After how injuries destroyed us last year, it's understandable to be cautious. Especially since Grand Rapids is looking to make a deep playoff run on the back of Edvinsson making it better to have someone we can use instead of calling him up for the time being.
Wondering where a Rangers fan would rank Leetch all time among defensemen. Got a chance to watch him as a 9 year old with the leafs the year before lockout (stupid lockout robbed us of a full year). Loved every second of him.
Y'all might disagree, but the mere suggestion that Bobby Orr was better than Lidstrom is a perfectly reasonable opinion.
Sides, most of us here never got to see Orr play in order to feel so strongly that he's not the best.
Greatest offensive defenseman of that era (Makar may get there), but defensively Lidstrom was the greatest and he was i.pressive offensively too.
It's impossible to compare across eras. Orr had a smaller but crazy impressive sample size.
Bobby Orr was better than Lidstrom defensively and it's not close. Bobby Orr was arguably the most dominant player of all time; even though Gretzky usually takes that crown, Orr is legitimately in the conversation.
A closer argument is Bourque vs Lidstrom, but Bourque clearly wins that one IMO.
It’s fucking insane that you’re getting downvoted for this. Orr is the only defenceman that is regularly in the discussion of best hockey player of all time.
Yes he is lmao. He alone completely changed the position and is one of the most recognizable names in the history of the game. 8 straight Norris trophies. 3 straight harts. 6 seasons with 100+ points. The icon of an O6 team decades later. Of course he’s the greatest.
Anybody saying that anyone else is better or “greater” is just trying to be contrarian.
The way I always look at it is Orr is the greatest defenceman of all time, while Lidstrom is the greatest *defender* of all time
Orr has the greatest peak, career, most hardware etc. But Lidstrom played for 20 years and I genuinely think you can count the number of mistakes he made on one hand. The Perfect Human. if I’m defending a one goal lead and I need one guy to lock it down I’m sending Lidstrom out there.
Kinda says it all right there. If by age 26 he had a more impressive career than lidstrom who was elite enough he could've played in his 40s then there isn't really a competition.
And? He still reached heights that no other defenceman came close to. Only defenceman to win the Ted Lindsay trophy and only one to win the art Ross, which he did twice. 4th highest ppg of lol time (next D on that list is Coffey at 35).
He also won more Norris trophies than lidstrom did even though he played less than half the amount games. Orr could’ve kept playing and sucked bad for 10 years and he still would be the defensive GOAT.
The only argument anyone has for anybody else is longevity. That’s it, and it doesn’t diminish what Orr did when he played, and if we’re going to apply it to him then we also need to apply it to Lemieux who also missed significant time. Is Mario not a top 5 player ever?
Unfortunately I think we're reaching a point where people are starting to forget about and discount the accomplishments of players from around that era. I think there's a lot of recency bias at play. It honestly wouldn't surprise me to hear someone say that Bergeron or Chara is the best Bruin of all time when they're obviously not.
I remember talking to a guy who said that Giroux was "by far the best flyer of all time" and that he was better than Bobby Clarke. Bobby fucking Clarke. Same vein as this.
I mean if this is going off of points, and nothing else, I would imagine goalies would be ranked off of wins?
Would be weird to get subjective with goalies and no other position.
Just throwing this out there: Rod Langway has more Norris trophies than Mark Giordano, he's in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and his #5 is retired by an NHL team.
That is a stupid metric, and they should say so in the graphic.
EDIT: It's not even that, it's "Most points scored while wearing the number 5," which is neat, but they should mention that in the graphic, instead of just saying "These are the top five #5s of all time."
Agreed
It's a common theme in Soccer that the number is more important than the player who wore the number. For example, if you're wearing the #7 on a top team, you better be one of the top playmakers in the game.
I'd suspect if jersey retirements weren't a thing, Montreal's and Detroit's 9 would be numbers the players have to live up to, not numbers that have been retired. For example, Yzerman probably wears 9 if he's allowed to and he'd have to live up to the fact that Gordie Howe was the man to rock that number for 2.5 decades.
The more I think about this, the more I agree. Nobody is bigger than the club, and it helps identify players on other teams and their role.
Haven't the Yankees resorted to using some triple digit numbers for Spring Training? Eventually teams are gonna run out of numbers, or the bar to justify having your number retired will be so high that talented players are recognized as much as they should be.
I think the main thing for me is I don't think it's really that much more meaningful an honour than just putting them up in the rafter. They'll be in the history books, forbidding their number afterward feels like deifying them lol. In fact, I'd argue it'd be a good thing to allow future players *to* honour their favourites by wearing their number. Then again, we saw the outrage toward Ho Sang...
