Your All-Time Stars Franchise Team

This is something of a redux of what I've already done here with the All-Time Dallas Stars fanshot, except expanded throughout the entire history of the franchise. I might eventually be interested in spreading this post (localized to each team, of course) to all of the different NHL blogs, so I can get an idea of what educated fans consider to be their "best players", but for now, I'm going to stick with my home team's blog; that way, if I get a poor reception here, I'll know not to waste my time in other, hostile environments. I would have posted this as a fanshot, which I feel is a more appropriate category, but unfortunately it is so long that the formatting was messed up beyond repair, so I decided to go with this for now.

Because of the more universal nature of this post, there's a few extra rules. First of all, and most importantly, there can only be one version of a player at the same time, so you can't have, say, Belfour playing for both Chicago and Dallas; it has to be one or the other. This creates a need for several more rules, to determine which players are eligible for which teams. Here's a few that I think will work fine for our purposes.

Rules for NHL Roster Selections:

#1: The player should be primarily identifiable with the team, like Mike Modano with Dallas, or Mike Bossy with the Islanders. Ideally, most NHL fans should automatically think of this guy playing for the prospective team.

#2: If the player is easily identifiable with more than one team (say, Messier with the Oilers or with the Rangers), he should be given based on who he achieved more team success with.

#3: If he had equivalent amounts of success, he should be selected based on who he was with longer.

#4: If he was with all teams the same or equivalent amounts of time, he should be selected based on who had him first.

#5: The player's skills are assumed to be the peak of the skill they had at the time they were with the team that picked them, not their best ever, regardless of team.

Finally, you should pick 23 NHL players (18 skaters, 2 goalies, and 3 scratches). If you're feeling ambitious, you may also select 27 minor-leaguers (12 of which must have played less than 260 pro games, and 1 of which must have played less than 320 pro games, at the age they were when you picked them up), but this is not a requirement.

Your goal is to pick the best team you can, not the team with the players most associated with the team (although if you can do both, that's a plus). On a St. Louis Blues blog, that might mean something like picking Curtis Joseph over Grant Fuhr.

Examples of Ineligible Stars Players (and why they're ineligible)

Brett Hull - Played mostly with the Blues. He's our guy, but most NHL fans remember him as a Blue.

Guy Carbonneau - Long-time Canadien, came to Dallas near the end of his career.

Brad Richards - Right now can be associated with Tampa Bay almost as much as Dallas, and he won a Cup with the Lightning.

Craig Ludwig - See Guy Carbonneau.

Pat Verbeek - Great Star, but he belongs more in NJ's or maybe Carolina's all-time team.

Mattias Norstrom - See Guy Carbonneau; replace "Canadien" with "King".

Bill Guerin - Played best in Dallas, but hopped from team to team his entire career. Played longest with New Jersey.

Jason Arnott  - You know why.

I'll try to post my list below, hopefully soon, as an example of what you might pick. Thanks for reading, and hope you get back to me on this one.