The great unknowns....

[flame4life]

John Tonelli. I love his time on the Flames, although it was brief. He was a 4 time cup winner, and had 325 goals and 511 assists for 836 pts in his career with New York Islanders, Calgary Flames, LA Kings, and brief appearances with Chicago Blackhawks and Quebec Nordiques before retiring. One of his 5 career hat tricks was with Calgary and he had 16 points (7G and 9A) in 1985-1986 playoffs for Calgary.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Nobody talks about any player from the generation before theirs. Recency bias is always going to be a thing.

You could probably name every NHLer who isn't Gretzky, Lemieux or Orr in this thread and it'd be accurate.

Search any year pre-2000 or so and you'll find a whole list of guys you never hear mentioned. anymore Joe Juneau, Kevin Stevens, Geoff Sanderson etc all scored 40+ goals in a season 30 years ago. Nobody cares anymore.

[Ford Prefect]

Eddie Shore. Old time hockey.

[rogermexico]

If you want to see how many of these guys you can name in twenty minutes:

https://www.sporcle.com/games/dw_can...scorers-career

[Redlan]

Washington Capitals was my second favorite team in the 80's and they had a few HoFers' but Mike Ridley was an 8 time 20+ goal scorer including a 41 goal year.

The Hockey Writers had an article the june "Best NHL Players Not in the Hockey Hall of Fame"

Pierre Turgeon tops their list and is" is the highest-scoring eligible player currently not in the HHOF".

[savardandjokinen]

Alexander Semin put up better numbers than people would ever remember

[Jiri Hrdina]

One way to look at this is taking a glance through franchise all time leading scorers and see who is unexpected.
A few pop to me:

St. Louis: Bernie Federko (already mentioned by Bingo)
NJD: Patrik Elias (over 1K points), runner up John Maclean
Dallas: Mike Modano isn't a surprise but #2? Neal Broten.
Nashville: David Legwand, runner up Martin Erat

I feel like overtime someone like Mikko Koivu will get lost to history.

[Red Slinger]

Not sure if he fits the criteria, but my favorite player growing up was Willi Plett. He was 6'3 205lbs, had six 20 goal seasons, including two 30 goal seasons and finished with 2572 penalty minutes. He won the Calder in 1977.

[GomerPile]

Frederick Olausson - steady Dman for the Jets for most of a decade. Ended up putting up over 1000 games played and over 500 pts. Bounced around until finally winning a cup with Detroit in 02'. I was randomly going through the cup winning rosters of every team(Covid time killer) and thought who the hell is Frederick Olausson. Quite the resume for a guy I had never heard of before stumbling upon.

Piecing together a 25 yr pro career will always impress me!

[pylon]

Originally Posted by Red Slinger

Not sure if he fits the criteria, but my favorite player growing up was Willi Plett. He was 6'3 205lbs, had six 20 goal seasons, including two 30 goal seasons and finished with 2572 penalty minutes. He won the Calder in 1977.

One of my fondest memories as a kid involved Willi Plett.

It was the inaugural Flames season, and some how my dad managed to get tickets through his office. At the Corral you could go downstairs and watch the players come out of the dressing room between intermissions/warmup and go to the bench. My dad took me down before the game to watch them go back to the room after the warm up.

This giant guy with surfer blonde hair walks by and I am just standing there stunned staring at him. He winked at me and 6 year old Pylon was the biggest Willi Plett fan in franchise history, and thought the world ended and bawled his eyes out 2 years later when he was traded to Minnesota.

/coolstorybro

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by savardandjokinen

Alexander Semin put up better numbers than people would ever remember

His shot was deadly.

But his legacy is the slap fight.

[bigpete]

I agree with whoever said Loob. I don't think he is well known or remembered outside of long time Flames fans. Everyone knows the late 80's Flames legends like Fleury, Roberts, Nieuwendyk, Otto, Mullen, MacInnis, Suter, McDonald, Gilmour, Vernon, etc but you mention Loob and they look at you like you are some kind of weirdo.

