Best Hockey Players to Play for Las Vegas

With the announcement that the NHL's thirty-first team, which will be added for the 17/18 season, is based in none other than Las Vegas, Nevada, I've decided to celebrate some of Sin City's hockey history with this list. From 1993 through 99, the now defunct IHL included the Las Vegas Thunder, a short-lived team to be sure, but one that had quite a lot of interesting players, including many NHL fans are familiar with. For six seasons the Thunder were a mixed bag but always entertaining. They were arguably the first team to prove that professional hockey in the desert could indeed work.

From the outspoken and frequent Off The Record guest, enforcer Lyndon Byers (31 games and 176 penalty minutes in 93/94) to high scoring minor league defenceman ace (and former Cape Breton Oiler) Greg Hawgood (a 20 goal, 85 point season in 95/96) to diminutive NHL scorer Daniel Briere (a single game during the team's 97/98 season), the Thunder boasted lots of noteworthy and interesting talent. Brent Gretzky represented Vegas at one time (96/97) and so did longtime Detroit Red Wings goalie Manny Legace, several years before reaching the NHL (97/98) and sharing the net with former Red Wings goalie, Tim Cheveldae. And how about Manon Rheaume? Remember her? The female goaltender who once played an exhibition game for the Tampa Bay Lightning? Well, she played two actual-for-serious regular season games for the Thunder in 1994.

But enough with the honourable mentions/shoutouts (and honestly, there could be more; for more on the team's history follow this link); let's get to the best.

5. Petr Nedved, LW (1997-99)/Curtis Joseph, G (95/96)

He doesn't want anyone to know he played there, I guess

In terms of sheer talent and career, Nedved would rank higher if he hadn't been limited to just 16 games spread over the 97/98 and 98/99 seasons. After leaving the Pittsburgh Penguins due to a contract dispute following the conclusion of the 96/97 NHL season, Nedved returned to his native Czech Republic to play for Sparta Praha. But he would return to North America towards the end of the season, still unhappy with his NHL contract but still technically Pittsburgh property, to join the Thunder for three games. He acquitted himself very well, scoring 3 goals and 6 points but he didn't suit up for their playoff series. All summer his contract status with the Penguins went unresolved so he began the next season in Las Vegas, racking up 18 points in 13 games before being traded from the Penguins to the New York Rangers for Alex Kovalev.

The second overall pick of the 1990 NHL draft and a veteran of 982 NHL games, Nedved is easily one of the higher profile players to play for the Thunder.

The same rules apply to Joseph - heck, he could even be number one on this list if he'd played more games but as he started just 15, I've decided to have him share this slot with Nedved. And just like Nedved, it was a contract dispute that landed Joseph, certainly an NHL star in his own right, in Las Vegas. He played like one too, going 12, 2 and 1 with a sparkling .929 save percentage and miniscule 1.99 goals against average before returning to the NHL with the Edmonton Oilers. Cujo was definitely the most talented and accomplished man to ever guard the net in Las Vegas.







4. Sergei Zholtok, C (1995-97)
Zholtok is one of several one-time Las Vegas Thunder players to meet a premature and tragic end. During the NHL lockout year of 2004/05, he was playing in his native Latvia for Riga 2000 in the Latvian National  Hockey Championship and the Open Belarus Hockey Championship when he left a game with five minutes remaining, collapsing in the dressing room and dying. He had a pre-existing cardiac arrhythmia and ultimately died of heart failure. He was thirty-one years old.

But back when his professional career was in its early stages, the Boston Bruins draft pick (55th in 1992) would move from the AHL with Providence (the Bruins's AHL farm team) in the 94/95 season to the IHL to play for the Thunder. He played every game of the 95/96 season with them and established himself as a star in the league, scoring 51 goals and 101 points and adding 20 points in 15 playoff games.

He would begin the 96/97 season again in Las Vegas, scoring 13 goals and 27 points in 19 games before returning to the NHL (he'd played sparingly for the Bruins a few years before) as an Ottawa Senator. He would go on to be an NHL regular, also playing for the Canadiens, Oilers, Wild and Predators until his untimely death. He's probably the greatest hockey player to ever come out of Latvia besides Sandis Ozolinsh.

His 95/96 season in Las Vegas is one of the greatest offensive seasons in the team's history - only one other player had a 50 goal season for them and only two others managed 100 points in one, including his teammate Patrice Lefebvre.

3. Radek Bonk, C (1993-95)
In its day (1945-2001), the IHL was an interesting league. It coexisted alongside the AHL, providing the same function (farm system for NHL teams) and containing players of basically the same skill level. I'm not sure when the rule was implemented but at least during the period that the Las Vegas Thunder was in operation, players under eighteen years of age were eligible to play. Nowadays in the AHL, no underage players are permitted and even eighteen and nineteen year olds are extraordinarily rare due to the current rules. It's led to the awkward problem of North American players who have proven ridiculously dominant in the CHL (Canada's three major junior leagues) but may not be quite ready to play in the best professional league in the world (um, the NHL) having no choice but to return to junior even though it's unlikely to help their development.

Anyway, I mentioned all that because this entry, Radek Bonk (one of the best names in sports, right?), was one of the IHL's such players - a seventeen year old foreign import who was talented and physically mature enough to play pro, but, as the NHL draft is for eighteen year olds, couldn't yet play on the biggest stage. He signed with the Thunder for their inaugural season and was an instant sensation. He finished third on the team in scoring with 87 points, including 42 goals. He even wore the flashy #76 (worn by the likes of P.K. Subban in the NHL these days) for them; a far cry from his #14 with the Sens.

But the statistic I find most interesting about that year was his penalty minute total - 208 - that's in the range of an extremely physical player and in Bonk's case, a power forward who scores. That stat line is akin to players like Brendan Shanahan, Gary Roberts and Rick Tocchet. But here's the thing - if you knew Bonk from his days in the NHL, you'd remember him as a fairly mild mannered player. Even though he was 6'3 and around 215 pounds, in the NHL at least, he wasn't particularly physical at all and his PIM totals reflect that. His career high in the league is 66 - a very average amount.

Not having seen him play for the Thunder and since I can't really find much info on his season there, I can only theorize that Bonk's status as a hotshot seventeen year old who was also quite big caused his IHL opponents to take it upon themselves to challenge him physically. You don't put up over 200 penalty minutes without fighting. I can't recall him EVER fighting in the NHL but it must've happened at least a couple times.

So Bonk's awesome season led directly to him being drafted third overall by the Senators in the 94 draft. He likely would've jumped straight to the NHL the next year but a lockout delayed the 94/95 season and he played his first 37 games back in Vegas. We all know now that he never turned into the dominant star player he was envisioned to be but he was definitely one of Ottawa's most consistent and reliable players over the near decade that he played for them. He established himself as a good second line player with some scoring ability, topping out at 70 points in 01/02, but most years he was more in the range of 45 or so.

While he's most remembered as a solid if unspectacular player in the NHL, for the Las Vegas Thunder, he was one of their very best and brightest stars.

2. Pavol Demitra, LW (1996/97)

While most of his brief IHL career was spent with another franchise, the Grand Rapids Griffins (who shifted into the AHL when the IHL folded), Demitra's 22 game stint in Las Vegas in 96/97 can't be overlooked. Because...well, it's Pavol Demitra. As with Sergei Zholtok, Demitra is tragically no longer with us. One of the most talented and accomplished Slovakian players of all time, he was killed in September of 2011 along with the rest of his Yaroslavl Lokomotiv (KHL) teammates in a plane crash.

Like Bonk, Demitra was an Ottawa Senators draft pick, but he was at the other end of the spectrum, going 227th overall in 1993. He never really found his footing with the Sens but after playing in the IHL with the Thunder and Griffins, he joined the St. Louis Blues and soon developed into a star player. On the international stage, he was always one of Slovakia's best and most prominent players. This was punctuated nicely at the 2010 Olympics where he was named Best Forward after leading the tournament in points.

