Who is the most underrated NHL player of all-time?

Credit: © Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports

This NHL season, it’s Quinn Hughes this, Connor McDavid that, meanwhile Nikita Kucherov keeps chugging along, leading the NHL in scoring, on pace for more than 135 points.

The man is a two-time first-team all-star, a two-team second-team all-star, a two-time Stanley Cup champion, a two-time playoff scoring champion, a Hart Trophy winner, an Art Ross winner and more. Yet it feels like we take him for granted because he shares an era with generational superstar McDavid.

Kucherov is one of the most underrated players not just of his generation, but perhaps ever.

So this week, in honor of him, I ask: Who is the most underrated player of all-time?

MATT LARKIN: It’ll be seven years this winter since the NHL botched their centennial Top 100 players list by excluding Evgeni Malkin, and I swear I’m still mad about it. The man owns a Calder Trophy, a Hart Trophy, a Conn Smythe Trophy, two Art Ross Trophies and three Stanley Cup rings (and owned all of those accolades aside from Stanley Cup No. 3 when the NHL released its list). He has amassed well north of 1,200 points and will soon surpass 500 goals. He’s one of the best playoff performers ever, 14th all-time in points. You could make a case for Geno as a top 50 player, let alone Top 100. Yet in Pittsburgh he’s always under the shadow not just of Sidney Crosby but also the legends who preceded them in Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. Perhaps that’s why Geno doesn’t get the love he deserves.

FRANK SERAVALLI: Man, this is one of the harder roundtable questions we’ve ever had. What exactly defines underrated? Players are revered in different markets, underappreciated in others and often, greatness is washed away simply by time. I think he’s obviously still universally respected – I mean, every Rangers game still begins with a chant about him in the Garden – but I’m not sure kids today fully appreciate the career of Denis Potvin. When we think of greatest defenseman ever, first answer is Bobby Orr. Second invariably involves one of Nick Lidstrom, Paul Coffey, Ray Bourque or Chris Chelios. It’s not often that it’s Potvin and he has a legitimate argument. He played way fewer games than all of them except Orr, and that may be why. Consider this: 15 seasons, 4 Stanley Cups, 3 Norris Trophies, 1 Calder and a slew of incredible stats. Nine 20-goal or more seasons. Hart runner-up and seven times finished in the Top 9 in Hart voting. He was a traditional defender who averaged nearly a point-per-game in his career (1,052 in 1,060) and retired as the all-time leader in goals and points by a defenseman, only to be passed by those whose bodies cooperated a lot more than him. Hard to say that Potvin is underrated by any stretch of the imagination, but I have him close to my Top 10 all-time players.

MIKE GOULD: Man, Malkin and Potvin are both good answers, but they don’t quite scratch the itch for me in terms of being “underrated.” So I’m going to go ahead and say Ray Whitney, who truly was one of the greatest playmakers of his generation but never got much recognition because of the markets in which he played. Whitney spent more than two decades in the NHL, beginning with the Sharks in 1991–92 and ending with the Stars in 2013–14. “The Wizard” was a 77-point scorer with the Coyotes in 2011–12 and then, after turning 40 in early May, helped them to their first Western Conference Final berth. And, of course, Whitney was one of the key contributors for the 2006 Hurricanes team that won the Stanley Cup. In total, Whitney managed 1,064 points in his career despite playing primarily for unheralded teams like Florida, Columbus, Carolina, and Phoenix.

SCOTT MAXWELL: Shocker, Mike picks a former ‘Yote. I guess I’m not one to talk since I’m taking a player who was a Leaf for about as long as Whitney’s tenure in Arizona. Admittedly as a younger lad, my pulse on the “of all time” status isn’t all there, but my pick is going to be Alex Mogilny. The fact that he hasn’t been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame is criminal, especially considering when we’ve had some names in recent years that have more or less turned it into the Hockey Hall of Very Good. Prime Mogilny was a force to be reckoned with, as he had eight point-per-game seasons, including two in his 30’s, and managed to hit 1,000 points in his career without even needing to play 1,000 games. He only has a Lady Byng trophy to his name in the individual trophy case, but would have had a Rocket Richard in ’93 if it had been invented yet, and he’s a member of the Triple Gold Club in case you doubted his ability to “win.” Considering the fact that he’s also the closest a player not named Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull or Mario Lemieux has ever gotten to scoring 70+ goals and obtaining a goal per game pace in the process (he finished the 1992-93 season with 76 in 77 games), it’s really becoming an insult that he hasn’t gotten the nod for the Hall yet.

STEVEN ELLIS: I’ll throw in a more off-the-board answer: Tomas Vokoun. He was a ninth-round pick that carried the Nashville Predators during some difficult years. He always seemed to have great numbers, even when the team didn’t come close to sniffing the playoffs. For a good chunk, it was a given he’d hover around the .920 save percentage mark. He played some of his best hockey with Florida, and was even relevant with Pittsburgh at the end of his career. It’s a shame that blood clots ended his career early, but I don’t think he got the love he deserved while playing against Marc-Andre Fleury, Henrik Lundqvist, Evgeni Nabokov, Miikka Kiprusoff, Martin Brodeur and others in the 2000s and early 2010s.

COLBY COHEN: How many three-time Stanley Cup winners (one as a player, two as an assistant coach) had just shy of 1,000 points and 3,000 penalty minutes? There aren’t many… and thats why I believe Rick Tocchet might have been the most underrated NHL player of all time. This is a guy who scored 440 goals, 512 apples and played over 1,100 regular season games. Lets go one step further, Tocchet had a 109-point season where he scored 48 goals and racked up 252 PIM. I haven’t even addressed the playoffs yet where he played 145 games and scored 112 points when it mattered most. I am sure the argument will be “look who he played with” but it doesn’t matter to me, he produced in all three zones, he produced in the playoffs and he looked after his teammates with his hardnosed, afraid-of-nothing on-ice personalty. It’s easy to remember him now as the guy who coaches or was arguing with Biz on the TNT panel, but I wonder, how has he not gone into the Hall of Fame? Because he is underrated and never quite got the respect he deserved for his game.

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Who is the most underrated NHL player of all-time?

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