Why There's No Cookie-Cutter Way of Naming an NHL Captain

As NHL teams fill their captain vacancies, don't fret if your team hasn't got an official leader with the 'C' at the moment, writes Adam Proteau.

On Tuesday, the St. Louis Blues filled their vacant captain position by giving the job to longtime forward Brayden Schenn. 

Meanwhile, the Vancouver Canucks named Quinn Hughes their new captain last week, making the 23-year-old defenseman their official on-and-off-ice leader. One day later, the Winnipeg Jets gave Adam Lowry the ‘C.’ However, a look at the macro picture reveals there’s no one road that’s right for all teams when they decide who to give the ‘C’ to.

For starters, let’s be transparent about the footprint teams are looking for from a captain. No NHL GM or coach expects their captain to do all of the heavy lifting on the leadership front. Yes, a captain is a conduit between players and management, as well as an example for their teammates when dealing with media, fans and officials. But the notion that a captain is the driving force for the rest of the team is giving the captain role too much credit while giving the team not enough credit for governing itself as a whole.

This is why, even after Hughes, Schenn and Lowry got the ‘C’ for their respective teams, nearly a full quarter of the NHL’s teams – Anaheim, Arizona, Boston, Calgary, Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle – currently do not have a captain. 

There are different reasons for those teams choosing to operate without a captain: the Ducks, Coyotes, Blackhawks and Flyers all are in the infancy of a full roster rebuild, so there’s no impetus to pick out just one player as their focal point for leadership. The Flames haven’t had a captain since Mark Giordano held the title in 2020-21. The Bruins' captaincy was just vacated after franchise icon Patrice Bergeron retired this summer, and the Kraken briefly had a captain – the aforementioned Giordano – in 2021-22, but their leadership group continues to evolve.

It’s clear teams are comfortable without a captain, preferring to give the ‘A’ as an alternate captain to veteran players or elite young skaters they want to ease into the role of being the face of their franchise. But don’t kid yourself into believing there’s no method to the madness of NHL leadership. Examining the patterns of alternate and official captains reveals there’s a formula of sorts at play.

To wit: of the 25 players who currently wear the ‘C,’ 14 are centers, seven are wingers, and four are defensemen. The average age of a captain is 30.8 years old, and 16 captains are at least 30 years old, while five are 35 years old or older. 

That ought to give you an indication of players earning the trust of their teams long before they became elder statesmen. An elite player is often unlikely to get the ‘C’ in their first few years with a team, as the pressure on them to perform is already high without being the focal point of their roster. It’s better to slowly acclimate them to the job, the way the Maple Leafs have done with superstars and alternate captains Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. There will come a day when current Leafs captain John Tavares hands over the ‘C’ to one of them, and there will be no steep learning curve. Of course, there are exceptions, such as Sidney Crosby, Gabriel Landeskog and Connor McDavid, who either hold or held the record for youngest captain in NHL history.

Ultimately, the NHL’s top teams use their captains as de facto coaches on the ice, giving them the leeway to engage with teammates in their own individual leadership styles. This is why there’s no cookie-cutter procedure involved with naming a captain. GMs and coaches have their own rationalizations for making the choices they do in this regard, and the results in the win-loss columns will dictate whether or not their captain will stay in that role for the long term. As we saw recently with Winnipeg, a player can be removed as captain (see Wheeler, Blake) when the direction of the team changes. It’s not a tenured position by any stretch, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t great time and effort put into choosing who will be captain.

So, don’t fret if your team hasn’t got an official captain at the moment. The captaincy is a fluid job whose duties can be drastically different from market to market, and while there’s no formula to identifying and developing someone for the position, teams often will go the most proven route by making players earn it well in advance of any official announcement of the post. You can be an excellent player without being a captain, but all captains must be excellent at something, and that reality will continue to determine who gets the ‘C’ in any organization.