fromLuke Fox of Sportsnet,

We had the EGG Line (New Jersey Devils Patrik Elias, Scott Gomez and Brian Gionta), the ridiculously skilled KLM Line (Soviet national stars Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov), and the HEM Line (Toronto Maple Leafs Billy Harris, Gerry Ehman and Frank Mahovlich).

There’s the MPH, the MVP, the PAP and the LAPD.

But when it comes to digging up the greatest hockey line nicknames, we’ve decided to skirt the acronym. Here are 15 of the game’s best line nicknames, regardless of how great the players on the lines were themselves, although many of them were fantastic.

The Production Line: Detroit’s Sid Abel, Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay (and later Alex Delvecchio) were not only productive shooters, but they represented a city that was churning out automobiles with equal proficiency in their heyday of the late ’40s and early ’50s. That the line spawned a sequel in the ’60s, The Production Line II Electric Boogaloo — Alex Delvecchio, Gordie Howe, Frank Mahovlich — makes it even more legit.

The Kraut Line: So what if this was a super derogatory name for three dudes from Kitchener, Ont. (or anywhere for that matter)? This was the 1930s, when people named their football franchises “Washington Redskins” and no one batted an eyelash.

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