decent scoring depth. There’s more balance on Team Brother, with three Hall-of-Famers. But Team Father/Son has the most dominant player in Hull and his 741 goals, plus a pair of All-Stars who saw action in some of the most important international tournaments ever played.

Also, a quick clerical matter: We made the call to deny Team Father/Son eligibility to Howie Morenz and Bernie Geoffrion; Howie was Boom Boom’s father-in-law, which doesn’t quite fit the spirit of the thing. Any complaints or challenges can be filed with the official Down Goes Brown Office of Appeals (my trashcan).

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Hockey nicknames are broken. Here’s how we fix them

The NHL has a rich history of cool nicknames. Classic monikers like The China Wall, Old Poison or the Golden Jet evoke memories of larger than life stars, while memories of legendary moments can be summoned just by mentioning The Rocket, Mr. Hockey, Boom-Boom or, simply, The Great One.

But with a small handful of exceptions, all the sport’s best nicknames are from long ago. These days, star players get half-hearted variations of their last names, if they get anything at all. Nicknames used to matter in hockey, but not anymore. The entire concept is broken.

But we can fix this. And all it will take is five steps. Here’s what we need to do:

Step one: Stop accepting what we have now

Ask around an NHL dressing room over the past few decades and you’ll find out that most players are just referred to by modified versions of their last name. Usually, you just take the first syllable or two of their surname, maybe slap on an “er” or a “y” to the end, and you’re done. Sometimes you don’t even do that much. Jonesy. Kaner. Gio. Alfie. Iggy. Ovi.

Everyone agrees that these are terrible sports nicknames. But everyone is wrong.

No, those aren’t bad sports nicknames, because they’re not sports nicknames at all. They’re abbreviations. If you want to get technical, you could call them diminutive hypocorisms. Terms of affection between friends, in some cases. They’re nicknames, I guess, if only in the broadest possible sense.

But they’re not sports nicknames. Sports nicknames are a special class. They’re supposed to be descriptive, or at least creative. Fun, even. Vaguely interesting, at a bare minimum. (An academic paper by Robert Kennedy and Tania Zamuner calls these kinds of nicknames “Homeric,” which I kind of love because it’s a reference to the poet Homer but also captures that homer sports fan vibe).

The key point is that most modern hockey nicknames aren’t good nicknames because they’re not real nicknames at all. If your last name is Jones and people call you Jonesy, you don’t have a nickname. Yet. But maybe you should.

But first, we have to do something very important …

Step two: Stop asking the players what their nicknames are

Sure, players are terrible at assigning nicknames, at least publicly. Therefore, the whole problem is their fault, right? No. Not at all.

It’s not their fault. It’s ours.

All of us. The media. The fans. We’re the ones who are supposed to be coming up with nicknames. That’s supposed to be our job. But at some point along the way, we all decided to offload it onto the players. And again, they’re terrible at it.

The problem was buried right there in the first sentence of step one. “Ask around an NHL dressing room.” Why are we doing that? Who cares what the players call each other? That’s not where great nicknames come from.

Do you think Georges Vezina’s teammates were calling him “The Chicoutimi Cucumber” when they played cards on the train? Of course not. They probably called him Vezzy. But we don’t know that, because nobody ever asked them, and rightly so. Some old-timey sportswriter came up with The Chicoutimi Cucumber, everyone else went “that’s awesome” and a nickname was born. Vezina himself didn’t get a say. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Back then, you had to rely on a handful of anointed media to come up with creative names, which worked well enough because most of the good ones were drunk at all times. Later, as cable TV and sports talk radio spread, you might occasionally get something generated by fans that was able to break through the filters. But today, in the age of social media, literally anyone can send a thought out into the world and see it gain traction. And sports nicknames are exactly the sort of fun-but-meaningless content that should be thriving on Twitter. We should be living in a golden age of nicknames.

But we’re not. And it’s because literally, nothing good has ever come from Twitter we all got lazy and just decided to ask the players to do it. Shame on us. It’s not their job, it’s ours. Let’s take it back.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

(This post is part of The Athletic's week-long look into hockey culture. As part of the event, new subscribers can sign up today and save 40%.)

This is so pointless: A brief history of players going oh-for-the-postseason

This post is going to be completely pointless.

Wait, that didn’t come out right. I don’t mean that this post won’t have any reason to exist. I mean, who would write something like that? (Realizes everyone is staring at him.) OK, yes, I may have had a few of those in my day. But this isn’t necessarily one of them.

