There’s no arguing that the current Blackhawks team was well-represented in the NHL’s top 100 players list. Certainly Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith are among the best and most accomplished players of this era.
But they have a teammate who has accomplished even more, and he somehow didn’t make the top 100.
With his three Stanley Cups, five Cup final appearances and 517 career regular-season goals — and counting — Marian Hossa has more skins on the wall than any of his fellow Blackhawks.
And when you compare Hossa to some of his other contemporaries who were chosen for the top 100, it’s hard to understand why he was overlooked.
Long-time Red Wings star Pavel Datsyuk, who now is playing in the KHL, made the list, though he comes up short when compared to Hossa by almost any measure.
Datsyuk won two Cups to Hossa’s three, scored 314 regular-season goals to Hossa’s 517, and averaged .72 points per postseason game to Hossa’s .74. Datsyuk gets the edge in regular-season points per game, .96 to Hossa’s .87.
While Datsyuk is a three-time Selke Award winner as the league’s top defensive forward, Hossa has only his great reputation as a tremendous two-way player with no hardware to show for it. That’s another oversight to be addressed on another day.
A look at the Blackhawks named to the NHL’s top 100 players of all time on Jan. 27, 2017.
Should Eric Lindros have made the Top 100 ahead of Hossa? Well, there’s no question that Lindros was a terrific player — when he was healthy. He averaged well above a point per game (1.13) during his injury-shortened career and finished with 372 goals in 760 regular-season games. But Lindros never won a Stanley Cup and reached the final only once, when the Wings swept his Flyers in 1997.
Hossa wasn’t the only notable omission. Jarome Iginla and his 617 career goals didn’t rate, either. Ditto for Dino Ciccarelli and his 608, though few Hawks fans are likely to be broken-hearted about his exclusion.
As for Hossa’s Blackhawks teammates on the list, consider this: Kane and Toews would have to average 30 goals per season for the next eight years to match Hossa’s 517. Seeing as how Kane and Toews are still on the fresh side of 30, there’s a chance they’ll get to where Hossa already is.
Of course, that assumes Hossa will slow down someday. It seems only fair to mention that he has 18 goals this season — tied with Artem Anisimov for most on the team — which is three more than Kane and twice as many as Toews.
Should we forgive the NHL for playing favorites? After all, Kane and Toews are two of the game’s most visible stars, and they — along with Keith and Corey Crawford — were selected as All-Stars, so their selection to the top 100 was also a wise marketing move. And Hossa, at 38 years old, probably appreciated the time off during the All-Star break.
We should note here that the Tribune’s recent list of the top 100 Blackhawks of all-time ranked Hossa at No. 18, but that number reflected the fact he has spent more than half of his career playing for other teams. The NHL’s list was open to all of the game’s greatest players.
Hossa deserved to be among them.
jknowles@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @jknowles31
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