Search for your favorite player or team
© The Hockey News. All rights reserved. Any and all material on this website cannot be used, reproduced, or distributed without prior written permission from Roustan Media Ltd. For more information, please see our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Top 50 Players of All-Time by Franchise
In The Hockey News 2017 Collector’s Edition, we count down the top 50 players for each NHL franchise. With stats and bios for all 1,500 players, plus a full-page profile on a star for every club, and top 10s for the six defunct teams, this mag is a trip through the game’s rich history that all fans are sure to enjoy.
DETROIT RED WINGS
CONSIDER THIS. Only four players in NHL history have played more than 1,500 games, while doing so all for the same franchise. And three of them – Alex Delvecchio, Steve Yzerman and Nicklas Lidstrom – did it with the Detroit Red Wings. (Shane Doan is the other.) The Wings have had some of the game’s greatest individual talents and they stuck around for a very long time. Detroit has won the majority of its 11 Stanley Cups in three clusters, two in the 1930s, the dynasty of the 1950s and the one that came along more than 40 years later. It should come as no surprise the players on those teams dominate the list of top players. 1 GORDIE HOWE POS | RW YEARS | 1946-71 GP | 1,687 G | 786…
COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS
THE BLUE JACKETS turn 17 this year. They haven’t reached adulthood as an NHL team, so their lore isn’t rich yet. They boast no league MVP or scoring champ. They haven’t won a playoff series. They’ve picked in the top 10 at the NHL draft 13 times this millennium. Detroit hadn’t done so even once until this past June. Columbus has endured mostly painful seasons since arriving and lacks elite players to celebrate aside from sniper Rick Nash and stopper Sergei Bobrovsky. That said, the franchise just completed its most successful year. Some of its current players will eventually go down as the all-time greats. 1 RICK NASH POS | LW YEARS | 2002-12 GP | 674 G | 289 A | 258 P | 547 NASH WAS THE franchise’s first star skater, and…
BRAINS BEHIND THE BRAWN
DERIAN HATCHER casts a shadow like an old, granite statue. He towers over his young charges, all 6-foot-5 of him, breathing fire behind the Sarnia Sting’s bench. He was always intimidating during his 16-season NHL career, and he’s told he has the same effect on his OHL pupils today. Hatcher spent 13 years with the Minnesota North Stars and Dallas Stars, nine as the franchise’s captain, and was a powerful and imposing 235-pound defenseman. Any forward daring enough to streak down his side often left bludgeoned, bruised and shaken. A major knee injury derailed Hatcher’s one season with his hometown Detroit Red Wings in 2003-04 at the end of the Dead Puck Era, and he emerged on the other side of the lockout with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2005-06, where he…
CALGARY FLAMES
1972-1980 ATLANTA FLAMES THE GOLDEN ERA in Calgary came in the late 1980s, when the Flames fought a pitched battle with the Edmonton Oilers in the old Smythe Division but still managed to make two Stanley Cup finals. Calgary lost the first to Montreal in 1986, then got revenge on the Habs by beating them in ’89. Needless to say, many of Calgary’s top all-timers are from this era, but the top five also features Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff, who led the team back to the 2004 final. With the Flames once again reaching contender status, the question becomes how high current mainstays like Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan can climb on this list. 1 JAROME IGINLA POS | RW YEARS | 1996-2013 GP | 1,219 G | 525 A | 570 P…
Made possible with the support of
