Over the course of my writing career, I’ve been known to produce the occasional ranking or two or several dozen, and I can tell you from experience that there’s a weird thing that happens when you do any kind of top five or top ten – people get mad.
OK, that’s not the weird part, because these days you lose your internet account if you go a full day without being furious at some random opinion you were exposed to just because you went specifically looking for it. But it’s the way people get mad: They’ll swear that a certain player or team or whatever absolutely deserves to be on the list, without making any kind of case for which spot it should take.
So if you say that the five best players in NHL history are Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe and Rocket Richard, somebody will show up and be furious that your list doesn’t include Jaromir Jagr or Sidney Crosby or Nicklas Lidstrom. They don’t seem to want you to take anyone off of your list, mind you, they just want their guy there too.
And I get it. When you hear terms like “top five” or “top ten”, they feel more like labels or tiers, a badge that can be earned for being near the top of the mountain. But the obvious problem here is that that’s not how numbers work. There might be eight or nine players who feel like they have a Top Five case, but the number five doesn’t care. There’s five spots, you get five names, and that’s just how it works, even if it means seemingly deserving candidates have to be left off.
All of which is to say that this week’s Top 5 was an ordeal, because there are more than five teams in the league that feel like they deserve a spot right now. This has been an ongoing theme this year, one that has as many as 14 teams looking like genuine contenders. I’ve only got five spots to work with, and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for subtlety. Your favorite team is either in and you’re happy or they’re out an I’m an idiot.
I am an idiot, for the record, but today seemed like a good time to expand the field a bit. Let’s use our bonus five to list teams that are on the outside of this week’s real list but shouldn’t be, because they’re clearly Top 5 teams, you dummy.
While it was at least a little bit lost in all the trade deadline news, Connor McDavid made some history by joining the 50-goal club last week. Somewhat surprisingly, it was the first time he’d reached the milestone, making him the 95th player in NHL history to have achieved the feat.
This seems like a good excuse for a ranking.
Now, with 95 different names to sort through, am I going to write an extensive explanation of each and every rankings, droning on for roughly 10,000 words that nobody will read? Sure, sounds like fun! (Editor’s note: No you will absolutely not.) No I will not. But with some judicious use of grouping and categorization, we can get this down to a manageable level. Remember, these sorts of lists aren’t about being right or wrong. They’re about you CTRL+F’ing down to your favorite player and then having a temper tantrum in the comments about him being too low.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday, so let’s do this. To be clear, I’m not ranking these players best on who had the best careers. I’m not even ranking them based on who had the best goal-scoring season, since we can just sort by stats to get that. No, we’re looking for the guys who do the best job of capturing that 50-goal vibe. I realize that’s vague, but you know it when you see it, so let’s get to the ranking.
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.
This is usually the spot where I do a long lead-in to the column, focusing on the league’s biggest stories. Most of you skip that part and go right to the rankings so you can get super mad that your 16th place team isn’t in the top five. It’s cool, we all know what we signed up for.
But there’s really no need for any of that this week, because we know what the big story is: The trade deadline, which is officially one week away. It’s been quiet so far, without a single trade since way back on March 2. It could stay that way, with Hockey Night in Canada suggesting that some of the bigger names might stay put and Pierre mostly backing that up. Lots of GMs are putting out the word that the market is slow, which they always do at this time of year.
On the other hand, I just wrote about the lack of trades, which usually means that a dozen of them will happen between now and when I hit “send” on this post. Let’s see how much the hockey gods hate me these days.
The NHL saw two legendary players have their numbers retired over the weekend, as Henrik Lundqvist’s 30 went to the rafters in New York and Sergei Zubov’s 56 went up in Dallas. Both players were obviously worthy of the moment, one that ranks as just about the highest honor a team can bestow on a former star. It’s one of the few things in the hockey world that everyone can enjoy.
So, needless to say, I’m going to take this opportunity to make a lot of you mad about it.
