Flyers

Ranking Claude Giroux’s Top 10 Teammates of All Time

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Mar 21st, 2022 · 11:51 AM EDT

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The other day I threw out a fill-in-the-blanks question on Twitter that went like this:

“Alex Barkov is the best player Claude Giroux has played with since________”

Most people said Jaromir Jagr, which is crazy considering Jagr was in Philadelphia for a grand total of one year and that one year was a full decade ago, when he was 39 years old. There have been dozens and dozens of new Flyers since then, yet Giroux never played with anybody who was as good as Jagr during a lengthy time span.

So I hit up Anthony SanFilippo and floated the idea of a top 10 list of Giroux’s best NHL teammates. We didn’t really know how to organize it initially, because there are some guys he played with for many years, during their primes, like Jake Voracek. Other guys he played with were more talented than Voracek, but G only shared the ice with them briefly, or caught them at the end of their careers. And then you throw in the new Florida Panther teammates, who he is just starting with, but should be under consideration for this list.

Ultimately we said “screw it, let’s just rank the most talented NHL teammates G has ever had, full career” and decided to include guys that he played with for only a little bit. We opened up the exercise and made it more expansive, coming up with:

10. Sean Couturier

Coots. Won the Selke not long ago and ripped off two-straight 76 point seasons while being the Flyers’ second-best player. Maybe this season goes differently if he’s not injured, but regardless, he’s now the best remaining player on the roster following the Giroux trade.

9. Jake Voracek

Shoot! Just shoot it! Shoot the damn puck! Stop trying to find the perfect pass.

Whatever complaints you had about Voracek, he played more than 700 games here and is fifth all-time in assists. If the Flyers franchise ended right this very moment, he’d go down as the best non-North American player to ever wear the uniform.

8. Jonathan Huberdeau

86 points this season. 86! That’s third in the NHL, behind only Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. He’ll eclipse his career-high of 92 points and already set a career-high for assists. If he can bag 10 more goals, he’ll set a career-high there as well. And he’s not even Florida’s best player.

7. Danny Briere

You want a stat?

Briere only played here for six seasons and has one fewer playoff point than Giroux. He’s sixth-all time in playoff points for the Flyers, despite playing fewer games than guys like Tocchet, Leach, Recchi, Sinisalo, etc. It really is insane how good Danny was in the postseason, and those are days we yearn for.

6. Jeff Carter

Carter won a couple of Cups with the Kings following his summer 2011 trade.

As a Flyer, he made an All-Star Game appearance during that 84 point season, and he was part of the team that played in the Stanley Cup Final in 2010. He scored five goals that postseason and added 61 regular season points while wearing the A on his jersey, so when you add all of that up, plus the contributions he made in LA (with brief stops in Columbus and Pittsburgh), he lands at #6 on this list.

On this date in 2009, Jeff Carter scored his first career NHL hat trick. #Flyers pic.twitter.com/VpZmvPb8mS

— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) April 3, 2021

5. Vinny Lecavalier

We originally didn’t have Lecavalier on this list, because he only played 2.5 seasons here. But individually, we’re talking about a guy who won a Cup, went to four All-Star Games, and got his number retired in Tampa. He had a 108 point season and when you look at him during his Tampa prime, you would easily take that player over the other guys below him on this list.

4. Joe Thornton

Thornton is in the same category as Vinny Lecavalier. Giroux will only cross paths with him towards the end of his career, with Thornton getting only about 10 minutes per game as a 42 year old.

Go down the list though, and you look at the insane career he’s had. Six All-Star Games, Art Ross Trophy, Hart Trophy, 24 years in the league, etc. He’s got 1,534 points for God’s sake, which is currently 12th all-time in the NHL.

3. Aleksander Barkov

We’re talking about a generational talent here. 500 points before the age of 27. He really does have a shot at finishing his career with 1,500 points. He won the Selke last year and still has a ton of good years left, which is why we ranked him as high as we did.

Consider some of the lines Florida can roll out here:

• Giroux–Barkov-Verhaeghe
• Huberdeau-Barkov–Giroux
• Huberdeau-Bennett-Duclair

Pretty stacked.

2. Chris Pronger

We put Pronger up here even though as a defenseman he’s never gonna have the sexy stats that make arbitrary list-building easy. But he had a Thornton-like career at his position. Hall of Fame, Stanley Cup winner, 6x All-Star, etc. Norris Trophy, Hart Trophy, etc. Pronger was a huge part of the Flyers team that went to the Finals, so he goes in here at #2. He also gets bonus points for telling Ben Eager to basically fuck off:

1. Jaromir Jagr

Consensus #1, and it wasn’t even close. Giroux logged 93 points during the Jagr season, which was his second-highest regular season total, ever. It’s still crazy to me that Jagr put up 54 points that year, despite being almost 40 years old. Shame that team went out 4-1 to New Jersey in the playoffs, but those were some fun games to watch before the exit. (also, if we were all in consensus on Jagr being #1 despite having a cup of coffee with the Flyers, then the Lecavalier and Thornton additions to the list are solidified).

honorable mention: Kimmo Timonen, Wayne Simmonds, Aaron Ekblad, Simon Gagne, Mike Richards, Sergei Bobrovsky, Brayden Schenn

Takeaways:

Our list is arbitrary, of course, and subject to opinion, but 30% of it ended up being Florida Panthers. Even if you took Thornton off the list, you’d have Ekblad hovering around the top 10. It should tell you all you need to know about the talent surrounding Giroux during the later years of his Flyers tenure. There are 2-3 Panthers teammates who are easily better than anybody he played with here over the last half-decade, and even though it’s gonna be super-weird watching him play for another team, it should be enjoyable from a pure hockey perspective just to see him on the ice with guys like Barkov and Huberdeau. That Florida team is stacked and really does have a ton of added potential with G in the fold.