No, I mean that this is going to be pointless in the other way – as in, it will have zero points. Today, we’re going to try to assemble an all-time roster of playoff performers who didn’t record a single point in a given postseason.

That’s not an easy thing to do, especially if you’re a decent player. Even if your team goes out early, you’d think that you’d get in on at least one goal along the way. But as we’ll see, there are some surprisingly big names on the list. And a few other players have some interesting stories to tell.

Nobody from this year’s postseason made the cut, although a few almost did. Sidney Crosby didn’t get a point until his team’s final game. Neither did Nikita Kucherov. Of course, their runs ended early. But some lasted longer, like Carl Gunnarsson. He made it all the way to Game 2 of the final before finally recording a point. He actually had two that night. I can’t remember if any of them turned out to important.

The point is … well, sometimes there is no point. And that’s OK. Don’t worry, Viktor Arvidsson and Nikolaj Ehlers. Fear not, Nikita Zadorov, Micheal Haley, Trevor van Riemsdyk or Frederik Gauthier. You may have been pointless, but as you’re about to see, you’re in decent company.

First line

C Phil Esposito (1964 and 1967)

We’ll start off with a Hall-of-Famer who qualifies for our list in two seasons, one of which helped change NHL history. Esposito’s playoff debut came in 1964 when he was a 22-year-old rookie. He was only a bit player with the Hawks back then and had only managed three goals in part-time duty during the regular season, so his pointless performance in four games during a semifinal loss to the Red Wings wasn’t especially newsworthy.

But three years later, Esposito was coming off a 61-point season that left him tied for seventh in the league scoring race. With a lineup that also featured Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita in their primes, the Hawks ran away with top spot in the NHL, racking up 94 points over the 70-game schedule while outscoring the next best offensive team by 52 goals. They went into the playoffs as heavy favorites, before being stunned by the Maple Leafs in six games. Esposito was held off the board again, cementing a reputation as a player who couldn’t be counted on when it mattered.

Convinced they needed a change in direction, the Hawks traded him to the Bruins in an offseason deal that stands as one of the most important trades in NHL history. Esposito developed into one of the greatest goal-scorers the league had ever seen, helping the Bruins win two Cups. And it may have never happened if he’d just managed a point or two in that 1967 playoff loss.

RW Mike Gartner (1989) and LW Bryan Trottier (1988)

We’ll give Esposito a pair of Hall-of-Famers on his wings, even if we have to ask Trottier to play out of position to do it. Gartner never won a Cup and occasionally fought a reputation as a guy who was a better regular season star than a playoff performer, as evidenced by the 1994 Rangers shipping him out at the deadline. He did have some decent postseasons, including four where he hit double-digit points. But his lone spring as a North Star saw him go pointless after a massive deadline deal and he’d be gone less than a year later.

As for Trottier, he won six Cups, led the postseason scoring race twice, won a Conn Smythe and ranks among the highest scoring playoff players ever. But he was blanked in a first-round loss in 1988 despite an 82-point regular season, finishing behind high-scoring Islander teammates like Gerald Diduck and Ken Leiter.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Grab Bag: It don't matter if you're black-and-white

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The brilliant fix for goaltender interference that's gaining support yet sounds vaguely familiar
- If we really need to change the Hart Trophy, I have an idea about how we should do it
- An obscure player who shows why just drafting the best player available can sometimes spell disaster
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at the montage video the Kings put together for Wayne Gretzky's record-breaking 802nd goal

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Five franchises with unlikely first 50s

There hasn't been a lot of good news for the Colorado Avalanche this year, so here's something to cheer up Avs fans: Today marks an important milestone in franchise history. Yes, it's been exactly 36 years since Jacques Richard scored his 50^th goal of the 1980-81 season, becoming the first player in franchise history to join that exclusive club.

Wait, who?

Modern fans could be forgiven for not being all that familiar with Richard; he doesn't quite carry the name value of other Nordique/Avalanche 50-goal scorers like Michel Goulet and Joe Sakic. Richard was a journeyman who'd bounced around for most of the 70s, topping the 20-goal mark only once. But in his first full season in Quebec, he ended up getting put on a line with Peter and Anton Stastny, and the trio clicked. Richard scored 52 goals that year, and then only 24 more over the rest of his NHL career, making him one of the great one-hit wonders in league history.

