Which NHL team has the best ‘Mount Rushmore’ of legendary players?

Matt Larkin
Matt Larkin(MLarkinHockey)
Which NHL team has the best ‘Mount Rushmore’ of legendary players?

After Jaromir Jagr’s jersey retirement last weekend, a tweet went viral depicting Jagr, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, asking if the Pittsburgh Penguins had the claim to the best Hockey ‘Mount Rushmore’ ever:

Is that true, or does another team have a legit argument? Which franchise has the best hockey Mount Rushmore of legendary players? 

Over to you, Roundtable.

MATT LARKIN: So many good choices. Normally I open the Roundtable with the low-hanging fruit, but I’ll leave the Pens and Edmonton Oilers for one of you. Remember, it’s not the Mount Rushmore of forwards, it’s all positions. And the Detroit Red Wings can lay claim to Gordie Howe, Nicklas Lidstrom, Dominik Hasek and Steve Yzerman. Am I cheating with Hasek, who felt more like a career Sabre than Red Wing? No, considering he won two Stanley Cups with Detroit. This quartet boasts, in my opinion, the best power forward ever, the second-best defenseman ever, the best goalie ever, and a top-20ish player who happens to also be my favorite player ever. 

STEVEN ELLIS: I have to go with the team with 24 Stanley Cups – the Montreal Canadiens. My four picks are Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, Patrick Roy and Guy Lafleur, but there’s an argument to be made about Larry Robinson, Jacques Plante, Ken Dryden, Howie Morenz, Henri Richard, Doug Harvey, etc. There’s no team with Montreal’s history, and there’s a reason they lead the way, championship-wise. Even if we just looked at goaltenders, it beats out most NHL teams. Just insane.

FRANK SERAVALLI: Matt, it sure feels like Dominik Hasek is a cheesy reach to add to the Red Wings’ Mount Rushmore. He only played four seasons there and the second Stanley Cup in 2008, he only played four playoff games. I digress. Trying to think outside the box here, because it’s hard to argue with the Canadiens, Penguins or Oilers. There are some interesting cases. Chicago would have a pretty great modern day Rushmore with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. With the Kings you could include Wayne Gretzky and Luc Robitaille to go along with Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty. But I’m probably going to go with the Boston Bruins: Bobby Orr, Ray Bourque, Patrice Bergeron and Phil Esposito. That is a pretty lethal group. If we’re going pure salary cap era, the Tampa Bay Lightning are also pretty elite: Martin St. Louis, Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy. I’d hate to be the guy that would have to leave off Steven Stamkos and Vincent Lecavalier.

MIKE GOULD: Hear me out: the Colorado Avalanche. Joe Sakic, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, and Patrick Roy. You could make a great case for Peter Forsberg, too — how many other teams would be able to leave a guy like that off their Mount Rushmore? I think when all is said and done, Makar could go into the history books as the most decorated player of his era — yes, including Connor McDavid — and MacKinnon is certainly no slouch himself. Sakic is genuinely one of the greatest players of all time, someone who I’d put roughly on par with Crosby. Roy is second only to Hasek among all goaltenders for me, but unlike Hasek in Detroit, Roy actually played a substantial chunk of his career in Colorado and won two Cups there as a starter. And I’m not even including Quebec Nordiques stars like Mats Sundin or Peter Stastny. I just have to go with Colorado — they’re the Western Conference’s top powerhouse of the last 25 years for a reason.

SCOTT MAXWELL: My answer was also going to be Colorado in an attempt to be unique, but Mike already covered that base. How about I save the whole table’s butts of big-braining this question a bit too much and go with the team that started this conversation: the Pittsburgh Penguins. It’s the obvious answer for a reason. Mario Lemieux is probably the only other forward who can rival Gretzky as the best of all-time, and the two probably split all the records Gretzky holds if not for health. Jaromir Jagr is a legend in his own right, and if we’re going to give Gordie Howe props for how long he played, we probably should with Jagr too, and he actually produced more than Howe too. Sidney Crosby is, well, Crosby, and is already a lock for top 10 all-time when his career is over. And then there’s Evgeni Malkin, who is a slight drop off from the other three, and according to the NHL he isn’t even a top-100 player of all-time, but was just as good as Crosby during their prime days. You could make the case that the Penguins have three top-10 players on their Rushmore, and most other teams hardly have a case for two, so it’s hard to top that for this debate. Edmonton is close considering that they have pretty equal comparables for Lemieux, Crosby and Jagr in Gretzky, McDavid and Messier, but I just like Malkin a lot more than any of Edmonton’s options for the four slot.

MATT LARKIN: Wait…did we just galaxy brain this so badly that no one chose the Edmonton Oilers? Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid, Mark Messier and Paul Coffey? Fine. I change my vote.

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