A brief teammate of his in Las Vegas was Belrussian defenceman, Ruslan Salei, who also carved out a very respectable NHL career. But unfortunately, that wasn't their only link. Salei was also a member of Yaraslav Lokomtiv  in 2011 and was killed in the crash as well. So that's three former Las Vegas Thunder players I'm aware of who died prematurely.

1. Alexei Yashin, C (94/95)
By now it's pretty clear that the Ottawa Senators are the NHL team with the strongest link to Las Vegas. That's all going to change in a year but the history will always be interesting. Like Bonk, Yashin was a top three pick at the NHL draft (1992 this time) for Ottawa but unlike Bonk, proved right away he was a genuine star at the NHL level. It's only because of the lockout in 1994 that a player of his calibre wound up playing for the Thunder. He and Bonk were actually teammates that year so right off the bat Bonk got to meet the guy who would keep him from being a number one centre in the NHL.

And while I could probably devote several lists to Yashin based on the kind of career he's had, mostly due to the reputation he would develop as an underachiever whose heart didn't match up to his talent, in Vegas he pretty much delivered. In the only 24 games he would ever spend at the minor league level, Yashin showcased his all-world skills, racking up 15 goals and 35 points. Unfortunately for the Thunder, the 94/95 NHL season did eventually start and their Russian star returned to the big league so they were without him down the stretch and for the playoffs.

With 781 points in 850 NHL games (an impressive total especially
considering he sat out the entire 99/00 NHL season with a contract dispute right smack in the middle of his most productive years), I think it's safe to say the enigmatic and sometimes frustrating Yashin was the greatest hockey talent to ever play in service of the city of Las Vegas. With the NHL about to put a team there I guess that won't be true for much longer. But you never know.

NHL Stars That Never Were

One of the most fun questions we can pose about pretty much any subject is "what if"? Yes, it can also be one the most torturous, but hey, this is fiveorama and we're all about fun here so...um, this will be one of the fun times.

Of course in the world of hockey, there are tons of "what ifs" that make for some interesting hypothesizing. Some of the more popular ones are "What if Eric Lindros hadn't been such a bitch and decided to play for the team that actually drafted him, the Quebec Nordiqes, instead of flat out refusing and forcing one of the biggest and most significant trades in NHL history?" "What if Bobby's knees had held up?" "What if Canada had LOST the 1972 Summit Series?" and, my personal favourite: "What if Kerry Fraser had actually called Gretzky for highsticking Gilmour in May of 1993?" Oh, that one still bounces around in my head on at least a monthly basis.

But I said we'd be sticking to actually fun examples, not horribly painful ones. Now I'll admit that these aren't 100% fun because for a few of them, there definitely is a degree of tragedy present. But from strictly a hockey standpoint at least, they are fun to think about (I promise). Also I'll be limiting my choices to players that never played a single game in the NHL. So guys like the great Soviet star from Latvia, Helmut Balderis, who made his NHL debut at the age of 37 (with the Minnesota North Stars) after a distinguished career oversees, won't count. Players such as Michel Briere and Luc Bourdon managed to play briefly in the league before their untimely deaths so they're out as well.

So here are some players who, for various reasons never got to play in hockey's greatest league but whom I really believe would have been stars there if they had.

5. George Pelawa RW

Yup. He was friggin' huge

Players drafted while playing American high school hockey are incredibly rare. After all, putting up dominating stats in a league that is far inferior to Canadian major junior, pro leagues in Europe or American university is rarely seen as that impressive. But there have been exceptions, perhaps most notably goaltender Tom Barrasso who was not only picked extremely high at fifth overall but jumped straight into the NHL and won the Calder Trophy as the league's top rookie. And Brian Lawton too of course.

But back to George. A huge physical specimen at 6'3, 245 pounds as an eighteen year old, he effortlessly broke highschool scoring records and was named Minnesota Mr. Hockey as the most outstanding highschool player in the state. Several past and present NHLers have held the title. Pelawa so impressed scouts with his blend of size and skill that the Calgary Flames made him their first pick in the 1986 draft, taking him at sixteenth overall.

He was committed to play the 86/87 season with the University of North Dakota. But shortly after moving into his dorm there in late August 1986, he was hit by a car and killed.

It's impossible to say for sure whether or not Pelawa would have lived up to his lofty draft position or even made the NHL but I imagine he would have. If he could have played in the league anytime from his drafting until about 1992 or so, he would have been the biggest player in the league's history up to that point (there had been taller players but none so heavy). 

Maybe he could have been Eric Lindros before Lindros (except he was winger rather than a centre, and like most wingers, more of a goalscorer than playmaker) -  a power forward of such size and strength that he'd been almost impossible for defenders to contain down low. Maybe he would have scored piles of goals the way Tim Kerr had - by being an immovable object in front of the net and banging in rebounds and tipping point shots. Only he was even bigger and far more physical in his playing style than Kerr ever was. I see his best years being seasons with more than forty goals and two hundred penalty minutes - a unique stat line for a unique kind of player.

We'll never know.


4. Alexei Cherapanov RW

He never got to play wearing that jersey

Another young man who died way before his time, Cherapanov was the latest in a long line of Russians with dizzying offensive skills. We can be a little more sure of his potential as an NHLer than of Pelawa's because he lived long enough to play pro hockey. In fact it was while playing hockey, in the KHL with Omsk Avangard - the team he'd played with as a seventeen year old when he was drafted by the New York Rangers at seventeenth overall in 2007, that he met his end. Late in a game on October 13, 2008, after completing a shift with teammate Jaromir Jagr (something of an NHL star, if you'll recall), the nineteen year old suddenly collapsed on the bench. He was briefly revived twice before dying two hours later in hospital. His death led to an extensive investigation and several people within the league were suspended indefinitely.

But as to what kind of NHL talent Cherapanov could have been, I would say pure goalscorer. This was the kid who broke Pavel Bure's record for goals by a seventeen year old in the Russian pro league. He also had more points than any of Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk did in their seventeen year old seasons in that league. Those are only three of the biggest stars to play in the NHL within the past fifteen years or so. Ovechkin and Kovalchuk both have multiple fifty goal seasons and Malkin, who has one, has led the league in scoring twice, finishing atop the heap again this year. So it's certainly reasonable to imagine that Cherapanov could have been just as good.

Although at 6'1, 183, he wasn't as physically imposing as any of those three. And like Bure, Ovechkin and Kovalchuk, he was more of a scorer than playmaker, collecting more goals than assists in his brief professional career. He was on just under a point a game pace as a nineteen year old.

And unlike other players on this list, I did actually see Cherapanov play. He was front and centre at the 2007 and 2008 World Junior Championships for Russia. He scored five goals in six games leading his team to the silver medal in 2007. He was selected to the tournament all star team and named top forward overall. In 2008, the Russians took bronze and Cherapanov had six points in six games.

Actually, he was seen by many as the most talented player in the entire 2007 draft class (which included number one pick and current NHL star, Patrick Kane by the way) and was only taken so late in the first round because many teams were unsure of his desire to actually play in the NHL. But the Rangers decided they couldn't pass him up.

The following year his World Junior teammate Nikita Filatov was the next Russian hotshot projected to be a star and taken in the first round. So far things haven't really worked out that way as he couldn't consistently stay in the Blue Jackets's lineup, bouncing between them and the AHL and playing the entire 09/10 season back in Russia. They eventually gave up on him and traded him to Ottawa where he couldn't seem to make an impact either and is currently back in the KHL, putting up modest stats.

I mention Filatov because I'm well aware that Cherapanov could have been a flop in the NHL too - you  can never tell with any young player and gifted Russians are very often enigmatic. Still, I don't think Filatov is of the same pedigree as Cherapanov and firmly believe that if he had lived, would have eventually made his way to the NHL and established himself there as a star.

3. Sven Tumba C

Was there anything this man could not do?