[Sylvanfan]

The three Stastny bothers going to Quebec always fascinated me. Marian was the oldest and a year behind Peter and Anton going to Quebec. But all 3 were over a point per game in the 81-82 season. When will that ever happen again? 3 brothers on the same team all scoring like that.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Nobody talks about any player from the generation before theirs. Recency bias is always going to be a thing.

You could probably name every NHLer who isn't Gretzky, Lemieux or Orr in this thread and it'd be accurate.

Search any year pre-2000 or so and you'll find a whole list of guys you never hear mentioned. anymore Joe Juneau, Kevin Stevens, Geoff Sanderson etc all scored 40+ goals in a season 30 years ago. Nobody cares anymore.

Was going to mention Joey Juneau.

He was the forgotten runner-up in the Calder race in 1992 when Selanne hammered in 76 goals. I forget the reporter who decided to write an article promoting Juneau as the better Calder candidate, but he had an article written up and he was going to have in go out on the next Monday. Then Selanne goes on a tear, scoring 10 goals in 10 PERIODS, and hitting the 50 goal mark. So the reporter quietly filed the article in the trash.

[FlamingHomer]

Detroit's Roger Crozier for me. Very undersized goalie with small pads depended on extreme athleticism to make saves. One of the few players to get the Conn Smythe Trophy being on the losing team.

[Sylvanfan]

I had a buddy in high-school buy a Joey Juneau jersey at yhe same time I got a Selanne one. I think he was an aerospace engineer as well. The old times where after the Olympics guys would join teams at the end of the season.

[Strange Brew]

Surprised to see Federko mentioned by a few. He is in the HHOF and is probably the first player comes to mind when I think all time St Louis Blues. Plus he does their TV broadcasts so for people like me that would rely on Centre Ice before ESPN+ (especially before you could choose your feed), you'd see a lot of him. So definitely not an unknown for me.

Garry Unger would fit the category of great unknowns IMO, when it comes to former Blues. But he also played for many teams.

The OP who came up with Barry Beck is probably the best example I have seen yet. Haven't thought about that guy for a while. I'd put Ramage in a similar category as Beck, it's just he has a Calgary connection so we all know him.

Speaking of Ramage, he was responsible for the death of another player that kind of fits this category. Keith Magnuson. I'd forgotten about that.

[pylon]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Nobody talks about any player from the generation before theirs. Recency bias is always going to be a thing.

You could probably name every NHLer who isn't Gretzky, Lemieux or Orr in this thread and it'd be accurate.

Search any year pre-2000 or so and you'll find a whole list of guys you never hear mentioned. anymore Joe Juneau, Kevin Stevens, Geoff Sanderson etc all scored 40+ goals in a season 30 years ago. Nobody cares anymore.

And.....?

There are people that pack into convention centers, to oogle over PC's from the 1980's. The guy that stashed away a 1982 Packard Bell 286 in his closet as a teenager can give you great insight on the machine and its history. And there are those that want to listen.

Go to a car meet and you'll see some guy that has lovingly cared for a 1976 Mercury Bobcat, and be able to chime off the history and specs on the car as if it was built yesterday. A car the world forgot.

People do care. I care about history, and my NHL fandom peaked in the 80's when I was a kid, and it's cool to share information about players some people may have never heard of that I got a chance to watch play live.

Imagine if we felt the same about music artists?

[The 6 Flames]

Murray Craven scored 20+ goals in a season 7 times. Had 759 points in over 1000 games. Super underrated player on the 90’s Blackhawks teams.

[Tkachukwagon]

Milan Hejduk was a guy I always thought was a bit of an underrated player. He won the Rocket Richard in the 2002-2003 season with 50 goals (98 pts that season, career high).

Drafted by the Nordiques, played his entire career for the Avalanche. Finished with 805 pts in 1020 games, retired after the 2012-2013 season.

https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/....php?pid=14105