Care to try naming them? Because I doubt there's that many.
if we rank guys numerically, then i have nieuwendyk 19th or 20th, depending on what you do with yashin's higher peak but only having played half the decade (and of course, playoff no-show in his MVP season). in some, totally non-scientific and off the top of my head, order--
top 10:
mario
gretzky
lindros
messier
yzerman
fedorov
sakic
oates
gilmour
forsberg
11-20
francis
modano
roenick
sundin
turgeon
lafontaine
brind'amour (mostly C)
damphousse (partial winger, but was C at his best)
nieuwendyk
yashin
guys you'd put in the 21 and later category:
carbonneau
muller (partial winger, but in the 90s was C at his best)
janney
buffalo hawerchuk
linden (mostly winger, but like early messier, was C when games mattered)
nicholls
so if we take the relatively arbitrary number of 10, nieuwendyk is farther down but in the same tier as roenick, and the separation is less than ten guys. but i think most of us can agree there's a natural break between roenick/sundin/turgeon/lafontaine and damphousse/brind'amour/nieuwendyk. which is what i meant by "third rate"-- the difference between a superstar center that never (or in lafontaine's case very rarely) in the conversation for best player in the world, and an excellent 2nd line center/very good 1b center.
as for lafontaine, other than his two MVP-type seasons and the partial season in '92, he's a damphousse-level offensive guy without the two-way game and intangibles. we put him in the second tier because of his extremely high peak, but he was only that guy for only 1/4 of his career, and it's not like he played beyond his prime.
---
but all that said, i mentioned in the last voting thread that it seems totally incongruous to me that the 15th best center of the 90s (whether that's roenick or lafontaine or turgeon or nieuwendyk) should really be in the top 60. i mean, 1/4 of the best 60 centers of all time shouldn't really be from the same 15 year period, even if that era is extraordinarily deep right?
but if i
had to pick one post-lemaire guy to fill out the top 60, it would be roenick, not lafontaine, brind'amour, nieuwendyk, sedin, or stamkos.