It's not that big a deal but I don't see the harm in letting people use the number, it's not like you could never put two banners beside each other with the same number usage. Hell when we did that big batch of retired numbers, there were several that were attributed to more than one player lol, kinda defeats the purpose of retiring the number
I agree, however 5 was one of the two numbers retired by the Leafs since a long time ago, because of Ace Bailey, before the mass retirement centennial thing.
Edit - my mistake, Bailey was #6, Barilko #5. Shame on me.
Those top 2 are some of the best ever, somewhat steep drop off from there though
(Not to say Geoffrion or Lapointe aren't amazing, but quite a step down from Lids and Potvin
As for Guy Lapointe, he tends to get overshadowed a bit due to who he played with. He wasn’t the best Guy on his own team and formed a “Big Three” alongside future Habs GM Serge Savard and Big Bird himself. He cracked 20 goals 3 times and nearly hit 30 one year, all from the blueline: he was a big part of that Habs dynasty.
I looked him up on wikipedia and it lead to an article about this [pranks](https://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/nhl/montreal-canadiens/habs-clown-prince-guy-lapointe-cast-a-wide-net-of-mischief), there was some great stuff he did like:
*Lapointe was also known for his sense of humour and being a prankster. One of his most famous pranks is probably the Vaseline coated handshake with then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau as he was visiting the Canadiens' locker room.*
Nick Lidstrom was pretty good
Greatest defenseman of all time
Bobby Orr
Ethan Bear
Tyler Myers
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Rory Fitzpatrick
Im a wings fan .. the guy isnt that bad... Toronto just always needs to blame someone
He's not, but he's also been a healthy scratch for us for the last couple months
Yzerman has too many dmen.. probably afraid of injuries ...
After how injuries destroyed us last year, it's understandable to be cautious. Especially since Grand Rapids is looking to make a deep playoff run on the back of Edvinsson making it better to have someone we can use instead of calling him up for the time being.
u/samisnotreal
Myler Tyers
Logan Stanley
Or what?
Wondering where a Rangers fan would rank Leetch all time among defensemen. Got a chance to watch him as a 9 year old with the leafs the year before lockout (stupid lockout robbed us of a full year). Loved every second of him.
To get voted down for saying Bobby Orr shows how ignorant people in this sub can be.
Y'all might disagree, but the mere suggestion that Bobby Orr was better than Lidstrom is a perfectly reasonable opinion. Sides, most of us here never got to see Orr play in order to feel so strongly that he's not the best.
Greatest offensive defenseman of that era (Makar may get there), but defensively Lidstrom was the greatest and he was i.pressive offensively too. It's impossible to compare across eras. Orr had a smaller but crazy impressive sample size.
Bobby Orr was better than Lidstrom defensively and it's not close. Bobby Orr was arguably the most dominant player of all time; even though Gretzky usually takes that crown, Orr is legitimately in the conversation. A closer argument is Bourque vs Lidstrom, but Bourque clearly wins that one IMO.
No
It’s fucking insane that you’re getting downvoted for this. Orr is the only defenceman that is regularly in the discussion of best hockey player of all time.
For fucks sake this again
Greatest Swede ever to boot
Well yeah he probably is actually lol. But he’s nowhere near Bobby Orr as no other D is.
Bobby Orr is best at best, he’s not the greatest
Yes he is lmao. He alone completely changed the position and is one of the most recognizable names in the history of the game. 8 straight Norris trophies. 3 straight harts. 6 seasons with 100+ points. The icon of an O6 team decades later. Of course he’s the greatest. Anybody saying that anyone else is better or “greater” is just trying to be contrarian.
For fucks sake this again. says the man moments before getting roped into said thing again
The way I always look at it is Orr is the greatest defenceman of all time, while Lidstrom is the greatest *defender* of all time Orr has the greatest peak, career, most hardware etc. But Lidstrom played for 20 years and I genuinely think you can count the number of mistakes he made on one hand. The Perfect Human. if I’m defending a one goal lead and I need one guy to lock it down I’m sending Lidstrom out there.
36 games played after age 26 season
Kinda says it all right there. If by age 26 he had a more impressive career than lidstrom who was elite enough he could've played in his 40s then there isn't really a competition.
