Best Players Ever With Particular Names (That Are Common)...

[DitchMarner]

So obviously every language has its common names for males and females...

In English, there are the Sams and Ryans. Russia has Igors and Nikolais. Finland has Mikkos.


Who are the best professional hockey players with certain names?

Examples:

Best Joe: Sakic
Best Steve: Yzerman


The differences in answers may be interesting...


How about best Mike, John, Adam, Tim, Peter, Eric, Paul and Tom?

Click to read more...

 

[VanIslander]

 

[Johnny Engine]

There are a few names that the average fan, maybe even one with a regular-DGB-reader level of interest in history, would have as very different from this forum's lists.

- We had Frank Mahovlich as only the 3rd best Frank ever after Nighbor and Boucher, or perhaps 4th if King Clancy uses the common short form of his birth name.
- Bill/Billy/William/Will is an oddly shallow field - Billy Smith is a name that pops to mind easily. Bill Gadsby might be a choice for older boomers, as well as Xers and Millennials who grew up with coffee-table books with pretty photos of O6 hockey. For fans of his team Bill Durnan is in the continuum of great goaltenders that stretches from Vezina to Price. But Cook is our leader by far, we had Cowley ahead of Gadsby, and Quackenbush shows up nearly 70 spots before Smith.
- It's a bit more of a stretch, but the number of fans who'd recognize Ed Belfour's greatness would have to be exponentially more than the number of people who even know what Newsy Lalonde's first name was, but Newsy's over 45 spots ahead.

 

[Yozhik v tumane]

Thinking about the Youtube sports documentary about the decline of the once-great name “Bob”.