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Fanspeak: Mats Sundin voted greatest Maple Leaf in franchise history

Mats Sundin

This summer, NBC Sports’ social media team is conducting the #NHLGreatest initiative, designed for fans to choose the best player in each franchise’s history. Balloting was conducted through three platforms — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — with thousands of votes being cast. The results of this initiative will be released throughout the month of August, in conjunction with PHT’s Team of the Day series.

Toronto Maple Leafs

1. Mats Sundin (398)

2. Dougie Gilmour (177)

3. Darryl Sittler (152)

4. Dave Keon (99)

5. Johnny Bower (68)

6. Tim Horton (57)

7. Borje Salming (47)

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a history as old as the NHL itself, but in this vote the Leafs’ more recent stars like Sundin and Gilmour edged out some of the classic fan favorites like Sittler. That’s not terribly surprising as for many Leafs fans, Sundin is the man they grew up rooting for.

Sundin became the team captain in 1997 and held that position until his departure following the 2007-08 campaign. For much of his tenure, Toronto was a competitive team and made it to the conference finals twice. The Maple Leafs declined as soon as the salary cap kicked in, but Sundin wasn’t dragged down as well. In fact, he recorded at least 72 points in each of his last 12 campaigns with Toronto.

It was that level of consistency that allowed him to claim the top spot in the Leafs’ all-time goals list (420 to Sittler’s 389) and points list (987 to Sittler’s 916).

Including his start with the Quebec Nordiques and his brief tenure with the Vancouver Canucks at the end of his career, Sundin finished with 564 goals and 1,349 points in 1,346 games. He remains the all-time Swedish scoring leader and the only Swede to ever surpass the 500-goal milestone.

Although he was never able to end the Maple Leafs’ Stanley Cup drought, Sundin won a gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics and won the World Championship with Sweden an additional three times. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012.

Follow @RyanDadoun