Today, we’re going to rank all 32 NHL teams based on their retired numbers. But this isn’t just a list of which teams have honored the best players, because that would be too easy. No, we want to look at the whole picture. Who’s been honored? Who hasn’t? Has the team been weird about who they choose and when? Do they just retire numbers like a normal team, or do they insist on complicating things with some weird team-specific rules that nobody likes? And most importantly of all: Given what they have to work with, are they getting it right?
A few quick notes. We’re not counting the leaguewide retirement of 99, but will count upcoming retirements as long as they’ve already been announced. We’re ranking based on numbers that have formally been retired and removed from circulation, although we’ll make note of numbers that have been honored in other ways. And we’ll be going by the list on Wikipedia, because this right here is a professional operation.
Is there an objective, quantifiable way to rank something like this? Of course there is. Will we be using that method? No we will not. Will you agree with my ranking of your team’s most beloved players? (Checks to see if I ranked all 32 teams as tied for first.) No, I’m guessing you won’t, but that’s half the fun.
Worst to first, all 32 teams but you’re just going to CTRL+F for your own, let’s do this…
32. Seattle Kraken
Numbers retired: 32, for their fans
No.
Look, call me cold-hearted if you want, but retiring a number for your fans is just lame. And it’s especially lame if you choose the number based on how many ticket deposits you sold. Also, the banner that they retired for their fans doesn’t even mention their fans – it just says “Kraken”.
There’s no shame in being a new team without any banners hanging. You don’t need to force it. If your fans wanted to watch a number ascend up to the heavens, they could just look at Phillip Grubauer’s goals against average.
31. Florida Panthers
Numbers retired: Roberto Luongo’s 1, plus the number 37 for Wayne Huizenga and 93 for Bill Torrey
They get one point for retiring Luongo, who was awesome. We’ll be neutral on Torrey, who wasn’t a player and was better associated with another franchise but was still a legitimate legend. And we’ll subtract roughly one million points for honoring an owner, a move that no other NHL team has tried. I’m sure Huizenga was a lovely guy and he had a distinguished career in the waste management/Florida Marlins business, but come on. Even Harold Ballard didn’t think to retire a number for himself, so this is awful.
There’s nothing wrong with the three numbers the Flames have retired. But you’ll notice that there are some big names from the team’s history that are missing, including Al MacInnis, Joe Nieuwendyk, Theo Fleury and Miikka Kiprusoff. That’s where things get messy, because the Calgary Flames apparently can’t decide what they’re supposed to be doing with their numbers.
Here’s the thing: The Flames are the first of several teams we’ll meet that also have “honored” numbers. In their case, that’s MacInnis and Nieuwendyk, both of whose numbers hang in the rafters in Calgary under a new “Forever a Flame” system. But they’re not retired… sort of. It’s been almost 20 years since anyone wore MacInnis’s number 2 for the Flames, and given that it’s an extremely common number for defenseman, we can consider it unofficially retired. So is Fleury’s 14 and Kiprusoff’s 34, neither of which was never given to anyone after those players left. So we have a pattern… except that Nieuwendyk’s 25 has been in circulation pretty much constantly, including being worn by Jacob Markstrom right now.
We’re over a month into the season now, so we should know a few things. Not everything, obviously. There’s still plenty of time for twists and turns and there will be more than a few surprises by the time we get to the games that actually matter. But a month of hockey is a long time, and that means we should be pretty sure on at least a few things by now.
I mean, what else have we got that you actually feel confident about right now? The Panthers were probably on that list a week ago, but haven’t won since. The Avs, Knights and Lightning were all supposed to be elite contenders, and maybe they still are, but they’ve certainly made us wonder at a few points along the way. The Islanders and Bruins seem OK but were supposed to be more. Calgary and Edmonton are better than expected. Who knows about the Penguins, Maple Leafs and Flyers. The Caps, Wild and Jets are maybe about right, I guess?