A legend of Swedish hockey, Sven Tumba had a chance to become the first European star in the NHL (I don't count the Slovakian-born, Canadian-raised Stan Mikita), but it wasn't to be. Consequently, most North American hockey fans have never even heard of him. But as I said, over in Europe, particularly his home country, this guy was a big deal. You're about to learn why.

Born with the extremely common Swedish last name Johansson, he would eventually legally change it to Tumba - the name of the small town he'd grown up in -  and by all accounts, he earned it. He played sixteen years - from 1950 through 1966 - with the Tre Konor, Sweden's national team, and established himself as their best player, eventually becoming captain. He won seven medals at the World Championships (three gold, a silver and three bronze), two Olympic medals (bronze in 1952 and silver in 1964) and retired having scored the most goals ever for Team Sweden with 186 in 245 games. Within the Swedish League he led his team to eight national championships. Yeah, the guy was a winner.

And it doesn't stop there. He was multi-sport athlete, playing soccer at the professional and international levels and was a pro golfer too. In fact, he's responsible for introducing golf to the Soviet Union. Oh, and he was also a Swedish water-skiing champion. Besides that he also hosted his own radio show called The Tumba Hour and founded multiple charitable organizations as well as inventing the Scandinavian Open and running his own hockey school. And who was it that actually invented the hockey helmet? It was SVEN FUCKING TUMBA.

So he was a great player on the international amateur scene, but was he good enough to have played in hockey's greatest league? Hell yeah. Tumba was actually the first European to ever attend an NHL training camp when he tried out for the Bruins in the late fifties. They offered him a $50 000 contract (quite a bit back then) to start with the Quebec Aces, who were the Bruins's farm team at the time, but he ultimately turned it down because playing pro in North America would have made him ineligible to play for his beloved Swedish national team.

But an interesting fact I dug up is that while he was there (1957) he did play a handful of games with the Aces who at the time had a twenty-one year old Willie O'Ree on the roster. If the name doesn't ring a bell, O'Ree was the first black player to ever play in the NHL, having played two games as callup for the Bruins that season and then forty-three games with them in the 60/61 season. I think that's pretty interesting and it's weird that I've never read about it anywhere.

Although he was a centre, Tumba was more of a goalscorer than playmaker and a signature move of his was taking the puck off the boards in the offensive zone and deftly cutting into the middle to unleash a wicked wrist shot. Actually, one thing he took home with him from his experience in North America was the slapshot - something that really wasn't being used over in Europe at that time. Reportedly he was so good at it that some folks called for it to be banned because I guess they thought it wasn't fair to the poor goalies. Well, we all know that eventually the slapshot did catch on across the sea and it seems only fitting that it was Sven Tumba who'd shown them the way.

Tumba passed away last year and the nation of Sweden mourned the loss of a hero, who many still feel was the greatest of their country to ever play the game. Considering some of the Swedish stars we're all aware of who play or have played in the NHL, that's high praise indeed. I really feel that in the late fifties and early sixties he could have been a star player for the Bruins, maybe even helping them to not completely suck as they did back then. We can dream.

2. Valeri Kharlamov LW

Our first taste of dazzling Russian skill

One of the rare players elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame never to have played in the NHL, there is really no doubt he would have been a star there. Other entries on this list can certainly be disagreed with but not this one. Kharlamov is pretty much a slam dunk.

I could have made all my picks Russian players who played and retired before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Hell, I could have made this list entirely out of Russians who played in the 1972 Summit Series that made Kharlamov so famous. But better to have some variety so I opted to just pick one. It was a no-brainer to go with #17 as he's probably the most electrifying non-NHL talent ever to be seen by North American fans.

He made an immediate impact too. In the infamous first game of that series in Montreal, wherein a team of NHL stars were shellacked by a team of Russian "amateurs" by a score of 7-3, no Soviet player stood out more than Kharlamov. He was just twenty-four years old but he amazed with his skills, scoring two goals and was named the game's best player.

Throughout the series many Soviet players distinguished themselves, proving that they were certainly good enough to play in the world's best league. It's a story every Canadian should know by heart but if you don't then I urge you to at least look it up online and to find the games to watch sometime too. It's a huge part of hockey history.

So there were a lot of revelations during that series but the one I'm focusing on here is that Kharlamov impressed everyone involved with Team Canada and they would speak glowingly of his ability and tenacity (he was the most penalized Russian player in the series). I've seen the games myself and although he was a smaller player (5'8, around 170 pounds) he was in no way hampered against Canada's physical play (well, until Bobby Clarke broke his ankle with a slash). There is no doubt in my mind that every single player on that Soviet team was at least good enough to be an NHL regular and that a handful of them would have been absolute stars. Kharlamov is the cream of that crop and I envision him as an NHLer with multiple fifty-goal, hundred point seasons during his heyday in the seventies.

Like many of his teammates, his international stats are spectacular and he always acquitted himself well at the Olympics (three appearances) and World Championships (eleven appearances). Tragically, his career and life were cut short when he died in a car accident at the age of thirty-three in 1981.

To this day, many Russian players with offensive flair wear his number 17 the way Canadians wear numbers 9 and 19. It truly is a shame that politics kept him from hockey's greatest stage (recall that in his day the Olympics did not involve professional players) because he truly was one of the all-time greats.


1. Tony Hand LW RW

He coulda been a Cape Breton Oiler!

Hand takes the top spot not because he is the player whom I'm most sure would have been an NHL star but because I find him to be the most interesting. Of all the NHL careers that never were that I've read of, none make me ask "what if?" more than Tony Hand's story.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, he established himself as a phenom early on, playing for the Murrayfield Racers at the age of fourteen. Now I know what you're doing to say - so what? He was a phenom playing hockey over in freaking Scotland?! What the hell does that prove? Well, to that I say: read on. First of all, the Racers may have been a Scottish team but they weren't a junior team - Hand found himself playing against grown men from his mid-teens on. And the players weren't all Scottish - there was even a smattering of displaced Canadians. Granted, these were Canadians who obviously weren't good enough to play in most of the respected pro leagues but still.

He became a regular member of the roster for the 83/84 season at the age of sixteen and led his team with 52 goals and 95 points in just thirty games. In the next two seasons he would rack up over seventy goals and 164 points each time, in just over thirty games. Inferior league or not, the kid was averaging over five points a game playing against players in their twenties and thirties. In early 1986, he was the winner of the Young Player of the Year award and the prize was to attend the Calgary Flames training camp that summer.

At the start of that summer, a curious thing happened. News of his scoring exploits had somehow reached NHL scouts and he was drafted with the final pick -  that's 252nd overall - of the 86 draft by the Edmonton Oilers. So it was their training camp he found himself attending. He acquitted himself well there, lasting the entire two weeks without being cut. He impressed Oilers coach Glen Sather with his skills and vision. In fact, it was his opinion that the teenager possessed more on-ice intelligence than any of the other players there, with the exception of Wayne Gretzky, the Great One himself. Remember, not only was this an NHL team but the mighty Edmonton Oilers, one of the best teams ever assembled - just think about some of the players on that roster. Sather said that Hand was "a real prospect".

He would play in three games of Canadian major-junior with the WHL's Victoria Cougars, scoring four goals and eight points. But homesickness, coupled with the exhaustion from being such a target of the media, caused him to return home. That season with his home club, he exploded for 105 goals and 111 assists for 216 points - his first of four two hundred point seasons. He helped Canadian teammate Rick Fera score an astonishing 133 goals to lead the league in scoring. Fera had played Canadian major junior a few years prior with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. His teammates included future NHLers Rick Tocchet and Jeff Beaukeboom.

Another interesting fact about that season is that while Hand was third in league scoring with his linemate Fera taking the first spot, second belonged to a thirty-eight year old Gary Unger - veteran of over a thousand NHL games with nine thirty-goal seasons to his credit. I think this helps us gauge the level of talent Hand had - Unger may have been past his prime but he was still a genuine NHL player and an above average one at that, as his stats attest - he was still good enough to rack up a league-leading 143 assists along with 95 goals in the Scottish league. And Hand - still just nineteen at the time - was right up there with him.

