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In 2004, the Tampa Bay Lightning won their first Stanley Cup title in franchise history; in doing so, this represented the culmination of a lifelong dream for childhood friends and teammates Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards. From their days as teenagers playing junior hockey to being part of the same draft class with Tampa Bay and experiencing early struggles with the franchise before achieving individual and team success, the two players’ careers were always intricately interlinked; in fact, they would even retire in the same season (2016) with similar career statistics, leading to the inevitable natural comparison:
Who was better – Vincent Lecavalier or Brad Richards?
The Beginning
As youngsters growing up in the hockey hotbed of Canada, Lecavalier and Richards would cross paths as teenagers, marking the beginning of a long partnership that would take them all the way to the NHL.
Growing up in Quebec, Lecavalier attended Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan, an elite hockey boarding school, before returning home to star in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) for Rimouski Oceanic; in his first year, he won both the Michel Bergeron Trophy and the RDS Cup as the league’s best rookie forward and overall rookie, respectively. As a result, in the 1998 NHL Entry Draft, he was drafted first overall by the moribund Lightning franchise; however, his rookie season was somewhat of a disappointment, as an 18-year-old Lecavalier only posted 13 goals and 15 assists for 28 points with a -19 +/- rating.
Meanwhile, Richards was born and raised on Prince Edward Island and actually became close friends with Lecavalier as a teenager when both attended Athol Murray College of Notre Dame and were roommates. He later followed Lecavalier to Rimouski Oceanic in the QMJHL and became a star in his own right, winning a slew of awards, including the Jean Beliveau Trophy as top scorer, the Telus Cup as top offensive player, Canadian Hockey League (CHL) Player of the Year, the Guy Lafleur Trophy as QMJHL playoff MVP, and the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy as Memorial Cup MVP. In the same draft where Lecavalier was selected first overall, the Lightning also picked Richards with the 64th overall pick of the third round, though he did not make his NHL debut until the 2000-2001 season; that year, Richards had 21 goals and 41 assists for 62 points with a -10 +/- rating to finish as runner-up for the Calder Trophy as top rookie.
Career Comparison
During the early/mid-2000s, Lecavalier and Richards were Tampa Bay’s top two centers and achieved both their peak individually while also lifting the team to previously unscaled heights, thus leaving an indelible mark as two of the greatest players in team history.
After improving significantly to 67 points in 1999-2000 (25 goals and 42 assists, though with a -25 +/- rating), Lecavalier was named Tampa Bay’s captain at age 19, which made him then the youngest captain in NHL history, surpassing Steve Yzerman of the Detroit Red Wings (age 21; though Lecavalier has since been surpassed by others such as Sidney Crosby, Gabriel Landeskog, and Connor McDavid). However, with the weight of increased expectations, he struggled the next couple of years and was subsequently stripped of the captaincy. In turn, Lecavalier would then improve drastically to 33 goals and 45 assists for 78 points in 2002-2004 and follow-up with another 30-goal season in 2003-2004 (32 goals and 34 assists for 66 points and a +23 +/- rating). During the lockout, he went to play in the Russian Superleague with Ak Bars Kazan alongside Lightning teammates Richards and Nikolai Khabibulin.
Upon returning to the NHL in 2005-2006, Lecavalier picked up right where he left off, totaling 35 goals and 40 assists for 75 points. The next year, he soared to even greater heights with a career-best 52 goals and 56 assists for 108 points with a +2 +/- rating, in the process winning the Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal-scorer, finishing fourth for the Hart Trophy as MVP, and breaking teammate Martin St. Louis’ previous team record for most points in a season. For an encore, Lecavalier had another strong season in 2007-2008 with 92 points (40 goals and 52 assists with a -17 +/- rating), winning the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for the player that “best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and who has made a significant humanitarian contribution to his community”. As a result, he was also re-named captain and would remain a 60-70 point scorer for the next few years.
