from Chris Lund of The Score,

What follows from this is all players are lumped into a love ‘em or hate ‘em category. Think of the best players in the world. You will find that 99.9999% of them fall well short of a unanimous opinion. Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, the Sedin twins, Steven Stamkos, Claude Giroux, etc. Go down the list and it is apparent that there are plenty of human beings who are not ‘avin what these guys are bringin’.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em? Do or do not. There is no try.

I would like to posit, however, that there is one throwback left. The one player left in this generation who we can all agree on. Who we all watch while we sit back and smirk and think “Yeah, this guy. He’s awesome.”

Pavel Datsyuk.

Have you ever met someone with vitriol for Pavel Datsyuk? I haven’t. You get moments where you’ll find an emotionally distraught individual furious that Datsyuk skated through their entire team to tie the game with a minute left and then put their goalie’s jockstrap in Row Q for the shootout game winner, but the narrative never leaves the “Damn him, I want him,” story arc.

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