The NHL's top 25 forwards of all time

Joe Thornton might be the most underappreciated superstar in the history of the league. Instead of being celebrated for his ability, production and overall dominance, he has spent most of his career listening to criticisms about playoff shortcomings (that were not his fault) and not yet winning a championship (also not his fault; but this year's San Jose Sharks team seems to have an outstanding chance). He is the type of player who 10 or 20 years after he retires, the hockey world will look back and wonder why he was not held in higher regard during his playing days. He might be one of the top five playmakers in the history of the sport and has a defensive game to match. He has never been a great goal-scorer, but he is good enough, and his playmaking more than makes up for whatever shortcomings he has when it came to scoring goals. 

Before they relocated and became the Colorado Avalanche, the Quebec Nordiques had a run of high-draft picks in the mid to late 1980s who would help build the foundation of a two-time Stanley Cup winner (in Colorado). The first of those to be put in place was their 1987 first-round pick, No. 15 overall, Joe Sakic. Sakic would go on to be the centerpiece of the franchise for the better part of the next two decades as one of the league's best two-way centers. He finished his career in the top 16 in goals, assists, total points, and he collected several pieces of hardware, including a pair of Stanley Cup rings, an MVP award, a Lester B. Pearson Award (best player as voted on by the players) and a Conn Smythe Trophy. 

Ron Francis was never the most dominant player in hockey, but there is a lot to be said for sustained excellence over two decades in the world's best league. When all is said and done, Francis is in the top five all time in assists, points and games played and was an exceptional two-way center and playmaker and a key cog for a two-time Stanley Cup winner in Pittsburgh. 

Like Eric Lindros, this isn't about career totals or championships; this is about playing the game at the highest level and dominating in a way few others have. Pavel Bure was a total game-changer when he arrived in Vancouver in the early 1990s and spent a decade as the most dangerous goal scorer in the league. With better health and a more offensive friendly era, who knows what he would have been capable of. Even with all of that, he was still a four-time goal-scoring champion who twice topped the 60-goal mark until his knees gave out. 

Maybe a controversial pick for the top 20, but Eric Lindros was a force unlike anything anyone had ever seen when he entered the NHL. An unmatched combination of size, skill, speed, strength and determination, Lindros was an astonishingly dominant player from the moment he arrived in the league. The only thing that slowed him down and kept him from reaching his peak potential was concussions. Even so, he still did enough to be considered one of the all-time greats. 

Marcel Dionne's career was defined by three things: longevity, productivity and never being fortunate enough to play on a championship-winning team. He is one of the most productive and prolific offensive players in league history, but because he never played on a team that was good enough to get even remotely close to a Stanley Cup he is mostly forgotten. How much different would his career look today with even one championship on his resume? How much better would his reputation be? Significantly better, for sure. 

By far the most dangerous goal scorer of the 1930s, Charlie Conacher finished as the NHL's leading goal scorer five different times in his career, and for the first six years of his career he was a point-per-game player. That level of production was almost unheard of in the early 1930s, and as of the 1936 season he was one of just four players in league history at that time to average such a pace. Among his peers at the time, there was quite simply no one close to him. 

We are going way back in time for this one, but Howie Morenz was one of the NHL's first superstars, playing in the 1920s and winning three MVP awards throughout his career. During his first 10 years in the NHL, he scored 41 more goals than any other player in the league and was one of only two players in that era to top the 200-goal mark, between 1923 and 1933. 

Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull formed one of the NHL's most dominant scoring duos ever with the Chicago Blackhawks and helped lead the team to a championship in 1960. Mikita ended up winning four scoring titles and two MVP awards during his career and was in the top four in points per game an incredible 10 times. He was a truly dominant offensive superstar. 

When the NHL released its top 100 players a year ago Evgeni Malkin was somehow not included on that list, which is absurd when you look at his resume. With the Calder Trophy, an MVP award, two scoring titles, three Stanley Cups and a Conn Smythe Trophy all to his name, Malkin is one of the most productive and consistent players regardless of era or context. 

LaFleur is one of the most dominant scorers of the 1970s and a centerpiece of a Montreal Canadiens dynasty. And the story of how the Canadiens acquired him is an astonishing one, as the draft pick used to select him was obtained several years in advance when then general manager Sam Pollock feasted on the incompetence of the incoming expansion teams that overvalued veteran talent and undervalued draft picks. One of those trades brought them the No. 1 overall pick that they used to select Lafleur. 

Maybe the most notorious of the NHL's all-time greats, Bobby Clarke did pretty much everything, from offense, to shutdown defensive play to aggressive stick-swinging. He was the leader of the Broad Street Bullies, a three-time MVP winner and a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Philadelphia Flyers. 

I don't know how to measure Messier's leadership qualities, but I do know how to measure 694 goals, 1,887 points and six Stanley Cups. Two of those championships came after he no longer played next to Gretzky, too, leading the 1988-89 Edmonton Oilers to a title after the Gretzky trade and then helping to snap the New York Rangers' Stanley Cup drought in 1994 thanks in large part to his guarantee in the conference finals  against the New Jersey Devils. That was probably the signature moment of his career. 