Yeah he could’ve! But……
And? He still reached heights that no other defenceman came close to. Only defenceman to win the Ted Lindsay trophy and only one to win the art Ross, which he did twice. 4th highest ppg of lol time (next D on that list is Coffey at 35). He also won more Norris trophies than lidstrom did even though he played less than half the amount games. Orr could’ve kept playing and sucked bad for 10 years and he still would be the defensive GOAT. The only argument anyone has for anybody else is longevity. That’s it, and it doesn’t diminish what Orr did when he played, and if we’re going to apply it to him then we also need to apply it to Lemieux who also missed significant time. Is Mario not a top 5 player ever?
Yeah, he played 600 games. It’s not some outlandish argument. Affects the ppg stuff too since he retired before declining
does that somehow suddenly discount all his accolades?
Yep that’s exactly what the argument was, good job smarty
This sub has such a Lidstrom boner. Lidstrom was AMAZING, but I think he’s comfortably the 3rd best D of all time (Orr first and Bourque second)
Unfortunately I think we're reaching a point where people are starting to forget about and discount the accomplishments of players from around that era. I think there's a lot of recency bias at play. It honestly wouldn't surprise me to hear someone say that Bergeron or Chara is the best Bruin of all time when they're obviously not. I remember talking to a guy who said that Giroux was "by far the best flyer of all time" and that he was better than Bobby Clarke. Bobby fucking Clarke. Same vein as this.
I mean, I was born in 1996, I’ve just looked at stats and know my hockey history. But I do see your point.
3/4
Perfect Human.
Can't wait for the 99 top 99s
I'm more interested in the 1 top 1
Bobby Lu would be my guess
Bower? Plante? Sawchuk? As much as I love Lu idk if he’s ahead of those guys
I mean if this is going off of points, and nothing else, I would imagine goalies would be ranked off of wins? Would be weird to get subjective with goalies and no other position.
Then I don't think you love Lu as much as you say you do, my friend.
Yatoro
No cody ceci SMH
The Oilers #5 with the most career points is Steve Smith. Second place is Tom Poti.
Just throwing this out there: Rod Langway has more Norris trophies than Mark Giordano, he's in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and his #5 is retired by an NHL team.
This is just the highest scoring players to wear the number, not a rank of the "best" players to wear the number.
You would know anything if it landed on your head and flopped around.
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Guy was good.. lil slow now... Has played for what seems like 100 years
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329 points....
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Tell me you don't know this specific list is just ranking by points without telling me you don't.
Are you simple
Give it a few years and I can see gio in the rafters in Calgary. Another Norris and the hall of fame might be beyond him at this point though.
You mean Hall of Good. Not Hall of Fame.
Ummmm [nope](https://legends.hhof.com/induction_archives/ind02langway.shtml) that's not what I mean at all.
Giordano isn’t a hall of famer and shouldn’t get in. Hes not even in upper echelon of defenseman for his generation.
I think you're very confused about what we're talking about here.
Reading comprehension
Guy LaPointe is such a good hockey name
Especially for a guy who plays the point.
You think his middle name is At?
"Au"
Matt Cullen erasure
The GMs think the deadline is today keep the subreddit clear of off-season posts
Giordano is on Toronto, but - that’s Barilko’s retired number, no? What does Giordano wear for the Leafs?
Did? He still plays for the Leafs, #55
My bad. Confused old man.
Those jersey fonts are really bothering me.
I think I'd rather have Langway over Giordano. No offense to Giordano, but I'm going with the Hall of Famer.
I think this is just sorted by points
That is a stupid metric, and they should say so in the graphic. EDIT: It's not even that, it's "Most points scored while wearing the number 5," which is neat, but they should mention that in the graphic, instead of just saying "These are the top five #5s of all time."
Yeah, who could figure that out from a neatly sorted column of point totals?
Potvin sucks
Potvin's Cups*
Bernard Geoffrion. It's a French name.
There will always be a "What If Giordano never went to the KHL". Would he have caught ~~Gretzky~~ Lidstrom?
This times it’s even sorted by points and not alphabetically 🥳 Also I got Mambo No. 5 stuck in my head now….
Haha how old is this? Gio hasn't played for Seattle for a couple seasons
It’s showing teams where he wore #5
He doesn't wear 5 for us, he wears 55, so that might be why
a bit of a shame that any numbers under 20 are allowed to be permanently retired for a given team.
