All 95 members of the 50-goal club ranked, from Gary Leeman to Rocket Richard

While it was at least a little bit lost in all the trade deadline news, Connor McDavid made some history by joining the 50-goal club last week. Somewhat surprisingly, it was the first time he’d reached the milestone, making him the 95th player in NHL history to have achieved the feat.

This seems like a good excuse for a ranking.

Now, with 95 different names to sort through, am I going to write an extensive explanation of each and every rankings, droning on for roughly 10,000 words that nobody will read? Sure, sounds like fun! (Editor’s note: No you will absolutely not.) No I will not. But with some judicious use of grouping and categorization, we can get this down to a manageable level. Remember, these sorts of lists aren’t about being right or wrong. They’re about you CTRL+F’ing down to your favorite player and then having a temper tantrum in the comments about him being too low.

I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday, so let’s do this. To be clear, I’m not ranking these players best on who had the best careers. I’m not even ranking them based on who had the best goal-scoring season, since we can just sort by stats to get that. No, we’re looking for the guys who do the best job of capturing that 50-goal vibe. I realize that’s vague, but you know it when you see it, so let’s get to the ranking.

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Five forgotten expansion draft picks

Now that the Vegas Golden Knights have a name, a logo, and a future head coach, everyone is turning their attention to June's expansion draft. Who will the Knights end up with? Matt Murray? Jakob Silfverberg? Trevor van Riemsdyk? Maybe even an established veteran who waives a no-movement clause, like Dion Phaneuf or Rick Nash?

Those are all reasonably big names, and if the Golden Knights wound up picking any of them, you'd think it would make for a memorable moment.

Then again, maybe not. You see, sometimes NHL expansion teams end up taking big name players, and everyone just kind of forgets about it. That's because there's no guarantee that any player taken by an expansion team will ever actually play for that expansion team.

So today, let's take a look back at five fairly big names that have been called at expansion drafts of the past, and how they managed to avoid ever actually suiting up for the fledgling franchises that chose them.

Tim Kerr, 1991

Early NHL expansion drafts of the 60s and 70s were fairly standard. A handful of good players were picked, including names like Terry Sawchuk, Glenn Hall and Bernie Parent. But for the most part, the established teams didn't offer much in the way of talent, and the expansion franchises patched together a team with whatever they could find. That's why most of the early expansion teams were awful.

But by the time the second wave of expansion had hit in the 1990s, the new teams were willing to get a little more creative. Oh, they'd still be awful. But they realized that just because they drafted a player didn't mean they had to keep him, and it became common to see trades worked out as soon as the expansion draft was over (and sometimes even sooner).

Take the 1991 draft, for example. That was the weird expansion/dispersal hybrid that featured the San Jose Sharks and the Minnesota North Stars, which we covered in some depth over the summer. The most famous weird pick from that draft was the very last one, in which the North Stars picked quasi-retired Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur because they didn't want any Quebec Nordiques and the rules wouldn't allow them to pass. But another well-known sniper was also taken that day.

That would be Tim Kerr, a four-time 50-goal scorer for the Flyers who'd been slowed down by injuries. By 1991, he hadn't put together a full season in four years. But he was still scoring at well over a point-per-game pace when he did play, and seemed like the sort of guy who could be a good gamble for a contender.

The Sharks weren't a contender, but the Rangers were. And so the Sharks grabbed Kerr off of the Flyer's unprotected list, and then immediately flipped him to the Rangers in exchange for Brian Mullen. It was a smart deal for San Jose; Mullen ended up being their second-leading scorer in their debut season. It worked out worse for the Rangers, as Kerr struggled through another injury-shortened year before being dealt to Hartford.

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The 1980s were completely insane

One thing we occasionally like to do in this space, especially during the late summer dog days when nothing else is happening, is leaf through the pages of the NHL record book. While many of you who read these posts are hockey diehards with decades of fandom under your belts, I realize that others may be slightly newer to the sport. So every now and then, it can be fun to take an educational and nuanced look back through NHL history.

And so, in that spirit, today we’re debuting a feature called Holy Crap, the 1980s Were Freaking Insane. Because, good lord, that entire decade was incredibly offensive.

That’s “offensive” in the good way — as in lots and lots of offense. At its peak, the era saw an average of just less than eight goals per game. By comparison, the dead puck era of the late ’90s and early ’00s dipped down to a borderline unwatchable average of 5.1. (Luckily for us, Gary Bettman and friends didn’t stand idly by, and a series of new rules has since managed to drive that number all the way up to … uh, 5.3.)

Not surprisingly, most of the major scoring records were established during the ’80s, many of which are unlikely to ever even come close to being matched. Even casual fans probably know some of them by heart, like Wayne Gretzky’s 92 goals in 1981-82 and 215 points in 1985-86, or Mike Bossy’s nine consecutive 50-plus-goal seasons to start his career.

But it wasn’t just the household names who racked up obscene numbers during the decade. Just about everyone, from Hall of Famers to guys you barely remember, was putting up ridiculous numbers. That’s what made the ’80s so much fun. And it’s why it’s worth taking an occasional look back at some of the madness that went on.

The Legend of Kent Nilsson

Nilsson played just eight full NHL seasons with no major awards, and depending on how old you are or how well you remember the 1980s, there’s a good chance he’s the most productive player you’ve never heard of.

After two years in the WHA, Nilsson made his NHL debut with the Flames at the beginning of the 1979-80 season. He was traded to the North Stars in 1985, and split two more seasons between Minnesota and Edmonton before heading back home to Europe. Except for a six-game comeback attempt with the Oilers in 1995, his NHL career was essentially over by 1987. He played in only two All-Star games, the last in 1981, and was never really considered one of the league’s top players. In fact, he may be best remembered as the Oiler who got hacked by Ron Hextall in the 1987 final.

He also struggled to stay healthy in his later years, only hitting the 70-game mark once after 1983. That last bit was good news for opposing goaltenders, because whenever Nilsson did play, he racked up points at a rate that was almost unmatched in league history.

That’s not an exaggeration — Nilsson’s career point-per-game average ranks him ninth on the all-time list. Here’s a look at a few of the guys who are trailing him. They’re pretty good.

Part of that’s due to Nilsson’s elite (if underappreciated) skill level; he was nicknamed the Magic Man and was considered the true inventor of the breakaway move we now know as the Forsberg. But it’s also a factor of him playing in the madness of the 1980s. Of the top 25 players on the point-per-game list, 15 played a big chunk of their careers during the decade.

In fact, a look through the record book shows that most of the league’s offensive rate stats are dominated by ’80s guys. Here’s one more …

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