Free Press prepares to launch ‘Best Red Wings Player of All Time’ showdown

The Free Press is about to launch a “contest” pitting 16 players against each other in a voting showdown to determine the “Best Red Wings Player of All Time.”

I know this because the Free Press posted a photo gallery of the 16 players, and I know that it’s the end of the first full week of June, some 3 weeks away from the first round of the draft on June 22nd in Dallas, so it’s the perfect time to launch this kind of thing.

I usually don’t spout off after posting stuff from other sites for a reason–I want you to weigh in and let your opinions be known, and I’m more of a news-oriented person–but to me, this one is easy.

Gordie Howe is the winner for both the player he was and the person he was. Just as other teams’ fans suggest that Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr changed the game at their positions, because they did, they are superb human beings, and it’s hard to move away from that triumvirate because goalies (like me) are such ecclectic, weird people.

After that, good luck. The Free Press offers Bob Probert, Nicklas Lidstrom, Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Reed Larson, Chris Osgood, Terry Sawchuk, Alex Delvecchio, Brendan Shanahan, Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Sid Abel, Norm Ullman and Red Kelly as choices.

You could easily add Vladimir Konstantinov, Black Jack Stewart, Larry Aurie, Marcel Pronovost, Mickey Redmond and others to the mix, and I’d argue that your choices would nearly be arbitrary. I did a “Red Wings Mount Rushmore” for Puck Daddy a couple of years ago, and I went with Howe, Lindsay, Yzerman and Lidstrom (who was still playing at the time, by a hair’s breadth over Fedorov), but the permutations are limited by your fandom’s imagination.

Who are your #2-5, or 2-10?

I wish the Free Press luck with their vote-counting and fan-argument-separating, because it’s going to be an interesting diversion…

But you’ll have to trust me when I say that June has a way of keeping the news flowing. We really don’t get “slow” until the month-long period between mid-July and mid-August when it truly gets quiet…and even then, there’s content to be had.

As CapFriendly noted…

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!

5 thoughts on “Free Press prepares to launch ‘Best Red Wings Player of All Time’ showdown”

  1. I’m too young to have gotten to watch the greats so I’ll choose my generation of players. Outside of Howe that is.

    Howe
    Yzerman
    Lidstrom
    Fedorov
    Datsyuk

      1. He’d be right after Datsyuk for me, Datsyuk narrowly beats him out because of talent and skill. He can just do things no other player could do. Z is amazing don’t get me wrong. I don’t think any other player has shutdown Crosby like he did in the finals or shutdown Toews like Z has in the past. Z is easily my 2nd fav captain after Yzerman. Yeah Lidstrom was great but he never had to carry the team like Z has been doing the past several years.

  2. The #1 is indisputable, and the Mount Rushmore is indisputable, really. So ya gotta do the next four.

    Fedorov
    Sawchuk
    Delvecchio
    Probie

  3. I don’t really care for these types of things. I guess it depends on how you define “greatest”. You could argue forever. lol

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