The following summer he would return to Canada to train with the Cougars and he was offered a contract to play for Edmonton's farm team in Nova Scotia - but he turned it down, figuring he could make more money back home. Years later, he would reflect that perhaps he'd made a mistake and that he should have renegotiated the offer and given playing pro hockey in North America a real try. Sather -  a man who certainly knew something about hockey talent - believed he really could have progressed playing against better competition and I have to agree.

So for the next two decades Hand would continue to play for teams in Scotland, putting up astronomical stats well into his thirties. In his final season with the Racers, 93/94,  he would have his best statistical season with 72 goals and 150 assists for 222 points in only forty-four games.

In 2001 he became a player-coach - a role he continues to play to this day in his forties. I urge you to look him up to get all the details of his incredible career.

But it's the career that might have been that I think about the most. Could he have made it to the NHL? Could he have flourished there? Considering his skills and intelligence, I have to believe he could. He was modest 5'10, 185 pounds - roughly the size of a player like Dale Hawerchuck - but he played a fairly physical brand of hockey. Certainly playing in any league in North America would have been an adjustment but he seemed to have no problem with the OHL, even if it was only a very brief stint.

The NHL still awaits its first Scottish born and raised superstar. Maybe someday.

Most Talented Vancouver Canucks

Every year like clockwork, here in the dog days of August I start to go through a serious bout of hockey withdrawl. Nearly all the trades and signings take place in July and all news slows to a crawl. By this point I salivate at the thought of watching even meaningless exhibition games played with training camp rosters. But even that's a month a way.

So to help myself cope, I've come up with a list. Ah, Five-O-Rama, your functions are many and your splendor absolute.

In discussions of hockey, the word "talent" can of course refer to quite a few different things. But probably its most universal usage is in regard of offensive skill. The goal scorers, set-up men and flashy stickhandlers. How talented a player is in these areas doesn't always completely dictate his offensive totals. There are tons of other factors to consider. And plenty of players who have been known for their extreme skill have come to be known just as much for their bad work ethic, unwillingness to play the physical game and tendency to completely disappear in games. Such players are branded with labels like "underachiever" and "enigmatic". Some day I'll do a list on those players.

But for today we're talking about the most talented players to ever play for the Vancouver Canucks in their forty-plus year history. I've stuck to guys who played at least three seasons for the franchise and  had the chance to make a decent impact. Note that players ranking as high as third and second on the all-time franchise points list didn't make the cut. Obviously those players (Stan Smyl and Trevor Linden, respectively) were very talented but I feel there are others that outstrip them in pure offensive ability. So here they are.


5. Thomas Gradin C (1978-1986) 613gp 197 353 550
For eight seasons Gradin was one of the driving forces of the Canucks's offence. While known mostly as a playmaker he would still top 30 goals three times. He led the team in assists five times and in overall points twice.

Known for his deft stickhandling, the Swedish centre had great chemistry with Stan Smyl and set him up for many of his goals. Tony Tanti as well.

Perhaps his greatest moment as a Canuck came in the 1982 playoffs when the team made a surprising run to the Final. He led the team in scoring with 9 goals and 19 points in seventeen games.

But by 1985, he was no longer the team's number one centre, having lost the position to fellow Swede Patrick Sundstom, who in 83/84 set a franchise record for points in a season with 91 as a twenty-one year old. After the end of the 85/86 season, Gradin left the Canucks for the Boston Bruins, departing as the franchise's all-time leading scorer.


4. Daniel and Henrik Sedin LW, C (2000- ) 787gp 249 402 651  810gp 157 509 666
Isn't it great when people adhere to stereotypes? Because every stereotype you've heard about twins seems to go double for the Sedins. Believe me, it only makes perfect sense for them to share this slot.
Ever since they started playing minor hockey as kids, Daniel and Henrik have played on the same team. And on the same line. That's easy enough to manage at first but you'd think it would become problematic as they entered the pros. But no - early on coaches and gm's came to understand that the twins truly are a package deal. Their on ice chemistry can't be matched. They just seem to know where each other are at all times and what they're thinking. If you don't believe me, there's tons of video evidence to back this claim up.

But as their draft day approached, it seemed inevitable that they would finally be split up. After all they were both projected as top five picks and in 1999, no team held even two in the top twenty. To no one's surprise, neither one was seen as having any distinct advantages over the other - it really didn't matter which one was selected first because their skill sets, while different, added up to the same level. Daniel was the shooter and Henrik the passer. That's really all you needed to know.

The pair expressed their hope to somehow be drafted by the same team and Brian Burke, through some wheeling and dealing, made it happen so that he wound up with both the second and third overall picks. Patrik Stefan (perhaps the worst number one pick in NHL draft history) went to the Atlanta Thrashers, then the Canucks snapped up the twins (Daniel then Henrik). They wear the numbers 22 and 33 respectively.

It took the Sedins nearly a decade to live up to their superstar potential (an extremely rare occurrence for forwards) but all the way there their stats added up to nearly identical point totals, with Daniel scoring more goals and Henrik racking up the most assists.

They're both coming off 100-plus point seasons where they each led the league in scoring and have even recently proven they can still succeed playing apart, at least for short stretches. Another interesting thing about the twins is just how durable they've both proven to be over the years, hardly ever getting injured and missing time.

But what they'll most likely always be best known for is their "twin sense" that leads to fantastic chemistry on the ice. Together they've made some truly beautiful offensive plays, all the while piling up points at a fantastic rate.


3. Markus Naslund LW (1996-2008) 884gp 346 410 756
Yet another Swede makes the list and this one's the team's all-time leading scorer, ranking first in goals and fourth in assists. He also served as captain from 2000 until his departure.

A standout as a teenager playing for Modo in the Swedish Elite League (one of the two - Peter Forsberg was there too), Naslund was a first round pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991. He had an underwhelming rookie season in 93/94, not really getting much ice time on the  still high-powered Pens but in 95/96 was putting up very respectable numbers - 52 points through sixty-six games - when he was traded to Vancouver for Alek Stojanov, the Canucks's own first round pick from 1991, who was actually taken ten spots ahead of Naslund. Stojanov would score one goal in ten games for the Penguins after coming over and no points in nine playoff games. The following season he managed 5 points in thirty-five games. And that was it for his NHL career. Needless to say, it's remembered as perhaps the most lopsided trade in NHL history.

After two decent seasons in Vancouver, Naslund would develop into a thirty-goal scorer in 98/99 and he'd never look back. From 2000 through 2004, he was widely regarded as the best left winger in the game, playing on a dominant line with playmaking centre Brendan Morrison and power winger Todd Bertuzzi. In 02/03, Naslund was second in league scoring with 104 points including 48 goals - the second highest goal total for a Swede in league history. It was his third straight season with more than forty goals.

Naslund was a multifaceted player, known for his passing skills as much as his scoring. He had an extremely fast and accurate wrist shot, once winning the accuracy challenge in the All Star Skills Competition. He would never enjoy a particularly dominant playoff although he was a point a game or better there twice and the runs were short mainly due to Vancouver's goaltender issues of the time.

In 06/07 his production fell off steeply and never recovered. After two lackluster seasons he went to play for the New York Rangers where his fortunes didn't improve. It was his last season in the NHL.


2. Alexander Mogilny RW (1995-2000) 312gp 139 169 308
Mogilny's time in Vancouver wasn't exactly the highlight of his career. In the mid to late nineties the team experienced a sharp decline despite its talented lineup. Captain and fan favourite Trevor Linden was traded in 1997 and Mark Messier took his place. But the team still struggled, missing the playoffs from 1997 through 2000.

But Mogilny's first season there, 95/96, was one of his strongest. He put up 55 goals and 107 points. This was all the more impressive considering Pavel Bure, his fellow Russian star with whom he was supposed to form a dynamic pairing, was limited to just fifteen games due to injuries. A dazzling puckhandler with a lethal shot, Mogilny managed another strong season the following year despite injuries to Linden (forty games) and Bure (sixty-three games), scoring 31 goals and 73 points to lead the team again.

