Your favorite team's toughest and softest roster in their history?

[ted2019]

Yeah, I think many of the teams that usually get singled out would still do well in the toughest single game roster competition, including the 1981-82 Flyers -- although I'd be more inclined to go with the 1980-81 Flyers as the scariest.

Speaking of the Flyers, I've heard the 1988-89 outfit mentioned often as one of the toughest of all time. The list of fighters that saw time with them that year is distinguished, but a few of them saw limited action. Out of curiosity, I tried to find the toughest single game lineup the Flyers iced that season. Twice in December of that year the Flyers dressed the following players in a single game:

Dave Brown
Craig Berube
Rick Tocchet
Terry Carkner
Jeff Chychrun
Jay Wells
Scott Mellanby
Don Nachbaur
Jeff Harding (6'3", 220-pound rookie had 9 fights in the AHL/NHL/NHL pre-season that year)

That is exactly HALF of the skaters they dressed those nights.

Considering they also had 6'3", 235-pound Tim Kerr and 6'6", 235-pound Kjell Samuelsson in the lineup, THAT is a pretty dang impressive roster. In case you're wondering, the Flyers dressed all these guys in games Dec. 6, 1988 against Washington and Dec. 8, 1988 vs. Pittsburgh.

(By the way, this is a huge but fun time-waster.)

Any other single game line-ups come to mind?

The 80-81 Flyers had 2581 PIM's that year. Here are the players with at least 100 PIM's that season.
Blake Wesley 107
Brian Propp 110
Bobby Clarke 140
Bob Dailey 141
Kenny Linesman 150
Frank Bathe 175 (44 games)
Mike Busniuk 204
Glen Cochrane 219 (31 games)
Behn Wilson 237
Paul Holmgren 306

 

[SaturdayNightSlegr]

...

Speaking of the Flyers, I've heard the 1988-89 outfit mentioned often as one of the toughest of all time. ...

That Flyers team had Al Secord as well.

 

[IamJust0ne]

Ottawa '07-'08

Chris Neil
Brian McGrattan
Ray Emery
Zdeno Chara
Brad Norton
Mike Fisher

The man, the legend

 

[Nalyd Psycho]

The 87-88 Canucks were legit tough as well, boasting 3 legit heavyweights in Coxe, Stanley and Richter as well as decent middleweights in Butcher, Sutter and Smyl... as well as a handful of other guys that could handle themselves okay, such as Melnyk, Bruce and Sandlak. Plus, they were joined for a few games by young toughs, Ronnie Stern and Peter Bakovic.
This squad may have lost a lot, but at least they weren't pushed around.

At the other end of the spectrum, the 10-11 SC finalist team was pretty darn soft. Might have won it all if they had a bit of push back.
HM to the pre-Slap Shot era 72-73 team who had Schmatz and Wilkins and that was it.

Gotta have Garth Butcher on the blueline. Possibly the best crease clearer we ever had.

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

For the Sharks' toughest, I'd probably go '96-'97:


Marty McSorley
Todd Ewen
Andrei Nazarov
Dody Wood
Owen Nolan
Al Iafrate
Tim Hunter


For the softest, you can pretty much take any of the post-Ryane Clowe/Doug Murray years (2013-2015).

Then you had Link Gaetz and Odgers before them. Loved those early teams.