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?
In football, there is the saying that “speed kills” – as a result, at the NFL Combine each year, one of the most closely tracked metrics is the 40-yard dash, even though its ability to predict greatness at the next level is at best murky. Nevertheless, at the running back position, the 2008 NFL Draft saw the arrival of two of the fastest running backs ever in Jamaal Charles and Chris Johnson, with Johnson at one point running the fastest 40-yard time ever. With their blazing speed, both backs were multi-purpose weapons and among the game’s most productive offensive players at their respective peaks (and consensus first-round fantasy draft picks) – their similar styles of play and levels of production thus raises the question:
Disclaimer: I am well aware that Manny Ramirez tested positive numerous times for steroids during his MLB career and this is the primary reason why he is currently not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. With all of this background in mind, this head-to-head between Vladimir Guerrero and Manny Ramirez is meant to compare them based solely on their career numbers and achievements without judgment on Ramirez’s steroid use during his career.
The end of the 2011 MLB season marked the last time that baseball fans would see two of the greatest Dominican-born players ever suit up for a major league game – for nearly two decades apiece, Vladimir Guerrero and Manny Ramirez were two of the game’s best sluggers. Moreover, they were among the unique characters in the game, from Guerrero’s penchant for swinging at anything to Ramirez’s personality of “Manny being Manny”. Even though Ramirez’s legacy has been tarnished by a number of positive steroid tests, he and Guerrero still sit at or near the top of most career hitting categories among their countrymen, thus making this an apt comparison:
Who was better – Vladimir Guerrero or Manny Ramirez?
Note: Updated for Toni Kukoc’s 2021 Hall of Fame selection.
The modern NBA is a verifiable United Nations of players, with many of its brightest stars hailing from overseas: Giannis Antetokounmpo from Greece, Luka Doncic from Slovenia, Joel Embiid from Cameroon, Rudy Gobert from France, just to name a few. However, their paths to basketball stardom were paved by the pioneering foreign players of the 1980s and early 1990s, such as Sarunas Marciulionis, Arvydas Sabonis (whose son Domantas is now an NBA star in his own right), Drazen Petrovic, Vlade Divac, etc. Notably, during the 1990s, Toni Kukoc from Croatia and German-born Detlef Schrempf were key components of championship-caliber teams for the Chicago Bulls and Seattle SuperSonics, respectively, and early prototypes for today’s long and versatile European players. As basketball becomes more and more of a global game, let us look back on the 1990s and ask:
As one of the world’s hockey superpowers, Russia (and before that, the Soviet Union) has historically been renowned for producing explosive and high-scoring forwards, e.g. Alexander Mogilny, Pavel Bure, Sergei Fedorov, Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, etc., just to name a few. Nevertheless, the country has also had its share of firepower from the blue line – in fact, outside of Sweden’s Nicklas Lidstrom and Borje Salming, the two highest-scoring European-born defensemen in NHL history both hail from Russia (and share the same given name): Sergei Gonchar and Sergei Zubov. The two Sergeis were among the elite defensemen of the late 1990s and 2000s, particularly when it came to quarterbacking the offense – while Zubov is a recent Hall of Fame inductee and Gonchar remains on the outside looking in, their careers are nevertheless comparable in statistics and achievements, thus bringing about the question:
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