Mogilny was an extremely cerebral player, able to think the game at a higher level than most, and his own physical skills matched up to this allowing him to execute brilliant plays at top speed. This was of course precisely why he'd been brought to Vancouver. He'd spent five years as an absolute scoring machine in Buffalo, including one of the best goal-scoring seasons of all time, a 76 goals in seventy-seven games campaign in the magical 92/93 season. He was such a scoring threat that his playmaking abilities often went overlooked but he was a dynamite passer as well.

Unfortunately, injuries would limit his effectiveness over the following two seasons in Vancouver where he would play under sixty games each time. Mogilny was usually good to perform at a point-a-game pace or higher but getting hurt and coming back several times messed up his rhythm and his numbers went down because of it.

After putting up 38 points through forty-seven games in the 99/00 season, he was traded to the New Jersey Devils, who he would help win the Stanley Cup that year. The dream pairing with Bure never worked out as they seemed to almost take turns getting injured. In 97/98, while Mogilny battled injuries and scored 45 points in fifty-one games, Bure bounced back to play all eighty-two games scoring 51 goals and 90 points. It was his last season as a Canuck. But it's still fun to imagine what the two might have accomplished together if things had gone differently.

1. Pavel Bure RW (1991-1998) 428gp 254 224 478
The Russian Rocket tops this list, to the surprise of no one I am sure. From the moment he burst into the NHL in the 91/92 season, scoring 34 goals in just sixty-five games (and winning the Calder Trophy in the process), Bure was a human highlight reel. His combination of speed, great hands and will to score made him one of the most dangerous players of the nineties. It's not a stretch to say that something exciting would happen nearly every time he touched the puck. And if he ever got the chance to wind up, look out.

Easily the most pure scorer on this list, his next two seasons he scored 60 goals each time, blowing away previous Canuck scoring records and leading the league in goals the second time. That year (93/94) he also led the playoffs in goals with 16 in twenty-four games during Vancouver's magical run to Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Final.

As noted above, his 95/96 and 96/97 seasons were marred by injuries and kept him from approaching his usual offensive totals but he managed one final fifty goal season for the Canucks in 97/98.

To date, Bure sits fourth in goals on the Canucks all-time list with 254 and the three players in front of him (Naslund, Linden and Smyl) all played at least four hundred more games than him. His skill and creativity are legendary and I don't see them being bested by a Canuck any time soon.

Fifty-Goal Scorers You've Never Heard Of

Ever since the great Maurice Richard first accomplished the feat way back in 1945, scoring fifty goals in an NHL season has been a benchmark for offensive greatness. It was sixteen years before another player, Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion (also a Hab) would do it. Besides being the first player to ever hit the mark, The Rocket also managed it in just fifty games, setting another even more difficult measurement of scoring ability. The list of players to hit fifty in fifty (or less) is short indeed.

But still, reaching fifty goals in a single season remains a remarkable achievement in hockey and many of the game's brightest offensive stars never did it. Ron Francis never did it (never even came close). Neither did Adam Oates or Peter Stastny (although he'd have forty or more five times). Gilbert Perreault was a wonderful scorer and while he would help linemate Rick Martin do it twice (and 49 once), he never actually reached the mark himself. (note: I just read today, March 13, that Rick Martin passed away at the age of fifty-nine. My condolences go out to his family and friends. He was a great hockey player and, I'm sure, person.) Mark Messier, who has 694 career goals, only ever scored fifty once, way back in his third season. Gordie Howe, Mister Hockey himself, never potted fifty in a season although he would come very close a couple times.

However, to date there are 87 different NHL players with at least one fifty goal season to their name and some of them are hardly household names. With expansion came an increase in scoring as the early to mid seventies featured some truly terrible teams with terrible goaltending. This was the decade where Phil Esposito would smash the scoring record with a 76 goal season and he would top sixty three more times. The eighties would see a crop of offensive stars led by Wayne Gretzky that gave their teams the ability to play a wide open, offensive style that led to many goals. So the players I've chosen for this list come from that era. Mike Bossy scored at least fifty every full season he played.

Obviously, if you're at all into hockey and its history, I'm sure you will have at least heard of these players but to casual fans these are names they probably don't know. If I were to write this list again in ten years or so, I'm fairly certain Jonathan Cheechoo would be on it. But as his miraculous 56 goals came somewhat recently in the 05/06 season, I figure he still has some recognition attached to his name.


5. Gary Leeman - 51 goals for the Toronto Maple Leafs, 89/90
The most recent fifty-goal man on this list, it's wholly possible that once again my Leafs bias has come into play as there are several other guys I could've put in this spot who are definitely more unknown. But whatever, I wanted to include him.

In their long and storied (and painful) history, the Toronto Maple Leafs have had a lot of great players. But only three have actually scored fifty in a season while with the team. Darryl Sittler had four seasons with more than forty goals but never managed fifty. Frank Mahovolich had 48 way back in 60/61. Rick Vaive became the first with a team record 54 in the 81/82 season. He would follow that up with 51 goals the next year and 52 the year after that. He's the only Leaf to post multiple fifty-goal seasons.

But out of the jumbled mess that was the Leafs of the late eighties - an always entertaining bunch that scored lots of goals, gave up even more and racked up tons of penalty minutes - came a bright light named Gary Leeman. During his first three NHL seasons he was an ineffectual scorer, not even posting double digits in goals. But in 86/87 his ascent began with a modest 21 goal effort. The next two years he posted over thirty goals as a member of the semi-famous "Hound Line" with Wendel Clark and Russ Courtnall and in 89/90 made the jump to 51, mostly benefiting from the sublime playmaking skills of young centre, Vincent Damphousse.

Leeman himself was still only twenty-five years old at the time and his future as an elite scorer looked bright. But it wasn't to be. That season was his last where he played at least seventy games. He only managed 17 goals in 52 games in 90/91 and the next year, despite only posting  7 goals in 34 games, was still coveted enough by the Calgary Flames to be a key part in the blockbuster trade that involved ten players and brought Doug Gilmour to Toronto. Gilmour would of course go on to achieve folk hero status as a Leaf, bringing the team back to respectability (although of course not on his own) while Leeman battled injuries and inconsistency wherever he went. He was able to win a Cup playing a limited role with the Montreal Canadiens in 92/93 but he bounced to two more teams (Vancouver and St. Louis), barely playing any games before leaving the NHL for good in 1996.


4. Danny Grant - 50 goals for the Detriot Red Wings, 74/75
For six seasons from the late sixties through early seventies, Danny Grant was a reliable scorer for the Minnesota North Stars, averaging about 30 goals a year. He actually won the 1969 Calder Trophy as top NHL rookie for his 34 goal,  65 point season.

After being such a consistent offensive presence for the North Stars it was fairly surprising that they saw fit to trade him to Detroit for defensive forward Henry Boucha. Boucha was a Minnesota native so it's possible North Stars management thought the appeal of having a hometown player would boost attendance. Whatever the case,  Boucha would only play one season with Minnesota before jumping to the WHA. That same year, Grant scored 50 goals for the Red Wings, playing with superstar-to-be Marcel Dionne. Even though the Wings were crap in the seventies (kinda like how they were in the eighties), Grant wasn't actually the first one to hit the fifty mark. Mickey Redmond actually pulled it off in the two seasons before Grant's arrival, scoring 52 and 51 goals respectively. Just like Grant, he benefited from the massive talents of Dionne.

Grant's 74/75 season was of course the high point of his career but it was also the beginning of the end. For the next four seasons he was plagued by injuries and would never even reach 20 goals again before retiring in 1979.

So why include Grant instead of Redmond? Well, Redmond not only scored fifty twice, he also holds the distinction of being the first Detroit Red Wing to accomplish the feat. This is pretty impressive considering that's Gordie Howe's team. But Howe put up 49 goals in the 52/53 season and while he of course continued to put up points at a torrid pace, that was as close as he ever got to hitting fifty goals.