At the other end of the spectrum, other than the Coyotes pretty much all the teams who were supposed to be bad have been decent other than maybe Ottawa. The Hawks looked awful but were better this week. The Habs are a mess but we’re still waiting to see what they’ll look like when Carey Price is back. Dallas and Vancouver both seems to be almost out of chances. And maybe one of the biggest surprises is that an expansion team looks like an expansion team, which we probably should have all expected but here we are.
Basically, the first month has been a whole lot of “huh”. Depending on your perspective, that might make all of this frustrating or a lot more fun.
Anyway, it’s my job to understand the NHL and explain it to you but I really have no idea what’s going on right now. Please enjoy the power rankings anyway…
We kicked things off with the Jack Eichel trade still reverberating around the league. Thursday’s blockbuster saw the Golden Knights do what they always seem to do and swing big at the best player available, whether they can afford to or not. In this case, that means giving the Sabres a decent if unimpressive return and worrying about that pesky salary cap sometime down the line. It will be months before we see Eichel make his Vegas debut, but it’s the sort of deal that could shift the balance of power in the West.
We had the big Panthers/Hurricanes Saturday showdown that promised to make this week’s number one spot a pretty easy call. The game itself wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, with the Panthers taking a 4-0 lead in the first and then cruising to a 5-2 win. Not great drama, but an emphatic result that hands the Hurricanes their first loss and establishes the Panthers as our early team to beat.
We had our second coaching change (and first traditional firing), as the Hawks finally did what’s felt inevitable for a while now. You could make the case that Jeremy Colliton never really had a chance to succeed in Chicago, but it’s pretty clear that he wasn’t succeeding, even with a rebuilt roster that was supposed to contend for a playoff spot. It’s never fun to see somebody lose their job, but the churn behind the bench is part of life in the NHL, and now we get to see what Derek King can do.
We had a few other interesting stories. The Red Wings got a nifty OT winner from Moritz Seider. The Leafs are good again, at least for a week, with the core four doing all the scoring. The Knights/Habs game was fascinating for reasons we’ll get to in a bit. The Flames continue to dominate, this time icing the Rangers 6-0. The entire Metro stayed over .500. Hell, even the Coyotes got a win. Miracles really do happen.
But who are we kidding, none of that is what we’ll remember most from this weekend. Years from now, we might still be talking about this:
That’s just silly. I’m not even sure I can be mad at the Rangers. Stopping one guy with four should be pretty easy in the NHL, but McDavid isn’t one guy. He’s Mario Lemieux sitting on Pavel Bure’s shoulders wearing a big trench coat. The Rangers did their best, and I think you just pat them on the head and give them some orange slices and promise them that things will be better when they’re playing against human beings.
We’re officially into the final week of the NHL season, with the Stanley Cup final ending as early as tonight and no later than Sunday. And that means that this week, somebody on the Habs or Lightning is going to join a reasonably exclusive club: players that have scored Cup-winning goals.
It’s a weird group. Some Cup-winners have been become famous, or at least infamous. Others are all but forgotten, overshadowed by other moments. That seems like solid ground for a ranking, so let’s go back over the last 25 Cup-winning goals and rank them from worst to least. It’s completely subjective, of course, but it’s always fun to Remember Some Guys Goals.
We’ll be using the NHL’s definition of a game-winning goal, which is to say whichever goal put a team over what their opponent would end the game with. If you win 5-2, the third goal is the winner. If you get a shutout, the first goal is. This is a different definition that other sports use (the old game-winning RBI in baseball used to be the one that put a team ahead to stay) but it’s how the NHL has always done it. Sometimes, the game-winning goal is the most important and memorable in the game. Often, as we’re about to see, it isn’t. But it still goes into the record books.
For the most part, I want to look at each of these 25 goals on their own, without worrying too much about context. A Cup-winner that’s scored in Game 7 is obviously more dramatic than one that caps off a sweep, an overtime winner beats one scored in the first period, and one that wins the Cup for your favorite team is obviously more important than any other. We could try to do it that way, but I think it’s more fun if we just judge each goal on its own merits. How cool a play was it? How much skill was involved? How likely was it to make you shake your head, either in amazement or amusement? That’s what we’re looking for here, without too much concern for the bigger picture.
