For some reason, the last few weeks I’ve been seeing a number of posts making up “the ultimate” or “the worst” version of different things. Things like the ultimate basketball player or the ultimate college football program, or the worst NFL player or the one that really got me thinking, “build the worst NHL franchise imaginable.”
So, what do we do here at SinBin.vegas? VGK-ize it!
Let’s make the “Ultimate Golden Knight.”
We need to establish some ground rules first. I found a Reddit post that gave a nice outline for the categories. Of course, because it’s fun, I added a few of my own too. Each player can only be selected once to ensure we don’t have Jack Eichel as the answer for all of them.
Here we go…
Hockey IQ – Paul Stastny
The man is basically a walking hockey encyclopedia. He once told me that he doesn’t watch film of himself because he can remember everything that happened during his shifts. He always made the right play at the right time and was never out of position.
Hands – Nick Suzuki
Ok, I might be cheating a bit here because he never played a game for the Golden Knights, but Suzuki’s hands were so insanely good in the short time we did have the chance to see him that I couldn’t pass him up. And that was when he was 19 and 20 years old; they are even better now. If I had to pick someone who played games for VGK, I’d go with Paul Cotter.
Overall skating ability – Shea Theodore
There were a few options here, including Eichel and Karlsson, but Shea’s ability to skate just as well backward as forward gives him the nod. The elegance with which he can walk the blue line is so much fun to watch.