In the spirit of the 4 Nations Face-Off, the NHL is continuing to name quarter-century teams across hockey, and on Saturday, Canada’s top 12 players of the last 25 years were assembled.
The two teams were selected by Canada-based NHL.com writers and were judged based on their NHL and international performances from Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2024.
For most of these teams that have been announced, hockey fans had to use their imagination to picture the various players taking the ice together, but for the forwards on Canada’s First Team, that wasn’t the case.
Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon — currently sharing a power-play unit — were named as the top forwards for Canada.
Joining the trio on the First Team are defencemen Drew Doughty and Chris Pronger and goaltender Martin Brodeur.
Crosby, of course, has been the NHL’s leading scorer over the past 25 years, racking up 602 goals and 1,035 assists on his way to 1,637 points since 2005. The longtime Pittsburgh Penguins captain has claimed three Stanley Cups in his NHL career.
On the international side, Crosby has won two Olympic gold medals, a
World Hockey Championship, a World Junior Championship and the World Cup of Hockey.
Since being drafted in 2015 McDavid has been on an all-time pace, totalling 1,053 points in 694 games. The Edmonton Oilers star has won three Hart Trophies and led the NHL in points five times in his career.
McDavid won Gold representing Canada at the 2015 world juniors and the 2016 World Hockey Championships.
MacKinnon, meanwhile, has quite the résumé of his own. The Colorado Avalanche star has 986 points in 848 career games and won the Stanley Cup in 2021-22. He also helped Canada win gold at the 2015 World Championships.
On the blue line, Doughty and Pronger are two of Canada’s most decorated defencemen. They both have won Norris Trophies, the Stanley Cup and Olympic Golds since 2000.
Like the two playing in front of him on this theoretical Team Canada squad, Brodeur has won everything a goalie could dream of. After 2000, Brodeur won four Vezina Trophies, two Olympic Golds, three William M. Jennings Trophies and was named to NHL’s All-Decade Team for the 2000s.
Rounding out Canada’s best of the past 25 years were the six players named to the Second Team.
Forwards Jarome Iginla, Steven Stamkos and Joe Thornton were paired with defencemen Duncan Kieth and Scott Niedermayer on a group bolstered by goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.
In their careers, the six combined to win eight Olympic Golds, 12 Stanley Cups, three Norris Trophies, four Rocket Richards, one Hart and one Vezina.
The NHL will release the quarter-century teams for the U.S. and Finland in the next few days. The Swedish team was announced on Friday.