Also Grant is from Fredricton, New Brunswick and I think it's pretty cool that a Maritimer is a member of the 50 goal club. Sidney Crosby is of course the other one.


3. Jacques Richard - 52 goals for the Quebec Nordiques, 80/81
The second Richard (no relation) to score fifty goals in an NHL season is infinitely less famous. However, Jacques was projected to be a star, drafted second overall in the 1972 draft by the expansion Atlanta Flames after an insane 71 goal, 160 point season with the Quebec Remparts. Comparisons were made to Guy Lafleur.  He would play for the Flames as a nineteen year old in the 72/73 season (this team was actually coached by Boom Boom Geofrrion by the way) posting modest totals of 13 goals and 31 points. His second year he'd display some of his vast potential potting 27 goals (but few assists led to only 43 total points). But he would fall back to 17 goals the following year and I guess the Flames lost patience with him, trading him to Buffalo for the 75/76 season.

Richard's years in Buffalo were tumultuous. He developed a drinking problem and began having off-ice issues, gambling, abusing cocaine and once getting injured in a bar fight. He managed just 12 goals in 73 games the year he arrived. The next two seasons he would spend a significant amount of time with the Sabres's minor league affiliate, where he actually scored at a fairly decent pace. But he just couldn't do it in the NHL. Coach Punch Imlach would later say that Richard was "wasting his talent". He was traded once more.

Now Richard was in Quebec  - the city of his glory days as a junior. In the 80/81 season, his first full one with the club (and eighth as a pro), he would finally showcase his abilities, playing on a line with Peter and Anton Stastny. He exploded for 52 goals and 103 points.

But that was to be his only shining moment in the NHL as his mediocre play returned and his numbers dropped. Future Hall of Famer Michel Goulet stepped in as the Nordiques's premiere goal scorer (he would have four fifty-goal seasons of his own) and Richard retired in 1983 as a symbol of great potential unrealized.


2. Guy Chouinard - 50 goals for the Atlanta Flames, 78/79
When Jacques Richard was lighting it up for the Quebec Remparts in 71/72 and being touted as the NHL's next big offensive star, there was a supremely gifted fourteen year old on his team. Even though this kid was four years younger than the vast majority of his teammates and opponents, he still put up an extremely impressive 70 points in 58 games. His next two years of junior would see him surpass the one hundred point mark, first with 129 then 160 - the same amazing total as Richard in his final year but at the age of only sixteen. That kid was Guy Chouinard.

Despite his crazy numbers as a sixteen year old, Chouinard was once again overshadowed by a teammate, this time seventeen year old Real Cloutier - an absolute scoring machine who had 93 goals and 213 points in 69 games. But Cloutier would opt to play in the WHA rather than the NHL and became one of that league's most dazzling and prolific goal scorers. Chouinard was still a first round pick in the 1974 draft but a late one at twenty-eighth overall. He was picked up by the same team who had selected Richard two years earlier, the Atlanta Flames.

Since he was still seventeen when he was drafted, Chouinard was too young to play in the NHL (the WHA had no such rule, by the way - Wayne Gretzky, among others would play there as a seventeen year old) so he played a year in the now defunct CHL with the Omaha Knights, finishing third in team scoring. The next year he may not have been ready to jump to the NHL and spent the 75/76 season with the AHL's Nova Scotia Voyageurs, scoring 40 goals and 80 points. His first two years with the Flames, where he put up 50 and 58 points respectively, suggested he was more of a playmaker than goalscorer, and if you look at his career NHL stats, they certainly support that claim. But in the 78/79 season, Chouinard scored 50 goals and 107 points, becoming the first Flame to ever hit the 50 goal mark and the only player to do it while the team was in Atlanta.

Actually, I would make the claim that Guy Chouinard is the best Atlanta Flame of all time. He was with the team when it moved to Calgary and continued to play well for them although his goal totals dropped from 31 to 23 to 13. His last year in the NHL, 83/84, he played 64 games for the St. Louis Blues. He had a very good career overall, if cut a little short. He had 575 points in 578 games, 205 of them goals. But if you look at it within the context of his pro career, his fifty-goal season definitely appears to be an anomaly. But not a fluke.

1. Pierre Larouche - 53 goals for the Pittsburgh Penguins, 75/76; 50 goals for the Montreal Canadiens, 79/80
The only player on this list to post multiple fifty goal seasons, even more impressive is the fact that he did it with two different teams. Larouche was the first NHL player to ever accomplish this and remains on a pretty short list. No player has yet recorded fifty goals in a season with three different teams but Larouche actually very nearly did this, scoring 48 as a New York Ranger in 83/84. He still holds a record as the only player to have scored at least 45 goals for three separate teams.

And yet he remains relatively unknown. But he was hardly a flash in the pan, scoring at a very consistent level throughout his career and finishing with more points than games played. He also won two Stanley Cups with the Canadiens in 1978 and 1979. But even though he scored fifty goals for the second time in 79/80, he was second in team scoring to superstar Guy Lafleur who was recording his sixth (in a row, I might add). In fact, whenever those incredible Montreal teams that won four straight Cups from 1976 thru 1979 are spoken of, Larouche's name rarely even comes up. Even with his fifty goal season, he's still mostly remembered as a bit player on that team of stars.

Larouche's first fifty (53, remember) goal season, coming in just his second year at the age of nineteen was definitely seen as impressive. He added 58 assists for 111 total points. He set the record as the youngest player to have a 50 goal, 100 point season (Lafleur was 22 for his first). But perhaps the fact that this record would only stand for four years before a certain teenager named Gretzky would enter the league and break it (and so, so many others) contributed to his lack of general NHL fame.

And for those wondering if Larouche was the only Penguin to score fifty before Mario Lemieux, not only was he not because Rick Kehoe would put up 55 in 80/81, he actually watched teammate Jean Pronovost (who would later play with Guy Chouinard in Atlanta) rack up 52 of his own that same season (75/76). Speaking of Lemieux, just like Gretzky, he would take one of Larouche's records away from him. In junior, Larouche scored an astounding 94 goals and 157 assists in 73/74 for what must have looked like an unassailable record 251 points. But ten years later The Magnificent One would RAPE the Quebec league for 282 points (including 133 goals).

Larouche retired a Ranger in 1988 with 395 career goals in 812 games. But the fact that he so evenly spread his scoring among those teams makes him a very interesting player indeed.

Greatest Hartford Whalers

"Breakfasts come and go, Rene, but Hartford - "The Whale" - they only beat Vancouver, once, maybe twice in a lifetime."   - Brody Bruce, Mallrats








In their nearly eighteen years of existence as an NHL franchise (1979-1997), the Hartford Whalers didn't exactly set the league on fire. If I had to pick one word that best sums up what they'll be most remembered for, that word would be "mediocrity". They failed to reach the playoffs in ten seasons and only made it past the first round once. They were knocked out five times by the Montreal Canadiens, twice by the Boston Bruins and once by fellow WHA imports the Quebec Nordiques, who are also the team their lone playoff round victory came against in 1986. Altogether they had three winning seasons.

The Whalers were one of four teams that merged with the NHL after the WHA went under. In that league, they'd been the New England Whalers, one of the most successful teams. They won the league's first ever championship and actually lasted as a franchise all the way to the WHA's demise in 1979 - something only the other teams moving on to the NHL with it had achieved. Most WHA franchises lasted about three or four years, sometimes moving several times before ultimately folding.

But in the NHL the Whalers were basically punching bags in the early eighties (although they did actually make the playoffs in 1980 - their first season in the league), graduating into also-rans in the latter half of the decade and early nineties before receding into the league's basement in their final years. They'll never be associated with greatness.

But they still had a few pretty great players over the years. This list, which turned out to be way more difficult than I was expecting, honours those players who were the greatest within the context of being Hartford Whalers. That is, they'll be judged on what they brought to the team in their time there and nothing else. I mean obviously, Bobby Hull is one of the all time best left wingers, but his nine games with the Whalers in their first NHL season as a forty year old isn't exactly going to put him in their hall of fame. So here are the greatest to ever wear the Blue, White and Green as I see them.

note: You'll notice that each entry on this list represents one of the five positions in the game. I can assure you this is sheer coincidence and didn't affect my selections.