Starting in the 2010s, Lecavalier’s production began to dip and after posting 32 points in 39 games in 2012-2013, he was bought out by the Lightning, leaving after 14 seasons as the longest-tenured player in franchise history. He subsequently signed with the Philadelphia Flyers and spent two-and-a-half mediocre seasons there; midway through the 2015-2016 season, Lecavalier was traded to the Los Angeles Kings and would retire at season’s end at age 35.
In contrast to Lecavalier’s inconsistency, Richards was a steady performer with the Lightning – building on his rookie year, he posted 62 points (20 goals and 42 assists with a -18 +/- rating) in 2001-2002, followed by 74 points (17 goals and 57 assists with a +3 +/- rating) in 2002-2003. During the team’s championship season in 2003-2004 (more on that shortly), he not only had 26 goals and 53 assists for 79 points with a +14 +/- rating, but also only racked up 12 total penalty minutes to win the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for “sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability”.
Following the 2004-2005 lockout (in which he played in Russia with Lecavalier), Richards returned to the NHL and posted a career-best 91 points in 2005-2006 (23 goals and 68 assists); though he remained around a point-per-game scorer with the Lightning, he was moved at the 2007-2008 trade deadline to the Dallas Stars in a blockbuster deal with Johan Holmqvist in exchange for Mike Smith, Jeff Halpern, Jussi Jokinen, and a fourth-round pick. During his three-and-a-half years in Dallas, Richards’ best season came in 2009-2010, when he again had 91 points (24 goals and 67 assists, though with a -12 +/- rating) and finished second for the Lady Byng. In his final year with the Stars, he remained an effective center with 28 goals and 49 assists for 77 points and a +1 +/- rating.
As a free agent once again, Richards signed a massive contract with the New York Rangers in 2011 and was reunited with his old Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella. However, he was ultimately a disappointment – from 66 points in his first year in the Big Apple (25 goals and 41 assists), his scoring went downhill and even a reunion with Martin St. Louis could not help him fully capture his former glory. After three seasons with the Rangers (51 points in his final year), Richards was bought out and signed with the Chicago Blackhawks, though he only managed 37 points in 76 games. Finally he joined the Detroit Red Wings for a final season in 2015-2016 before retiring at age 35 in the same year as Lecavalier.
Though they were drafted in the same year (1998) and retired in the same year (2016), Richards entered the league two years after being drafted, thus giving Lecavalier the advantage in both seasons and games played. Having said that, even though Lecavalier was the better goal-scorer and tallied more total points throughout their parallel careers, Richards was a superior playmaker and had the better career +/- rating (both players had negative career +/- ratings). These trends also play out in their seasonal accomplishments – Lecavalier had five 30-goal seasons (including two 40-goal and one 50-goal campaign) vs. none for Richards (though he did score 20+ goals 10x) and a 100-point season to his name, but both players racked up 90+ points twice and Richards has the slightly higher career points-per-game average at 0.83 vs. 0.78. Accolades and achievements favor Lecavalier: he had more All-Star Game selections (4 to 1) and won one Richard and one Clancy Trophy to Richards’ one Lady Byng. As highly productive players who ended up just shy of 1,000 career points, both Lecavalier and Richards are the epitome of a borderline Hall of Fame candidate.
Regular Season Statistics
| Vincent Lecavalier | Player | Brad Richards |
| 17 (1998-2016) | Seasons | 15 (2000-2016) |
| 1,212 | Games Played | 1,126 |
| 421 | Goals | 298 |
| 528 | Assists | 634 |
| 949 | Points | 932 |
| -140 | +/- | -66 |
| 4x | All-Star Games | 1x |
| – | Hart Trophies | – |
| – | Ross Trophies | – |
| 1x | Stanley Cups | 2x |
| – | Conn Smythes | 1x |
| 1x Richard, 1x Clancy | Other Awards | 1x Lady Byng |
| – | Hall of Fame Induction | – |
Source: Hockey-Reference.com
As mentioned, Lecavalier and Richards helped guide the Lightning to their first Stanley Cup title in the 2003-2004 season with a seven-game victory in the Finals vs. Jarome Iginla and the Calgary Flames. While Lecavalier had a strong postseason with 16 points (9 goals and 7 assists), it was Richards who really shined – with a playoff-best 26 points (12 goals and 14 assists) with a +5 +/- rating, he not only set a postseason record with seven game-winning goals (breaking the previous record of six held by both Joe Sakic and Joe Nieuwendyk), but would also take home Conn Smythe honors as playoff MVP.