Well, mostly. There’s one goal that’s impossible to strip away from its greater context, and it’s the one you’re probably already thinking of. We might as well get that one out of the way first…
#25. 1999 – Brett Hull, Stars
To this day, virtually every hockey fan outside of Dallas is convinced that this goal shouldn’t have counted. The NHL was a few seasons into its completely awful skate-in-crease rule, and every fan had been taught that even so much as a toenail in the blue paint meant a goal wouldn’t count. Then Hull scored with his foot in the crease, and nobody even seemed to want to bother to review it.
To be fair, the NHL maintains that this goal was a good one under the rules, since Hull had possession of the puck. (Here’s a clip of the director of officiating explaining that on Hockey Night in Canada, which would be a nice thing to bring back for controversial calls these days.) The possession call is debatable, but the bigger issue is that after training fans to expect tedious reviews anytime anyone was near the crease, the NHL skipped over that this time and went straight to the Cup presentation. The whole scene left the impression that the league just didn’t have the guts to even consider overturning a Cup-winning goal when the celebration was already in full swing, and… well, yeah, you can see why people think that.
Even beyond the controversy, this is a pretty anti-climactic goal, especially given that it involves two legends in Brett Hull and Dominik Hasek. It’s just a basic rebound being shoveled home. Factor in the sour taste it leaves in so many fans’ mouths even decades later, and I can’t rank it anywhere else.
#24. 2007 – Chris Phillips, Senators Travis Moen, Ducks
The only thing keeping this out of the #25 spot is that Hull’s goal remains infamous, while this one has (mercifully) been largely forgotten. That’s good news for Phillips, since there’s a case that this moment should live alongside Scott Norwood and Bill Buckner among the all-time worst plays in sports history with a championship on the line.
Oy yoy yoy, indeed.
#23. 2017 – Patric Hornqvist, Penguins
Some games are just designed to make new hockey fans. This was not one of them. With the Cup in the building and the first repeat championship of the cap era on the line, the Predators and Penguins combined for 58 minutes of scoreless hockey. That’s OK, as long as the eventual winning goal is a good one, right? Or we could get a bank shot off the goalie’s behind. That sound you heard was remote controls clicking off all around the continent.
This one is a little bit of history: Four years before the Hull controversy, here’s the first Cup-winner to ever get the full review treatment. The NHL’s replay system was brand new back then, and there weren’t as many reasons for a review as we have today, but officials could take another look at goals that may have been kicked in.
I still can’t tell if this one was good or not, but how much more fun was replay review when the guys doing it were in the arena and we had a camera on them as they frantically pointed at freeze frames?
#20. 2003 – Mike Rupp, Devils
Rupp played 11 NHL seasons and scored two playoff goals. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this one was the biggest. It comes on a deflection of a Scott Niedermayer point shot. I’d give you more details, but every surviving clip of this goal seems to have been filmed on a potato.
It was exactly 16 weeks ago today that the 2021 edition of this column launched, back when the season was a few games old and we were pretty sure it was way too early. Was it? Put it this way: The Flyers were in the top five that week. Yeah, it might have been a little early.
It’s not early anymore, as the regular season is over, except where it isn’t. With apologies to the Flames and Canucks, whose remaining two games are super important and will certainly not be completely ignored by everyone outside their immediate families, we can put a bow on the regular season right now, with one last set of rankings.
The weekend certainly gave us plenty to chew on, with four games, three overtimes, at least a few upsets depending on who you picked, and no early evidence that anyone is unbeatable. Should we be shifting teams around the rankings based on one game? Well, yeah — one loss in the playoffs puts you a quarter of the way to elimination. But every Stanley Cup champion loses a few along the way, and you always have to strike a balance without overreacting to the first games of Round 1.