5. Geoff Sanderson, #8 LW (1991-97)
Selected in the second round of the 1990 draft with their second pick after Mark Greig (who, after three seasons of being unable to crack the Whalers on a consistent basis, was traded), Sanderson was the last high draft pick to ever make a sustained impact in Hartford. He was still on the team for their final season before relocating to Carolina and led them in goals and points that year.

A speedster with a nose for the net, Sanderson scored 189 goals in 439 games as a Whaler. This puts him fifth on the all-time goal-scoring list. Some might wonder why I'd include him over Pat Verbeek, who with 192 goals in 433 games scored slightly more in slightly less time. Verbeek also had more points overall than him (403 to Sanderson's 352) by virtue of getting significantly more assists. But the fact is Sanderson was more of a pure scorer - he had more goals than assists as a Whaler and also finished his career with more g's than a's, a rare trait. Both players had two forty-goal seasons in Hartford but Verbeek had his playing alongside one of the best set-up men of all time, Ron Francis. Sanderson arrived the season after Francis's (in)famous trade to Pittsburgh. While Sanderson got to work with a talented playmaker in Andrew Cassels (my favourite Whaler ever), there's really no comparison.

Sanderson only got to play in two playoff series as a Whaler, three games as a callup when he was eighteen in 1991 then seven games in his rookie season when he was nineteen.  He scored one goal in that series against the Montreal Canadiens. But if the Whalers hadn't been so brutal from 1992 through 1997, he would've gotten more.


4. Ulf Samuelsson, #5 D (1984-91)
One of the toughest Swedes to ever play the game, Samuelsson was another Hartford draft pick, taken 67th overall in 1982. A physical, stay at home defenceman, his main job was making life miserable for his opponents and he was good at it. While Dave Babych provided offence from the blueline, Samuelsson (who actually enjoyed his best offensive totals as a Whaler) provided defensive responsibility and snarl, averaging around 170 penalty minutes a season. In 86/87, he posted an extremely impressive plus/minus of +28 and +23 in 88/89 - not easily done on a team like Hartford.

He was there for five straight playoff seasons; the closest thing to "glory days" that the Whalers can boast as an NHL franchise and he was part of the biggest trade in team history when he, along with Ron Francis was dealt to the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he would win Cups and establish himself as an elite shutdown defender. Samuelsson makes this list because he was unique - there really was no other Hartford Whaler like him.

3. Mike Liut, #1 G (1985-90)
Perhaps the most underrated goalie of his generation, Liut was the man between the pipes for the Whalers when they were at their best. Starting his career as a St. Louis Blue, he was drafted in 1976, three years before the Whalers were in the NHL. But in an interesting twist, the New England Whalers did in fact draft him in the WHA draft (it was common for players to be drafted by teams in both leagues during the WHA's existence) at nearly the same position as the Blues selected him (fiftieth overall rather than fifty-sixth).

When you're talking about the Hartford Whalers, really, there are only two goaltenders who should be in the discussion: Mike Liut and Sean Burke. But Burke never played a single playoff game as a Whaler and I think Liut's numbers are just more impressive. He had three twenty-win seasons to Burke's two, 13 shutouts to Burke's 10 and holds the record for wins in a season with 31. The season he did that (86/87) he also led the entire league in shutouts with 4 (that's eighties hockey for you). Liut is the franchise leader in wins with 115 - all this despite having played fewer games than Burke.

It was largely due to Liut's heroics that in the 1986 playoffs, the Whalers pushed the eventual Cup champion Montreal Canadiens all the way to overtime in Game Seven. This was after Liut was in the net for the team's ONLY playoff series victory, against the Quebec Nordiques in the round before.

I have absolutely no idea why the Whalers traded him in 1990 but I suppose it did work out for the best (sort of) because he would develop back problems that would eventually force him to retire.

2. Kevin Dineen, #11 RW (1984-91, 1995-97)
The Whalers selected Dineen with their third pick in the 1982 draft, just before Samuelsson. Actually, it's become pretty apparent that the '82 draft was definitely the best for the Whalers. Even though their first two picks (Paul Lawless, 14th and Mark Paterson, 35th) were misses, with their next three they snagged Dineen, Samuelsson and Ray Ferraro, who would make this list if it was a top ten.


Dineen, something of an undersized power forward at 5'11, 190 pounds, made an immediate impact as a rookie, scoring 25 goals in only 57 games. The following year he was also limited to 57 games but popped in 33 goals. Over the next four seasons, he would always score at least 25, twice eclipsing 40. He always put up over a hundred penalty minutes each season, including 217 in 87/88. He led the team in goal-scoring three times (sharing the lead with Ron Francis in 87/88) and was always a solid contributor in the playoffs.

He was traded to the Flyers early in the 91/92 season and performed much the same there, although his scoring did come down a bit. The Flyers even made him captain - a post he hadn't held as a Whaler - for the 93/94 season. He was traded back to Hartford during the 95/96 season and was there for the Whalers's last ever season of 96/97 as team captain. At thirty-two, he scored a very respectable 19 goals and was fourth in team scoring, also collecting 141 penalty minutes.

When the Whalers became the Carolina Hurricanes the following year, Dineen became that franchise's first ever captain. He finished as Hartford's second all-time points leader.


1. Ron Francis, #10 C (1982-91)
As I've said, this list turned out to be surprisingly difficult to come up with. Players like Pat Verbeek, Blaine Stoughton (four 40 goal seasons as a Whaler including two over 50), Ray Ferraro and my buddy Andrew Cassels (third on the all-time assists list) were all great Whalers who deserved careful consideration. But I'm pretty sure I made the right choices. That said, selecting number one was ridiculously easy and I never had any doubts. The greatest Hartford Whaler of all time is #10, Ron Francis.


Like Dineen, Francis would experience being traded away from the Whalers then years later coming back to the organization that had drafted him (fourth overall in the 1981 draft). But by then they were the Carolina Hurricanes.  Even though he was pretty old for a player by then (thirty-five) he was his amazing, consistent self and cemented himself as the best player ever to play for the franchise in either NHL incarnation. So of course he's the best Whaler. No contest.


In his second NHL season as a nineteen year old (after putting up 68 points in only fifty-nine games as a rookie), Francis led the Whalers in scoring with 90 points. While his 59 assists were wholly indicative of the kind of player he was, the 31 goals may have been a tad misleading. In his twenty-three NHL seasons (over which he missed very few games), he would only hit the thirty goal mark three times, all while with the Whalers.  The 32 he scored in 89/90 was his career high. It was also the year of his career high points total as a Whaler - 101.  He would actually have 119 points (with a ridiculous career high assist mark of 92) in 95/96 but that was with a high-powered Pittsburgh Penguins squad that included Petr Nedved, Jaromir Jagr and of course, Mario Lemieux.


But in Hartford, Francis was the guy. He led them in scoring four times and was leading them when he was traded in 1991. Every other year he was either second or third on the team and he ALWAYS led them in assists. Because helpers were really his game. He piled up 557 of them in 714 games as a Whaler which is more than any other Whaler's career point total (Dineen had 503). While he was never a big goal scorer, Francis still consistently put up over twenty each year, bringing his career points as a Whaler to 821. Do the math on that (or just let me) and you'll see that his points per game average in Hartford was an excellent 1.14. He also holds the team record for most assists in a single season with 69 in 89/90 and averaged close to 60 a year.


A truly classy individual, Francis didn't win any of his three Lady Byng Trophies in his time in Hartford but he still played much the same then - putting up mostly modest to low penalty minute totals while playing at an extremely high level. In his nine plus seasons as a Whaler he was captain for six. His inclusion in a blockbuster trade to Pittsburgh in 1991 (which also sent Samuelsson, remember) really marked the beginning of the end for anything positive for the team while they were still in Hartford. The 1992 playoffs the following year would be the team's last ever trip to the post season before relocating to Carolina. For the Penguins, Francis proved to be the missing piece of the puzzle and they would win the Stanley Cup that very season (90/91) and again the next with him playing a huge role both times.


