With just a month until we flip the calendar and hit the quarter mark of the 21st century, it was announced last week that the NHL would be uniquely honoring its best skaters of the past 25 years. The league is working on naming an all-century team for each of the league’s 32 teams, which will include six forwards, four defensemen and a goalie.
It will be tricky for the league to figure out teams like the Kraken, but the Blackhawks have had no shortage of talent in the 21st century. The worst-run organization in professional sports quickly turned into a dynasty with three championships and several future Hall of Famers. A handful of players led the team to three Stanley Cups, making most of the choices incredibly easy. Others are tough calls, as Chicago has had way more than 11 great players this century.
Forwards
Patrick Sharp – Jonathan Toews – Patrick Kane
Steve Sullivan – Alexei Zhamnov – Marian Hossa
The top three forwards in this list are no-brainers. They amassed 2,640 combined regular-season points in their illustrious careers, which doesn’t even include impressive playoff performances. Each was there for Chicago’s three championships in the 2010s and played a vital role in getting them there.
That second line, however, is much less clear. Hossa is a clear lock, picking up 415 points in 534 games with the Blackhawks. On the other wing, the league will likely choose one of Sullivan and Alex DeBrincat, but I’d expect them to opt for the former given the groups he played with. With pretty much zero help around him, Sullivan cracked the 60-point mark in four of his five seasons in Chicago. While DeBrincat had four more points than Sullivan in total, there’s no question Sullivan meant more to the teams he was on.
The center position features much of the same story. There were some great options like Dave Bolland and Marcus Kruger, but Zhamnov was another great piece on terrible teams. He put up 252 points in 308 games. If Zhamnov was on the roster during Chicago’s dynasty, we wouldn’t have been talking about Kane carrying his line.
Defensemen/Goaltender
Duncan Keith – Brent Seabrook
Niklas Hjalmarsson – Brian Campbell
Corey Crawford
Much like the forwards, there’s no questioning three of the Blackhawks’ top defensemen. Simply going off of games played and points scored, Seabrook, Keith and Hjalmarsson fill the top three in both categories. They were each integral to Chicago earlier this century and fans would be outraged if any of them wasn’t included on the league’s list.
There’s a pretty steep drop to the fourth slot on this roster, but I’d go with Campbell, the fourth on the list in points and fifth in games played. He’s far from a no-brainer, as Erik Gustafsson, Cam Barker, and even current names like Seth Jones and Connor Murphy could make a case. He was only in Chicago for a total of four seasons, but they were productive ones – he picked up an impressive 52 points in 2008-09 and added 38 and 27 in the subsequent years.
Between the pipes, the league won’t hesitate to name Corey Crawford the all-century goaltender. He won two rings with Chicago and won more than twice as many regular-season games as Jocelyn Thibault, the Blackhawks’ next-highest.With 26 shutouts and impressive stats to boot, he’s as easy of a choice as they come.