So where did those first few games leave us? We’ll get there in a minute. But first, let’s wrap up with some regular season record-keeping. The season saw a total of 12 teams appear in the top five, with 11 more in the bottom five. For the first time in a few years, nobody crossed over to appear on both lists (although the Flyers certainly made a case). I’m going to attribute that to me getting better at this, and not to a shorter season giving me about 10 fewer columns to mess up with.
The Lightning and Golden Knights both appeared in the top five in all 17 weeks, and the Avalanche almost did, dropping out briefly in early March. Those were also the only three teams to appear in the No. 1 slot. Carolina didn’t crack the top five for a month, but then ended the season on a 13-week appearance streak. Other multiple appearances included the Bruins (eight times), Capitals (five), Leafs (five, all of which were followed by a losing streak) and Islanders (twice). Aside from that first-week Flyers pick, every team that made the top five went on to secure a playoff spot.
In the bottom five, Ottawa’s late-season hot streak and final weekend escape means that not a single team appeared on every list, which I think is a first. The Senators showed up 16 times while the Red Wings and Ducks both had 15, the Sabres ran the table over the final 12 and the Devils had eight. Only Detroit, Ottawa and Buffalo held down the top spot, and a single appearance by the Predators was the only one to feature an eventual playoff team. (Fun fact: That Nashville debut came in the same week that the Sabres first showed up for the first time, proving that not all bottom five appearances are created equal.)
As for that mushy middle, eight teams didn’t make either list all season long. That includes four that missed the playoffs (the Flames, Coyotes, Stars and Rangers) and four more that are still playing (Blues, Wild, Jets and Oilers). We declared the Coyotes the league’s most mediocre team a few weeks ago, and that probably holds up, although the Blues finishing with 27 wins and 29 losses and a dead-even goals differential makes a strong case.
Let’s get on to the rankings. There’s only one set this week, since at this point you can just look at the standings if you want to know which teams ended up at the bottom of the league. But rather than give you a half-column, let’s go out with a bang by going long on the Cup list. That’s right, it’s a season-ending top 16 ranking of the most likely Cup winners, featuring every playoff team …
We’re 20 weekends into the season, and here’s where we’re at. The regular season is over for several teams, with the Penguins, Rangers, Sabres, Coyotes, Wings, Ducks and Blue Jackets all crossing the finish line of Saturday. The Stars, Hawks, Devils, Flyers, Hurricanes, Predators, Islanders, Lightning and Panthers will all join them tonight. We’re a couple of days away from the vast majority of the league being done. But the season still has well over a week to go, because the Canucks’ schedule drags until next Wednesday. But the playoffs will start before that, except in the North Division, we think, but maybe not, and the league hasn’t actually told us when the postseason will start yet, although their TV partner maybe did.
Makes sense? Sure it does.
Look, it’s been a weird season and we all knew what we were signing up for. Let’s focus on the positive, as the playoff picture comes into focus. The big news is that the last Central spot is settled, with Nashville taking care of business over the weekend to lock down a berth that seemed unlikely even a few weeks ago. They’ll face the Hurricanes in round one.
We know that we’re getting that Battle of Florida matchup that we were all hoping for, and the two teams served up a preview on Saturday that has some genuine nastiness on the way to a 5-1 Panthers win. They’ll meet again tonight in both teams’ season finales, meaning we could get nine straight Panther/Lightning games by the time this is done.
In the East, we know it’s Penguins first and Capitals second, meaning we’ll have to wait for round two to get the next chapter of Crosby vs. Ovechkin. We’re not sure who’ll play who yet, as the Bruins and Islanders have to sort out who’ll finish third. The West still has the top three seeds up for grabs, and will be the last division to finish its schedule.
In the North, the Leafs are locked in at number one but we don’t know for sure that they’ll get the dream matchup with the Habs, although it’s looking a little more likely thanks to Montreal dropping three straight in regulation to close the week. Update with whether Calgary stayed alive.
And finally, about the dramatic Connor McDavid chase for 100 points… yeah, never mind. He’s apparently not big into suspense, hitting the mark on Saturday with several games to spare.
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