Like pretty much any Whaler, Francis never got to do much in the playoffs with the team but his numbers there are good, if not great. While he would win his Cups with another team and eventually return to the franchise as a Hurricane (and be captain once again) the NHL's FOURTH LEADING SCORER (and second in assists after a guy named Gretzky) will always be remembered as Mr. Whaler.

Olympics Wrap Up: Surprise Performers

The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games are over now and they couldn't have been a much bigger success for Canada. We did more than just not embarrass ourselves, we led the way finishing third overall in the medal standings and first in Golds. Oh, we also set the record for most by Golds by the host country as well as most Golds at the Winter Games PERIOD.

But that last Gold we won to set the record was the big one: men's ice hockey (it always feels so stupid saying ice hockey but I have to stick to Olympic Speak here). Nova Scotia phenom Sidney Crosby scored at 7:40 of overtime to send the nation into celebration and I guess it's only fitting that he was the guy to do it (I called it by the way - picking him for Canada and Patrick Kane for the yanks).

Here I'll just point out five players (plus one extra) who really surprised me with how they performed at the Olympics, whether by really stepping up or completely disappearing. Apparently there were also some other events going on at these games but I didn't really notice.

5. Alex Ovechkin - Russia
Aside from a huge hit on Jaromir Jagr that led directly to a goal by Malkin, The Great Eight was essentially invisible in this tournament, particularly in the game against Canada. Really, the top two lines for the Russians, consisting of notable NHLers Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk (more invisible than Ovie but less surprising), Evgeni Malkin, Ovechkin, Maxim Afinogenov and Alex Semin were consistently outperformed by the bottom two made up of KHLers.

The knock on Russian teams of the past fifteen years is that for all their explosive talent, they never come together as a team and this leads to poor finishes in international tournaments. I personally believed that Ovechkin, with his wild passion and enthusiasm, would galvanize the Russians and they'd finally gel as they needed to. But nope.

4. Sergei Kostitsyn - Belarus
Just because a player doesn't play for a country in the Big Six doesn't mean he can't surprise you. Coming into these Olympics, no one expected much of the Belarussians and really, why would you? And because of injuries to two of their three top offensive players and two of the four NHLers on their roster, expectations were lowered even more. Not only were they without Mikhail Grabovski and short one Kostitsyn brother, it was the lesser Kostitsyn - Sergei - that they were left with.

Older brother Andrei is coming off a 23 goal season for the Montreal Canadiens and actually had 26 the year before so he was the one proven scorer Belarus had. Sergei is younger, smaller and less of a goal scorer. He has great stickhandling and playmaking skills but he's often overmatched by strong, physical players who take away his time and space. So once he became the undisputed number one offensive threat for Belarus, I figured he'd crumble under the pressure. But I was wrong. He led the team in scoring with 2 goals, 3 assists for 5 points in four games. Not overwhelming but still damned impressive when you factor in that he always saw the opposition's best players matching up against him in a tournament that featured the best players in the world. Bravo, Sergei. Grabovski still hates your guts though.

3. Brian Rafalski - USA
Obviously the entire US team's performance at these Olympics was a surprise. Many, including myself, picked them to not even earn a medal. And while the Silver they took home is more due to Ryan Miller's completely unsurprising dominant play than anything else, the fact is that lots of players upped their game. Rafalski is one of those players.

Unlike most of the roster, Rafalski is not young and unproven. In fact he was the oldest player on the team and oldest defenceman by a mile. He's had a great career as a mostly offensive defenceman, averaging close to 50 points a season and winning three Stanley Cups - two with New Jersey and one with Detroit. He played for the US at the last Olympics. And the Olympics before that. But in Torino, he didn't even score a goal. In Vancouver he got 4, 2 in the first game against Canada.

The diminutive, smooth skating native of Dearborn, Michigan, who was never drafted by an NHL team, finished the Olympics with 4 goals and 4 assists for 8 points in six games, along with a plus seven. He was selected as one of the defenceman for the tournament all star team (along with Canada's Shea Weber) and named top defenceman overall. He'll be forty by the time the next Olympics roll around and I highly doubt we'll see him there but that's ok given his amazing farewell performance on the international stage.

2. Pavol Demitra - Slovakia
Another tournament all star I don't think anyone saw coming. As I stated in my earlier Olympic list, the story on the Slovakians going into Vancouver is that they're friggin' old. Demitra is one of those players. Even more troubling is his injury history which has severely limited his effectiveness in the NHL for the past few seasons. He'd only played a handful of games for the Canucks this year so predicting how he'd play at the Olympics was tough.

Well, how he played was fantastic, finishing with 3 goals and 7 assists for a tournament leading ten points in seven games. He's easily the most surprising member of the all star team (Canada's Jonathan Toews and USA's Zach Parise were the other forwards with Toews named top forward) and helped Slovakia to a surprise appearance in the Bronze medal game. They were leading that game 3-1 (against the Finns) going into the third period but just couldn't hold it. I know the Slovaks are disappointed that they lost out on a medal but after beating the Russians and Swedes and almost coming back against the Canadians, they should hold their heads up high. Demitra highest of all.

1. Tore Vikingstad - Norway
It's only fitting that the Norwegians' most dynamic player at the Olympics is named Vikingstad. Perhaps his 4 goals in four games don't seem so impressive at first but let's put them into perspective. Firstly, in case you didn't know, Norway is pretty damn far from a power in the world of hockey (something that always surprised me a bit by virtue of geography, really) and they were definitely whipping boys in this tournament. Their number two goalie wasn't even a professional - he was a freaking carpenter. Canada smoked them 8-0 and the Americans easily handled them 6-1. How many goals did Norway even score at the Olympics? I'll tell you - 8. That's right, EIGHT. So Vikingstad accounted for half of his team's entire goal output. Even over a short stretch like four games, that's still pretty amazing. He was also the only Norwegian player to score more than one goal. Patrick Thoresen, their only player with any NHL experience, actually led the team with 5 points but they were all assists.

Vikingstad's offensive outburst came mostly in the form of a hat trick in a game against Latvia. You can say it's only Latvia but you should keep two things in mind: Latvia are technically stronger than Norway (ok, who isn't?) and a hat trick at the Olympics is still a freaking hat trick at the Olympics.

The thirty-three year old was actually a late pick of the St. Louis Blues back in 1999 (180th overall) after showing some promise playing in the Swedish Elite League. His 6'4, 204 pound frame probably was a pretty big factor too. But he never played a game in a North American league let alone the NHL. It's a safe bet this is the last we'll ever hear of him. But then again, he'll only be thirty-seven in four years and Norway isn't exactly stacked with talent...

Honourable Mention: Mats Zuccarello-Aasen - Norway
Norway's other best player doesn't have as kickass a name as Tore Vikingstad but that's ok considering his nickname which I am not making up: The Hobbit Wizard! That's right! In fact, how COULD I make that up?

While the tiny (seriously - 5'7, 154) Norwegian dynamo only managed one goal, he also had two assists for 3 points in the four games played. He also was somehow a plus one which, on that team, is outstanding, trust me. But even though he didn't pile up the points, The Hobbit Wizard made things happen almost every time he was on the ice, using his speed and creativity. He pinballed around the rink fearlessly and showed off some spectacular moves at times. He had 11 shots in the tournament, second only to Vikingstad (who had 12).

He's only twenty-two and currently leading Modo of the Swedish Elite League in scoring with 60 points in fifty-one games. That's a league full of skilled players but it is less physical than say, the AHL. Still, during these Olympics I think it's fair to say he caught the attention of some NHL scouts and gm's. Maybe the NHL is just too physically demanding for such a small player to succeed in but I'd love to see him give it a shot.