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

DitchMarner

TheGlitchintheSwitch
Jul 21, 2017
11,248
8,283
Brampton, ON
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?
 

Johnny Engine

Moderator
Jul 29, 2009
5,062
2,509
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.
 

JackSlater

Registered User
Apr 27, 2010
19,431
14,809
Thinking about the Youtube sports documentary about the decline of the once-great name “Bob”.
I was at a Christmas concert at an elementary a few nights ago and one of the songs was The Hockey Song. Sad that in the early 1970s when the song came out there were so many great Bobbys to choose from and today so few. Tragic almost.
 
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Albatros

Registered User
Aug 19, 2017
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MadLuke

Registered User
Jan 18, 2011
10,899
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Patrick was quite common in 1965:

Messier for the best marc-mark
Orr for the best Robert/bob/bobby

Scott become a bit of a Stevens vs Niedermayer, I imagine Stevens much longer prime can get the title.

51 skaters in the nhl were named Kevin, Stevens, Hatcher, Lowe, ...

I feel like there aren't many Waynes or Dougs anymore. Those names seemed to peak in the 70s/80s.
Bit surprised to see how much Wayne was popular, I thought it was more niche than that. A bit more than 20 nhler were named Wayne (cashman-Simmonds had great 1,000 games career).
 

Yozhik v tumane

Registered User
Jan 2, 2019
2,044
2,189
I was at a Christmas concert at an elementary a few nights ago and one of the songs was The Hockey Song. Sad that in the early 1970s when the song came out there were so many great Bobbys to choose from and today so few. Tragic almost.

I’m a bit surprised we aren’t seeing a few Bobs and Bobbies coming out of Sweden actually. Definitely seems like they would appear among the other ‘cute’, English names in vogue like the Noels, Miltons and Melvins we’re seeing among young prospects today. I do suppose parents are choosing from a greater variety of names in recent decades and the odds of seeing a dozen Swedish Daniels and Henriks in the NHL at the same time gets severely reduced.

Typical 00s births from Sweden will in my mind have names like Noel, Liam and Melvin (for whatever reason: isn’t a Melvin an epithet for a nerd?), but the 10s and 20s births will see an upswing for what the kids’ grandparents and great-grandparents might have been named, that seemed old-school and weird to name a kid when I grew up with a ton of Christoffers, Daniels, Henriks, Mattias’s and Mikaels.
 

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