SI's greatest NHL players by jersey number

[colonel_korn]

Nothing particularly deep here but I thought it was a fun list. It was assembled by Allan Muir of Sports Illustrated.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mu...atest.players.by.jersey.number/content.1.html

Results (spoilered in case you want to guess at some) below. After 40 it becomes hard to think of any notable players for a lot of the numbers, with some obvious exceptions. But it's not every day that Andrei Nazarov, Jamie McGinn or Mel Angelstadt gets to be on a top-100 list, so I think it's OK. He says #1 and #19 were the hardest to decide on.

[spoil]
00 - John Davidson
0 - Neil Sheehy
1 - Terry Sawchuk
2 - Doug Harvey
3 - Pierre Pilote
4 - Bobby Orr (duh)
5 - Denis Potvin
6 - Toe Blake
7 - Phil Esposito
8 - Alex Ovechkin
9 - Gordie Howe
10 - Guy Lafleur
11 - Mark Messier
12 - Dickie Moore
13 - Pavel Datsyuk
14 - Brendan Shanahan
15 - Milt Schmidt
16 - Brett Hull
17 - Jari Kurri
18 - Serge Savard
19 - Steve Yzerman
20 - Luc Robitaille
21 - Stan Mikita
22 - Mike Bossy
23 - Bob Gainey
24 - Chris Chelios
25 - Joe Nieuwendyk
26 - Peter Stastny
27 - Scott Niedermayer
28 - Steve Larmer
29 - Ken Dryden
30 - Martin Brodeur
31 - Grant Fuhr
32 - Claude Lemieux
33 - Patrick Roy
34 - Miikka Kiprusoff
35 - Tony Esposito
36 - Jussi Jokinen
37 - Olaf Kolzig
38 - Pavol Demitra
39 - Dominik Hasek
40 - Henrik Zetterberg
41 - Jason Allison
42 - Sergei Makarov
43 - Martin Biron
44 - Chris Pronger
45 - Arron Asham
46 - David Krejci
47 - Alex Radulov
48 - Scott Young
49 - Brian Savage
50 - Chris Mason
51 - Brian Campbell
52 - Adam Foote
53 - Derek Morris
54 - Paul Ranger
55 - Larry Murphy
56 - Sergei Zubov
57 - Steve Heinze
58 - Kris Letang
59 - Chad LaRose
60 - Jose Theodore
61 - Rick Nash
62 - Andrei Nazarov
63 - Mike Ribeiro
64 - Jamie McGinn
65 - Mark Napier
66 - Mario Lemieux
67 - Michael Frolik
68 - Jaromir Jagr
69 - Mel Angelstad
70 - Oleg Tverdovsky
71 - Evgeni Malkin
72 - Mathieu Schneider
73 - Michael Ryder
74 - T.J. Oshie
75 - Leroy Goldsworthy
76 - Radek Bonk
77 - Ray Bourque
78 - Marc Pouliot
79 - Andrei Markov
80 - Nik Antropov
81 - Marian Hossa
82 - Martin Straka
83 - Ales Hemsky
84 -Guillaume Latendresse
85 - Petr Klima
86 - Wojtek Wolski
87 - Sidney Crosby
88 - Eric Lindros
89 - Alex Mogilny
90 - Joe Juneau
91 - Sergei Fedorov
92 - Rick Tocchet
93 - Doug Gilmour
94 - Ryan Smyth
95 - Alexei Morozov
96 - Tomas Holmstrom
97 - Jeremy Roenick
98 - Brian Lawton
99 - Wayne Gretzky
[/spoil]

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[kmad]

Brett Hull over Bobby Clarke at #16 is pretty horrible.

 

[BlackDog13]

Marcel Dionne makes a pretty strong case for #16 over Hull or Clarke.

I'd also have gone with either Darryl Sittler or Frank Mahovlich for #27 over Scott Niedermayer and Billy Smith could have just as easily been the choice for #31 over Grant Fuhr.

 

[Habsfunk]

As much as I hate him, Mats Sundin has had a better career than Datsyuk, so far.

Andrei Nazarov has to be the worst player on that list.

 

[Kyle McMahon]

Funny to think that Bobby Hull, Beliveau, and the Rocket are pretty much concensus top-10 players, but pretty much have no argument for being on the list.

Niedermayer over Mahovlich for #27 is inexcusable. Hull over Clarke for #16 is bad too, but understandable in the sense that statistically (which was probably the main thing an SI author was looking at) it would appear to make sense.

Agree that #19 is a tough call. I'd have gone for Trottier personally.

Belfour vs Robitaille for #20 is very debatable.

Would go with Morenz at #7 over Esposito, hardly what you'd call a glaring error though.

 

[Leafs Forever]

Espo over Morenz isn't too bad, but the comment that goes along with it is ignorant:

Howie Morenz may be the choice of the game's mythologists, but the indomitable Espo would have bowled over the pipsqueak and eaten his lunch.

Sorry, but Espo is a walk in the park compared to dealing with Eddie Shore and doing fine.

 

[Kevin Malone]

As much as I hate him, Mats Sundin has had a better career than Datsyuk, so far.

Andrei Nazarov has to be the worst player on that list.

Agreed! I cannot believe that they put Datsyuk above Sundin.

Sundin had 1349pts and was still averaging 75pts per season on god awful Leaf teams.

Example: On the 2001-02 Leafs Sundin had 80pts, the next closest was Tucker with 59. For many years Mats Sundin was the Leafs offense.

Had Sundin played with Lidstrom/Zetterberg/Yzerman/Hull/Shanahan etc. He would have a bunch of rings on his finger as well.

Datsyuk is 32 and has 592pts while playing on one of best modern day dynasty. When Sundin was his age he already had 1100pts.

 

[The Mauve Avenger]

Wow, almost nobody ever wore the #69? Hope Greg McKegg changes that!

 

[colonel_korn]

Andrei Nazarov has to be the worst player on that list.

Almost -- I think you'd have to go with minor-league goon Mel Angelstad, the only player who ever had the audacity to wear #69 in the NHL, in his brief two-game call-up with the Caps a few years ago. No one else has worn it before or since. It's basically as if That Guy from your beer league who thinks it's hilarious to wear a number synonymous with a sex act somehow ended up playing a couple games in the NHL.

 

[Tavaresmagicalplay*]

How controversial is Datsyuk over Selanne? I mean if it's such a hot debate about Kurri vs Selanne then why is Datsyuk vs Selanne not a landslide?

 

[Kyle McMahon]

How controversial is Datsyuk over Selanne? I mean if it's such a hot debate about Kurri vs Selanne then why is Datsyuk vs Selanne not a landslide?

I personally associate Selanne with #8. Probably a case of a guy wearing two numbers for a significant amount of time and thus not being really being "the guy" for either one.

 

[HF007]

yzerman over sakic?
what's this guy smoking?

 

[CaliforniaSeal]

96 for Holmstrom? I thought Pavel Bure would be the shoe-in.

 

[mco543]

I thought the same thing but Bure wasn't up to Bure standards when he wore 96.

 

[Seanconn*]

i stopped reading after Selanne wasn't picked for #8.

maybe in 5 years Ovi will rightfully deserve to be called the number 1, number 8... but not yet.

Selanne only wore the 13 for like 2 very isolated seasons.

 

[Tavaresmagicalplay*]

i stopped reading after Selanne wasn't picked for #8.

maybe in 5 years Ovi will rightfully deserve to be called the number 1, number 8... but not yet.

Selanne only wore the 13 for like 2 very isolated seasons.

Why is Ovi such a ridiculous choice? He's accomplished more individually in 5 seasons than Selanne has in his entire career.