Canada All Time Team
- Thread starter Eye of Ra
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Lindros has no business being on all time Canada team over Yzerman and Sakic. Lindros was overrated during his career but he is overrated after it ended too.
Canada is losing in 4 you mean? Or the World?
I would say put him in there as a 13th forward anyway because he would be excellent to have if the games got more physical. Sakic and Yzerman are all-time greats but they don't bring anything different to the table. Crosby and MacKinnon can do what they can do. But how many people can do what a prime Lindros can do? The closest is Gordie Howe, and he's already on the team. And that is the thing, we are building a team here. A team that needs to have no weaknesses.
Gerulaitis
Guest
Canada losing in 4, I mean.
They won't score more than a goal per game on the red-hot Hasek.
Team World will comfortably score 3 or more in each game.
Why does Hasek get to be red hot?
I am amazed that Dominik Hasek can be both the best goaltender ever (in my opinion) and still wildly overrated (in my opinion) by people with regularity.
Anyway for Canada these are the players I think are the must haves
F: Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Beliveau, Hull, Crosby, McDavid
D: Orr, Bourque, Potvin, Harvey
The rest of the spots are just complementing those players, though I would struggle to not put Clarke, Shore, and Kelly on the team as well. Those are your best players, the others need to be great but also versatile and have a clear role.
Anyway for Canada these are the players I think are the must haves
F: Gretzky, Lemieux, Howe, Beliveau, Hull, Crosby, McDavid
D: Orr, Bourque, Potvin, Harvey
The rest of the spots are just complementing those players, though I would struggle to not put Clarke, Shore, and Kelly on the team as well. Those are your best players, the others need to be great but also versatile and have a clear role.
Hasek and Roy are pretty much the same here. But Canada blows the World out in every other category. A power play that could ice Gretzky-Lemieux-McDavid-Orr-Coffey is going to score just one goal a game?
I know it's early in his career but 5 straight Norris finalist selections after winning rookie of the year and a 9th place in norris that season, Makar has the icing on his cake to be on this team really soon right?
Yeah he'll get there, probably very soon. Made up team Canada could use another elite right handed defenceman. In terms of historical profile Makar has spent years as the consensus best defenceman in the NHL (spare me Quinn Hughes talk, Vancouver fans) and barring a late season injury will get another Norris this year. Would have had the Norris the year Fox got it had he not missed a few games, strong Conn Smythe in 2022. Very much passes the eye test, has a "winning pedigree", the way he generates offence has been influential in the league and so on. He's a historically relevant defenceman and Canada's best since Pronger.
I'm interested in seeing how he ages. I see parallels with the first third of Bourque's career, remains to be seen if he can peak like Bourque or even approach Bourque's longevity.
Agree with most of this except that Hughes was worthy of his norris last season and was rightly so, the frontrunner this year until he got hurt.
Even with that I can see why in a vacum people would prefer Makar, I probably would even with my support of Hughes.
It's an interesting comparison with bourge having 8 seasons through age 26 and Makar will have 6.
Makar is better offensively and has a better playoff resume but Bourque was healthy and very steady with elite play.
Actually scratch that Bourque missed games as well.
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Gerulaitis
Guest
Because he took the series personal
Oh, in that case.
Gerulaitis
Guest
Not really the same. Hasek can outplay Roy.
What power play? Team World will be coached by Tikhonov. Their discipline will be on another level. The most important series of their virtual careers.
So Canada will get only one or 2 power play chances per game. They might convert one of them but only if Don Koharski will be the ref.
There is a slim line, if one at all, between Hasek and Roy. And come to think of it, Roy is definitely the most clutch goalie of all-time. So Canada is not at a disadvantage with Roy in net. I'd probably pick him over anyone else. And that's getting past the forwards and the defense. Sorry, but a team that has 20 or more of the top 25 players of all-time is not losing a 7 game series.
Gerulaitis
Guest
Roy is a good goalie but not a super human.
There are 20 out of the top 25 in the world in your classification.
I agree. They're not losing in a 7 game series. Likely they would be losing in less than 7 games
Lindros was very good on the big rink too and I think he'd be very good as a power forward winger.
Leaving Makarov off is odd as he is likely the greatest non-Canadian skater ever apart from Jagr.
I think that's a crazy notion, and your best argument was that Hasek would be the reason. Forgetting completely that goalies on the other side are basically at the same level. And Roy is the greatest clutch goalie in NHL history. So if there is a slim lead, and it would be ever so slim, it doesn't make up for the defenseman and forwards. For example, if you have a team where you can throw out 4 straight lines where Gretzky, Lemieux, McDavid and Beliveau are the centremen how do you compete with that? I just don't see how Team World matches that. And that's just a sample size of the advantage Canada would have.
We would need him in there for his physical force. We tend to remember Lindros in a post-Scott Stevens hit manner. Let's remember the mid 1990s version of him, that's who I am picturing. And the options with him would be broad.
Yeah he could easily be on the team, just didn’t fit into any of the lines I had made at first glance. Ask me on a different day I could possibly make an even better team with him included.
I agree that Hasek is the best goalie ever, and I'm a Montreal fan. However, if Hasek was so much better than Roy, he would also have more than 2 Stanley Cups. If you think Hasek can overcome having inferior skaters in front of him, well, that's Roy's specialty - there's a reason he's the only player to win the Conn Smythe three times. When Roy decides to go God-mode in the playoffs, he's almost as good as Hart-level Hasek. The problem is Canada will be pressuring the international team from Lines 1 through 4; they will have more opportunities, and more to the point, more golden opportunities. At this point, Canada just has too rich a talent pool to pull from with its long history. I suspect Vegas would have Canada as a heavy betting favourite even if Sawchuk, Plante, or Brodeur were in net.
A more interesting discussion would be a similar competition, but fifty years from now. By that time, the international team will probably have added more generational game-breakers, like Ovechkin, since Canada now only comprises about 40% of the NHL. But, it still won't be easy - guys like Orr, Gretzky, and Lemieux don't come around often.
Yeah, Makarov is a must! The likely top scorer on the team, along with Jagr.
Was he a better scorer than Ovechkin or Malkin though at their peaks?
Well he absolutely dominated the Soviet league
In the 7 year prime he had (79/80 -85/86) his numbers are by far the best with higher GPG than pure goal scorers like Balderis or Krutov and significantly higher APG than Larionov.
even when compared to the 7 years of hockey before him in what was clearly a higher scoring environment (10 players with PPG above 1 while during Makarov peak it was just 3)
He was more or less scoring equally (if not better) to pure goalscorers like Mikhailov, Krutov or Balderis (so let's say slightly worse than Ovi or Bure goal scoring wise) while maintaining a higher APG than the best playmakers in Soviet history like Larionov, Petrov or Kharlamov (so closer to Crosby than Malkin imo) .
Really impressive passing and playmaking taken from one of his highlight videos:
all while being an elite skater and dangler:
He was even pretty good defensively.
Oh wow I never really looked at these stats before for their careers, I didn’t know he was this dominant. So wait, why is Kharlamov seen as the best from that era and not Petrov?
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