Detroit Red Wings' Quarter-Century Teams Are The NHL's Best

One of the fun elements of the NHL’s quarter-century team reveals is the opportunity to compare and contrast each franchise’s lineups.

It's clear, from this writer's perspective, that the top quarter-century teams belong to the Detroit Red Wings.

Almost every member of the Red Wings’ first and second quarter-century teams is a proven winner. Besides current captain Dylan Larkin, each Red Wings player has at least one Stanley Cup championship. Most Wings who made the cut have multiple Cup wins.

On the first quarter-century team, Wings icons Pavel Datsyuk, Steve Yzerman, Henrik Zetterberg and Nicklas Lidstrom all are Hockey Hall of Famers.

Blueliner Niklas Kronwall is a member of the elite Triple Gold Club, with a Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a World Championship gold medal on his resume. Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Lidstrom and second-team forward Brendan Shanahan are also Triple Gold Club members.

First quarter-century-team goalie Chris Osgood has three Cup wins.

On Detroit’s second quarter-century team are Larkin, Shanahan, Sergei Fedorov, superstar goalie Dominik Hasek and defensemen Brian Rafalski and Chris Chelios. Many teams would dream of having that group as their first team. Five of them won the Cup with Detroit, and Larkin is fourth in franchise scoring since 2000.

These teams are a non-stop parade of powerhouses, and no other team can boast of as many pure gems as Detroit has had in the past 25 years.

Related: NHL Quarter-Century Teams Tracker: Each Franchise's Best Players Since 2000

The closest organization to the Wings is the Colorado Avalanche, which also have a who’s-who of elite performers on their two quarter-century lineups.

The Avs’ first quarter-century team has Peter Forsberg, Joe Sakic and Nathan MacKinnon at forward, Cale Makar and Adam Foote on ‘D’ and Patrick Roy in net. Their second team has current captain Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen and Milan Hejduk at forward, Rob Blake and Erik Johnson on defense and Semyon Varlamov in net.

There’s lots to like about these Avalanche teams, but when you compare them to Detroit's, the Red Wings have the overall edge in depth and achievements, both as individual forces and in the team concept.

Other elite organizations deserve credit for their quarter-century lineups – Boston’s is first-rate, as is Chicago’s, Pittsburgh’s, Dallas’ and New Jersey’s. But there’s a reason why the Red Wings were, for a very long time, seen as the gold standard by which all teams should be judged – there are basically zero flaws in Detroit’s quarter-century squads.

The past nine years haven't been easy on the Red Wings and their fans as they try to end the playoff drought. But these quarter-century squads are proof there's a lot of excellence to remember. They're the cream of the crop, and we don't need to see the final nine franchises' yet-to-be-announced squads to say that.

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