The Nordiques/Avalanche aren't alone here. When you look back at the list of players to be the first in a franchise's history to hit the 50-goal mark, you run into a lot of names that are exactly the ones you'd expect to see. For the Canadiens, of course, it was Rocket Richard. For the Blackhawks, Bobby Hull. You get legends like Mike Bossy for the Islanders, Marcel Dionne for the Kings, and Johnny Bucyk and Phil Esposito (in the same year) for the Bruins. 

But you also run into a handful of unexpected names, guys you wouldn't expect to see in a particular franchise's history books. Today, in honor of Richard's milestone night, let's look at five other unlikely players who were the very first in franchise history to hit the 50-goal plateau

Philadelphia Flyers

A half-dozen Flyers have scored 50 in a season, including well-known names like John LeClair, Mark Recchi, Bill Barber, Tim Kerr and Reggie Leach. But the sixth member of that group is a bit of a surprise. It's not Eric Lindros or Bobby Clarke, or even Jeff Carter. It's the guy who was the first to join the club, Rick MacLeish.

MacLeish's feat was maybe even more surprising given that it came in his first full NHL season, in 1972-73. The former first overall pick had played 43 games over two seasons and scored just three goals heading into the season, but caught fire to finish with 50 goals on the nose. He also had 50 assists, tying him with Clarke as the first Flyers to have a 100-point season.

MacLeish never hit those heights again, although he did have 49 goals in 1976-77. Those were his only two 40-goal seasons, and he finished his career with a respectable 349 over the course of 14 seasons, as well as the Cup-winning goal in 1974.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Grab bag: The next step in killing the loser point

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Your favorite team raised ticket prices. Is that bad?
- A potentially controversial take on the loser point.
- An obscure player who enjoyed what may be the shortest decade-long career in history.
- The week's three comedy stars.
- And a classic YouTube clip of Don Cherry explaining how a hockey net works while trying really hard not to murder his co-host.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Grab bag: Revisiting the Pond of Dreams

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Debating the NHL's top 100 list that we're all going to hate
- There's something very strange about the music acts the NHL booked for the all-star game
- The most obscure player to ever score four goals in a game
- This week's three comedy stars, featuring an f-bombing ref
- And a look back at what's quite possibly the best piece of marketing the NHL has ever produced

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

---

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Ranking every NHL outdoor game

We’re a little over a week into the NHL regular season, so you know what that means: It must be time for an outdoor game.

OK, that may have been harsh. We’ve waited a long time for an outdoor game in Winnipeg, and this weekend’s Heritage Classic between the Winnipeg Jets and Edmonton Oilers should be all sorts of fun.

But it’s probably fair to say that while most fans still love the spectacle of an outdoor game, some of the novelty has worn off over the years, thanks to the league overdoing the concept.

This year’s schedule features four outdoor games — up from last year’s three, but still well under the record six games that the NHL served up in 2013-14.

Counting a handful of exhibitions, Sunday's game will mark the 22nd outdoor game in NHL history. Some of those have been memorable. Others, not so much.

Today, let's look back at those 21 outdoor games that are already in the books and count them down from worst to best. It's a subjective list, obviously, but we'll be looking at a few criteria, including the novelty factor, the venue, the buildup, and the quality of the game itself.

Oh, and games will get bonus points for actually being played outside. That's bad news for the first game on our list...

#21: March 2, 2014 – Senators 4, Canucks 2 (BC Place)

Let's see if we can list all the problems with the league's worst-ever outdoor game.

It featured two teams with no history or rivalry of any kind. The novelty factor was close to zero, given that it was the sixth outdoor game in nine weeks and the second one played that weekend. The game itself was only marginally entertaining, and is probably best remembered for John Tortorella's decision to nuke the team's relationship with Roberto Luongo for no particular reason.

And, oh yeah, it wasn't actually played outdoors – rain forced the stadium's retractable roof to be closed. The only argument against this game being dead last on our list is that it technically shouldn't be on here at all.

#20: April 9, 1956 – Bruins vs. Bay Roberts local teams (Conception Bay Sports Arena)

This was a weird one. As part of an exhibition series played after the Boston Bruins' regular season had ended, the team made a series of stops through Newfoundland to face local teams.

That included a stop in Conception Bay for what was supposed to be a fairly standard game against three local squads. But the local arena wasn’t finished yet, so the event ended up being played outdoors in fog and drizzle.