Overall, Lecavalier led Tampa Bay to five playoff appearances while also appearing once each with Philadelphia and Los Angeles; individually, his best postseason came in 2010-2011 – in bringing the Lightning all the way to a seventh game in the Eastern Conference Finals vs. the Boston Bruins, he tallied 6 goals and 13 assists for 19 points with a +6 +/- rating.
Richards made a total of 10 playoff appearances, including at least one trip for each team he played with. In addition to the championship run with Tampa Bay, he made it to two other Stanley Cup Finals:
- 2013-2014: as a member of the Rangers, lost to the Kings in five games; posted 5 goals and 7 assists for 12 points and a -2 +/- rating
- 2014-2015: won a second title while with the Blackhawks over his old Lightning team in six games; Richards had 3 goals and 11 assists for 14 points with a +4 +/- rating
During their collective primes, Lecavalier and Richards won gold with Team Canada at the 2004 World Championships, but finished a disappointing seventh at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.
Playoff Statistics
| Vincent Lecavalier | Player | Brad Richards |
| 75 | Games Played | 146 |
| 26 | Goals | 37 |
| 30 | Assists | 68 |
| 56 | Points | 105 |
| +1 | +/- | -13 |
Source: Hockey-Reference.com
Every athlete goes through a natural career lifecycle, from starting off as a rookie to reaching peak years of performance and finally, declining into the inevitable retirement due to a combination of age and/or injury; post their collective peak in the 2000s, Lecavalier and Richards each bounced around with a few teams towards the end of their careers before both retiring in 2016. For Hall of Fame caliber players across sports, I like to look at a concept I call a “decade of dominance.” The thinking behind this is that for most Hall of Fame type careers, there are roughly 10 great seasons that define an athlete (this idea is embodied in a sense by the NFL’s All-Decade teams), though due to injury or other factors, they might not be 10 consecutive years.
Decade of Dominance
| Vincent Lecavalier | Player | Brad Richards |
| 1999-2000, 2002-2004, 2005-2012 | Decade of Dominance | 2000-2004, 2005-2008, 2009-2012 |
| 772 | Games Played | 798 |
| 317 | Goals | 229 |
| 409 | Assists | 505 |
| 726 | Points | 734 |
| -49 | +/- | -69 |
Source: Hockey-Reference.com
It should come as no surprise that the decades of dominance for Lecavalier and Richards essentially overlap – during that time, they scored essentially the same number of points (more goals for the former, more assists for the later) at a similar per-game rate (0.94 and 0.92 for Lecavalier and Richads, respectively), with Lecavalier having the slightly better +/- rating.
My Thoughts
Looking back on their careers Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards are among the top 10 players in Tampa Bay Lightning history. In addition to neary 1,000 career points apiece, each center also has his defining moment/highlights, from Lecavalier’s Richard Trophy-winning season to Richards’ Conn Smythe performance in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Moreover, given their long friendship dating back to their junior days and parallel careers, perhaps no two hockey players in recent memory have been as closely intertwined as the two besides the Sedin twins. While it feels a bit like splitting hairs, I give the slight advantage to Lecavalier – Richards was consistently very good, in fact probably a little more consistent year in and year out than his counterpart, but Lecavalier at his peak was one of the premier players (i.e. top 10) in the NHL for a few years in his prime, a zenith Richards never quite reached. In terms of the Hall of Fame question, I think ultimately both players fall just a little bit shy, especially since neither was able to reach the 1,000 career point mark; nevertheless, both had terrific NHL careers and are firmly entrenched in the Hockey “Hall of Very Good”.
Thus, after weighing their careers against each other in terms of statistics, achievements, and impact, the winner of this faceoff is:
Vincent Lecavalier
As always, vote for your choice and leave your thoughts and comments below.
Further Reading
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