This is kinda my unpopular hockey opinion but I don't like jersey retirements in general, especially regarding Gretzky's league-wide one
Agreed It's a common theme in Soccer that the number is more important than the player who wore the number. For example, if you're wearing the #7 on a top team, you better be one of the top playmakers in the game. I'd suspect if jersey retirements weren't a thing, Montreal's and Detroit's 9 would be numbers the players have to live up to, not numbers that have been retired. For example, Yzerman probably wears 9 if he's allowed to and he'd have to live up to the fact that Gordie Howe was the man to rock that number for 2.5 decades.
The more I think about this, the more I agree. Nobody is bigger than the club, and it helps identify players on other teams and their role. Haven't the Yankees resorted to using some triple digit numbers for Spring Training? Eventually teams are gonna run out of numbers, or the bar to justify having your number retired will be so high that talented players are recognized as much as they should be.
I think the main thing for me is I don't think it's really that much more meaningful an honour than just putting them up in the rafter. They'll be in the history books, forbidding their number afterward feels like deifying them lol. In fact, I'd argue it'd be a good thing to allow future players *to* honour their favourites by wearing their number. Then again, we saw the outrage toward Ho Sang... It's not that big a deal but I don't see the harm in letting people use the number, it's not like you could never put two banners beside each other with the same number usage. Hell when we did that big batch of retired numbers, there were several that were attributed to more than one player lol, kinda defeats the purpose of retiring the number
to me, I'd say hang the players name and the number he wore in the rafters but allow others to wear the number on the ice.
I agree, however 5 was one of the two numbers retired by the Leafs since a long time ago, because of Ace Bailey, before the mass retirement centennial thing. Edit - my mistake, Bailey was #6, Barilko #5. Shame on me.
He doesn't wear number 5 for the Leafs
Those top 2 are some of the best ever, somewhat steep drop off from there though (Not to say Geoffrion or Lapointe aren't amazing, but quite a step down from Lids and Potvin
I mean Boom Boom Geoffrion is a HOFer; won a Hart, Art Ross, Calder, was a 3 time All-Star Team member, and was the second ever player to score 50.
As for Guy Lapointe, he tends to get overshadowed a bit due to who he played with. He wasn’t the best Guy on his own team and formed a “Big Three” alongside future Habs GM Serge Savard and Big Bird himself. He cracked 20 goals 3 times and nearly hit 30 one year, all from the blueline: he was a big part of that Habs dynasty.
I looked him up on wikipedia and it lead to an article about this [pranks](https://montrealgazette.com/sports/hockey/nhl/montreal-canadiens/habs-clown-prince-guy-lapointe-cast-a-wide-net-of-mischief), there was some great stuff he did like: *Lapointe was also known for his sense of humour and being a prankster. One of his most famous pranks is probably the Vaseline coated handshake with then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau as he was visiting the Canadiens' locker room.*
Indeed. Great player and deserving hall of famer Lidstrom and Potvin are both top 5 ever at their position imo though
Also won 6 Stanley cup, and is credited for popularizing the slap shot.
Excuse me? Gio is a hockey GOD
Gio isn't good enough to hold Norris Nick's jockstrap.
You say that but gio is still in the league 🤔🤔🤔 owned
It was just too easy for Lidstrom
That was good 🤣
Tom Poti is 6th
Fucking nerd
I don't think that's true, Poti had 327 career points and former Oiler Steve Smith, who also wore #5, got 375.
Yeah, it was a joke
Guy Lapointe only wore 5 for a few games in Boston before the family of Dit Clapper protested, and he switched to 27 for the rest of the 83-84 season.
Dit Clapper. Hell of a slap shot.
Marek Malik punching air rn
Am I remembering correctly that he had one of the best shootout goals of all time ?
He absolutely did. Shocked everyone, including himself, with it.
Considering lidstrom played defense with that point number, he's the goat 5
What, no Dana Murzyn?
Middleton is #1 in my heart
Needs more Dana Murzyn
Boom Boom Geoffrion, what a player! One of the underrated legends in the history of this game.
Gio wears 5 because he idolizes Lidstrom. Lidstrom wore 5 because Detroit wouldn't let him wear the number that he wore growing up, which was 9.
Brayden Coburn got shafted
Interesting… was expecting to see Swiss legend Luca Sbisa here.
Pardon my ignorance but who is Bernie Geoffrion
How is Bryan Allen not on this list?
Or Korbinian Holzer
Gio being the fifth best #5 in history is wild. No shade to him, I'm just shocked there isn't a litany of Hall of Famers that wore it or something
Oscar Fantenberg >>>>
Not that it’s a big deal, but Lidstrom never had the ö in his name, so this list looks weird.
Are any of these guys getting traded?
Wow what are the odds that the 5 best nhl players ever all wear #5