At one point, according to legend, Bruins' goalie Terry Sawchuk was spotted holding an umbrella.

#19: January 1, 2011 – Capitals 3, Penguins 1 (Heinz Field)

You could make a strong case that the fourth Winter Classic was the most-anticipated outdoor hockey game ever played.

The novelty hadn't worn off yet, the matchup featured the league's two biggest stars in Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, and the buildup included the debut of HBO's 24/7 documentary mini-series, which helped turn the game into something that felt like an epic confrontation straight out of Hollywood.

But then the actual game arrived, and things went off the rails.

Warm weather, wind and the threat of rain put the entire event in jeopardy. They eventually got the game started seven hours late, pushing it out of its scheduled afternoon slot. And despite all the star power, the game ended up being a low-scoring affair in which Eric Fehr played the hero.

Then, of course, there was the game's only truly memorable moment: David Steckel's blindside hit on Sidney Crosby.

The Penguins' star was allowed to remain in the game, played four nights later, took another hard hit and missed the rest of the season (and beyond) with a concussion.

Based on the buildup, this one should have been an easy top-ten pick. But the enduring image from the game will always be the sport's best player doubled over and facing an uncertain future.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Grab bag: When awards shows get weird

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Has soccer passed hockey in the USA?
- A big problem with expansion that we all missed
- The week's biggest stories were a Penguins' Cup win and remembering Gordie Howe. An obscure player with connections to both.
- A 100% Phil Kessel edition of the weekly comedy stars
- And the 1995 NHL Awards gets truly weird...

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Weekend report: The best team wins

In the end, the better team won.

After the disappointment of dropping Game 5 at home on Thursday, the Penguins went into San Jose last night and took care of business with a 3-1 win. That wraps up the fourth Stanley Cup in franchise history, and the second of the Sidney Crosby era.

And while the Sharks have nothing to hang their heads over after a deep playoff run that rewrote many of the narratives about the franchise's ability to win the big one, the Penguins left little questions about whether their win was deserved. They dominated long stretches of the series, showing off their impressive team speed while containing the Sharks' biggest weapons. In the third period last night, with a one-goal lead and the title on the line, the Penguins held a desperate Sharks team to just two shots on goal.

Sidney Crosby took home the Conn Smythe, a solid choice even if Phil Kessel might have been a slightly better one. Trevor Daley got the honor of receiving the first Cup handoff, in recognition of his first career championship and his mother's cancer battle. And San Jose fans buried Gary Bettman under a loud chorus of boos, passing the annual test and cementing their status as tried and true hockey fans.

Hi haters. Photo by Bruce Bennett/Pool Photo via USA TODAY Sports

It was an uneven series, one that was criticized early for being boring before picking up speed as it went on. Despite the presence of some of the game's biggest offensive stars, the two teams combined to average just 4.5 goals a game, further evidence of the Dead Puck Era's ongoing existence that the league will no doubt continue to ignore. But the games were close, with all six coming down to the final minutes, and even when the ice seemed titled it never felt like the Sharks were out of it.

But the Penguins deserved it, and in the end they got it done. We'll spend the next few days talking about legacies, Crosby's in particular—his trophy case is now edging into some very exclusive territory. Attention will also turn to both teams' windows, and whether either can expect to be back here next year and beyond. And then, after a few days to catch our breath, it's full speed into the offseason, with the buyout period starting on Wednesday.

It's possible that the Penguins will have sobered up by then, but here's hoping the party is still going strong. The best team won, and earned it.

Top Five

Celebrating those who've had the best week.

5. Martin Jones—The heroic losing goalie is one of the Cup final's most enduring tropes, so much so that they occasionally win the Conn Smythe. Jones didn't quite get to that level, but he was spectacular over the last two games with the Sharks facing elimination. That was especially true in Game 5, when he made 44 saves to almost single-handedly prolong the season.

He kept it up last night, including a ridiculous save off of Phil Kessel with five minutes left to keep the Sharks' hopes alive. His play was so strong that it apparently even caused some sort of mind wipe on a pair of Penguins forwards that we'll get to in a bit. His overall numbers weren't great, but fans tend to remember the most recent highlights, and Jones provided plenty of them.