Steve Yzerman never finished as the NHL's league leader in goals or points, but that was simply because he entered the league in the wrong era. That era? When Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were at the height of their powers as offensive megastars. There was no shame in being the third-best offensive player in the league at that time because in almost any other era he probably would have been the best. Yzerman is known more for his two-way play when the Detroit Red Wings finally broke through and won championships with him, but the early part of his career was highlighted by incredibly dominant offense. Playing in the shadow of Gretzky and Lemieux has probably made him one of the NHL's most underrated all-time greats. 

Between his time in the NHL and the WHA, Bobby Hull scored 913 goals in 23 seasons of professional hockey, leading the NHL seven different times. All of those numbers are obscene and easily put him among the top 10 forwards in league history. The Blackhawks still only managed one championship during his career, with the organization having to wait until 2010 to get another one. 

Another one of the games legendary figures, the league's goal-scoring crown currently bears his name after he led the league in goal scoring five times throughout his career. He won only one MVP award in his career, but he was a top-three finisher five other times and was a 13-time All-Star. 

For the six-year stretch between 1969 and 1975, there was only one player in the NHL who finished as the league leader in goals scored, and it was Phil Esposito. During that stretch he scored 369 goals, a number that was 149 more than any other player in the league during that stretch. The gap between him and the No. 2 player was the same as the gap between the No. 2 goal scorer and the 100th leading goal scorer. 

One of the NHL's greatest champions. Jean Beliveau was the centerpiece of 10 Stanley Cup winning teams with the Montreal Canadiens and one of the most prolific scorers to ever play in the NHL. On the list of all-time greatest Canadiens, Mr. Beliveau probably tops it. 

Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby have been the face of the NHL for nearly 15 years, and during that time have been the league's most prominent and best players. There is an argument to be made that Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in the history of the league, especially when you take into account the era in which he has played, whether he ends up breaking Gretzky's record of 894 or not. Now that he has a Stanley Cup there is no more criticism to be lobbed his way, something that happened far too often throughout his early run of dominance in the NHL. 

No, it is not too early to put Sidney Crosby in this sort of rarified air. A three-time Stanley Cup champion with multiple gold medals, two MVP awards, two scoring titles, two goal-scoring crowns and two Conn Smythe Trophies, Crosby has been the best all-around player in the NHL for more than a decade. He is one of the NHL's legends. 

Mike Bossy is always regarded as one of the all-time greats but probably doesn't get enough recognition for being one of the game's legends, mostly because he did not have the longest career. He spent only 10 years in the NHL, but he made the most of them, finishing in the top-five in points per game and first in goals per game. He also tallied at least 50 goals in each of his first nine seasons in the league. He probably would have done it in his 10th season, too, had he played in more than 68 games. 

He was always playing in the shadow of Mario Lemieux in Pittsburgh, but there is a really strong argument to be made that Jaromir Jagr has had the second-most productive career in the history of the league after Gretzky. Sure, some of it is due to longevity, but when you consider that he played the bulk of his prime years in the dead puck era and still put up legendary numbers comparable to the all-time greats who played in high-scoring eras, he had a nearly unmatched run of dominance. He and Lemieux might have been the greatest duo in the history of the league. 

Here is everything you need to know about Gordie Howe, aside from the total numbers, the physical domination, the longevity, the almost mythical story about his playing style, and everything else that goes along with the legend: He played professional hockey until he was 51 years old, and at age 51, in the NHL, still managed to score 15 goals and finish with 41 total points. It defies all logic and reason. It almost seems impossible. But he did it, and it is one of the most incredible accomplishments in the history of the league. 

He's probably the only player in the history of the league that has a legitimate shot to challenge Gretzky for the top spot. Had it not been for constant health issues throughout his career or playing his first five years on what was a mostly empty roster, Mario Lemieux probably would have had a shot to break or at least come close to matching many of Gretzky's records. He is single-handedly responsible for saving the Pittsburgh Penguins organization on two separate occasions, once as a player and once as an owner, and is now the owner of five Stanley Cup rings, two as a player and three as an owner. His two most incredible individual accomplishments were a game in 1989 where he scored five goals, five different ways (even-strength, power play, shorthanded, penalty shot, empty net) and also being an opposing player who received standing ovations, in both Madison Square Garden (for scoring five goals against the New York Rangers) and in Philadelphia (on the night he returned from his final chemotherapy session following his battle with Hodgkin's disease).  

It has to start here, doesn't it? Yes, the 1980s were not exactly the pinnacle of goaltending achievement in the NHL, and yes it was the highest scoring era in the history of the league. But even within that context, the numbers that Wayne Gretzky put up throughout his career are just so far ahead of everybody else that he has to be at the top of any list ranking the greatest forwards and probably greatest overall players of all time. Even if you take away all 894 of his career goals (still an NHL record), he would still have the most points in the history of the league just based on his assists.