Has anybody else noticed how many foreign players are captains of their teams? Of the 30 NHL teams, 13 (or 43%) have captains born outside of North America.

And quite right too! According to TheHockeyRating.com, 6 of the 13 are the #1 ranked player on their team and all bar 2 are ranked in their team's top 5.

Team Player Country THR Rank Team Rank Boston Bruins Zdeno Chara Slovakia 19 1 Detroit Red Wings Nicklas Lidstrom Sweden 2 1 Florida Panthers Olli Jokinen Finland 45 1 Los Angeles Kings Mattias Norstrom Sweden 308 10 Montreal Canadiens Saku Koivu Finland 87 3 Nashville Predators Kimmo Timonen Finland 32 1 New Jersey Devils Patrik Elias * Czech Rep. 243 8 New York Islanders Alexei Yashin Russia 30 1 New York Rangers Jaromir Jagr Czech Rep. 3 1 Ottawa Senators Daniel Alfredsson Sweden 34 3 Philadelphia Flyers Peter Forsberg Sweden 253 4 Toronto Maple Leafs Mats Sundin Sweden 116 3 Vancouver Canucks Markus Naslund Sweden 124 5

Summary Country # Sweden 6 Finland 3 Czech Rep. 2 Russia 1 Slovakia 1

* Patrick Elias deserves a special mention. He assumed the captancy in 2003-04 following the retirement of Scott Stevens and was rated third overall by TheHockeyRating.com for that season. Injuries have reduced his recent ratings.

Trevor Seeney
TheHockeyRating.com
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