After a summer spent on failed GM theories, contrarian takes and blockbuster alternate history, we’re going to keep today’s post nice and simple. It’s an idea that’s been sent in by a few of you over the years, most recently reader Stephen C., and I’ll admit to being surprised we haven’t done it already.Let’s make some all-time rosters based on how many Stanley Cup titles a player won.That’s it. Just a nice fastball over the heart of the plate to take a swing at. We’ll go through the best players, check how many Cup titles they’ve won, and assign them to that team. Then we see which one is best, and then ideally spend the rest of the day arguing about it in the comment section.But first, a few ground rules™:
Each team gets a 20-man roster of 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies. We’ll try to keep centers and wings in their proper slots, although we’ll assume some of these guys can play out of position.
For this exercise, “all-time” will go back to the start of the expansion era in 1967. Winning the Stanley Cup in a league with only six teams was just a completely different sort of challenge.
The one place this gets tricky: active players. It’s more fun to include a few names from today, but it would be weird to put Connor McDavid on Team No Cups when he still has time to win a few. So, my compromise will be that we can use active players whose careers are close to over, which we’ll define as 35 or older.
