Los Angeles Kings Well Represented in 100 Greatest NHL Players List
By Ian Smith
The NHL has completed its list of the 100 greatest players in the 100 year history of the league, and the Los Angeles Kings had a few representatives.
33 names from the league’s first half century had been announced back on January 1, and the other 67 names from more recent decades were announced tonight.
Among players primarily known for their time with the Kings, Marcel Dionne and Luc Robitaille cracked the list of legends.
Other players, like Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri, and Larry Robinson, had productive seasons in Los Angeles, but each one of these icons remain ultimately associated with their play for another franchise.
When a list of this magnitude is released, the natural instinct is to look for glaring omissions, but it’s not entirely fair to the players who did make the cut.
Insinuating that a specific player was left off is indirectly questioning the worthiness of an included player, and from looking over the final list, none of the names caught me as distinctly undeserving.
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There have been so many great players skate through this league, and inevitably some incredible talents would be left off when the list was limited to just 100.
I was probably most shocked that Joe Thornton and Jarome Iginla were excluded, considering their longevity as offensive threats.
Then you also have guys like Dale Hawerchuk and Evgeni Malkin who have such lofty points per game totals over their careers that it seems odd they weren’t included.
As for great Kings players, I was curious to see if Anze Kopitar would make the list, but I’m not surprised that he didn’t.
Rob Blake is probably the easier case to be appalled at, though, just because he has the stats and individual hardware to make a more objective argument for inclusion.
Blake was a Norris Trophy winner and had more career points than both Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, who each made the list with single Norris wins.
Pronger won a Hart Trophy, too, so that certainly helps his cause. It’s not enough for me to lose sleep over, but Blake not making the list is somewhat nonsensical when seeing some of his blueliner contemporaries that got selected over him.
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Overall, it’s a solid list, and I really have only minor grievances with it. I don’t envy the task of anybody involved in compiling lists like this, because observers will inevitably be frustrated with certain inclusions and omissions.