From Crosby to Thornton, Ovechkin to Chara, here are hockey's best from the past 25 years.
www.espn.com
ESPN's Top 25 NHLers of the 21st Century:
1. Sidney Crosby
2. Alex Ovechkin
3. Connor McDavid
4. Patrick Kane
5. Nicklas Lidstrom
6. Nathan MacKinnon
7. Martin Brodeur
8. Henrik Lundqvist
9. Evgeni Malkin
10. Patrice Bergeron
11. Zdeno Chara
12. Steven Stamkos
13. Leon Draisaitl
14. Joe Thornton
15. Auston Matthews
16. Erik Karlsson
17. Nikita Kucherov
18. Marc-Andre Fleury
19. Andrei Vasilevskiy
20. Jarome Iginla
21. Anze Kopitar
22. Pavel Datsyuk
23. Duncan Keith
24. Victor Hedman
25. Jonathan Quick
Alright here goes with a more in-depth criticizing....
McDavid #3 behind Crosby/Ovi? Absolutely no problem. Career-wise and length this is a super rationale take, even if many might say he's better. So top 3 is fine.
#4 Kane. No. Malkin and Kucherov are better. But....devil's advocate....if you really love Kane, you could potentially argue him for #4 so long as the others were 5 & 6 but...
Lidstrom? Ok - let's ignore him. A bit weird since he's 50/50 90s and 2000s - is this his whole career or what? If it's his whole career - him being behind Kane is idiotic. If it's half his career...no idea, don't even want to try to do that math. So - I'll ignore
MacKinnon....what? Over Malkin? Kucherov? Makes absolutely no sense. Even if you think he's better than both of them (he's not) - his career isn't yet since it's only half a career. If you're going by peak, McDavid could be #1 too - so huge logic gap there. (even for peak/prime, I'd have him behind Malkin and Kucherov, but at least it's closer).
Brodeur...i'll be generous and ignore him too for same reasons as Lidstrom. If it's ful career....idiotic he should be higher. If it's half career...no idea, maybe.
Lundqvist? Huh? Above Malkin/Kucherov? Absolutely brutal and ridiculous take. Also - all-time, Lundqvist/Price are very close. I could see some ranking Henrik's career higher - but him being #8 while Price isn't even on this list is idiotic.
Malkin at 9 - he should be 4
I'll skip a few
Kucherov at 17 - behind all of Matthews, Draisaitl and MacKinnon is the worst thing I've seen on the Internet today.
Fleury as the second best goalie - above Price and all the others? Again, stupid.
I could go on - but like I said in my earlier post, this is legitimately one of the worst rankings I've ever seen,