In the end, it wasn't enough. But it was a strong run from a guy who went into the season facing questions about whether he was a full-time starter or simply a product of the Kings' system. He won't be hearing those again for a while.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

RIP Gordie Howe

Gordie Howe passed away this morning, surrounded by family at his son’s home. He was a Hall of Famer and four-times Stanley Cup champion who dominated the record book over the course of a 32-year career, and he was known as Mr Hockey because nobody else could have been.

Howe’s death doesn’t come as a shock – he’d been battling serious health problems for several years – and over the next few days, you’re going to see a flood of tributes to him from around the sports world. Some of those will be written by those who watched him play, and others by those who were lucky enough to have known him. They’ll be touching and heart-felt, and I encourage you to read every one of them.

I’m young enough that I never saw Howe play. Even his later years, when he was putting up 41 points for the Whalers as a 51-year-old, were before my time. And yet Howe was one of the most important players of my lifetime; he did as much to shape my identity as a hockey fan as any player I could name. Howe was hockey. He was the archetype of what a hockey player should be.

That wasn’t because of his scoring records, which were stunning at the time but have almost all long since been broken. It’s not about his unmatched longevity, amazing as that was, or about his dominance in his prime, although there’s no question that he was the best player in the sport for long stretches.

Hockey’s always been a strange game, and to a new fan, it can feel like two different sports are being played at once. There are the element of speed and skill that show themselves throughout the game in ways both big and small; the way that some players can almost effortlessly do things on ice that, if you stop and think about it, should really be impossible. And there’s also the violence, the fury of collisions and elbows and sometimes fists. Not everyone appreciates that side of the game, and it’s been fading from the sport in recent years, but it’s still there in some form and always will be.

Those two halves of the game shouldn’t be able to co-exist, but they do, often on the same shift. At its best, hockey can be a work of art that leaves blood and teeth all over the canvas. And that’s why Gordie Howe always seemed to matter so much, why he was at the very core of what the sport was. Nobody ever combined both halves of the game the way he did.

Howe won the NHL’s scoring title six times, as well as six MVP honors, both marks that stood until Wayne Gretzky arrived. He was also a 23-time All-Star, which seems like it must be a typo. Nobody will touch that mark, and is speaks to Howe’s legacy of being so good for so long.

But the secret to Howe’s success was that his skill was tied to a legendary mean streak. Before he ascended to Mr Hockey status, he had another nickname: Mr Elbows. If you’re wondering where he got it, well, ask anyone who ever went into a corner with him. Be patient waiting for an answer; there’s a decent chance their jaw is still wired shut.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Grab bag: All-stars, punching, and all-stars punching

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Thoughts on the John Scott all-star campaign
- What GMs like Tim Murray get wrong about trading
- A look back at the only fights in all-star game history
- Adding a new term to the hockey lexicon
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a YouTube breakdown of the days when a coach attacking a player didn't mean him names

>> Read the full post on ESPN.com

Things overheard at the Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony

By the third time he ordered them to punch
an invisible midget, the inductees had begun
to realize the photographer may be crazy.

Last night saw four former NHL stars receive the highest honour the sport has to offer when they were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Doug Gilmour, Eddie Belfour, Joe Nieuwendyk and Mark Howe will each now see their names included among the legends that line the wall in the Great Hall.

The induction ceremony capped off several days of celebration, which included the annual Hall of Fame Game, a fan forum, and a legends game. It all makes up one of the most popular weekends on the NHL's calendar, with many of the biggest names in the sport gathered to take part in the festivities.

Needless to say, my sources were there with tape recorders rolling. And they put together a list of the most interesting comments overheard during the course of the evening.

• Wow, Doug Gilmour sure is getting emotional during his acceptance speech. Wait, what do you mean you can't see him? He's standing right in front of you, Mr. Fraser.
  
  
• That's a great question, Mr. Belfour, I'm not sure why your plaque has that asterisk next to the mention of your Stanley Cup win. I'll ask the engraver, he's the guy over there in the Sabres jersey.
  
  
• Mr. Nieuwendyk, how does it feel to be the only player in NHL history to have ever been traded for Jarome Iginla? You know, until next March.
  
  
• BOOOOOOO! Oh, sorry Mr. Bettman, I saw you brush up against the Stanley Cup display and I guess it was just force of habit.
  
  
• Come quick! Mark Howe is telling some great stories about how in the old days the Flyers would respond to a tough defence by working harder instead of just refusing to play any more like spoiled toddlers.
  

Read the rest of this post...