Patrice Bergeron, in my eyes, is the greatest all-around forward to ever play. He's great (and a little underrated) offensively, easily the best defensive-forward of all time, is solid physically and isn't afraid to throw a hit, and a great leader/community guy. Can you name anyone who beats him in that?

Bro come tf on... I'm not going to bag on Bergeron by any stretch, but he's not even the best all around player in the era that he's played in. First of all, Sidney Crosby is the best offensive player of the era while being well above average defensively in his own right. If anyone is the best all rounder of that era, it's him. He's also not a better all round player than Pavel Datsyuk, who is maybe the most disrespected superstar of the Cap era. He was every bit the defensive Allstar that Bergeron is, and he was drastically more skilled. And that's not even including guys like Ron Francis who played before that era.

I cannot believe still in 2021, Bruins fans continue to call Burgeron "underrated"... unbelievable

Yeah, I think we tend to overvalue contemporary players due to recency bias and the growth of fancy stats. I do think Bergeron is easily one of the top defensive forwards of the past decade, but all time, there's a lot of excellent players on the list. I mean, Sergei Fedorov was so good defensively that Scottie Bowman actually played him as a defenseman for a while one season (paired with Chelios...and they were pretty friggin' solid). Off the top of my head, guys like Poulin, Provost, Peca, Zetterberg, Datsyuk all make a worthwhile case...heck, even Ryan Kesler's run from 09-13 is worthy of a mention.

It's not that I don't absolutely love the way Bergeron plays, and he's definitely in the conversation, but there's a lot of guys that are also there.

Bergeron is really good, but come on man, he's not the best all round player of all time.

I'd put him up there among one of best all-around forwards that I've watched play. Also think Dats was underrated for just how good of an all-around player he was. He was a guy that when he came over the boards you better know where he is at all times. Crosby is another guy that I think is better defensively than he gets credit for. He's not to the level of Dat or Bergeron defensively, but he's gone Top 10 in Selke voting in 3 of the last 5 years, while having P/GP that put him around a 95pt pace in those 5 years.

its tough comparing cross era players to begin with. you really cant compare yzerman, datsyuk, messier, lindros, etc across eras. just a completely different style of hockey. I heard an argument on boston sports talk saying orr was the best player of all time. Defensively sure, but if you put orr in todays game i dont think he has the same results. Gretzky is easily the best player all around in the history of the sport. Do i think HE has the same success he had in todays era, honestly no... its probably lessened a little bit, imo scoring is WAY down from that era of hockey. However back to the OP, i think bergeron is a top 2-way player of this era of hockey, few have been better defensively as a center but many have been better offensively. One of my favorite "what-ifs" is always what if bergeron didnt have significant concussions early in his career. Would his offensive game be even better? I mean it really all comes down to offense vs defense sliding scales and you rank one player vs another player on the scales.

I'd say 99% of Bruins fans don't call him underrated anymore because he hasn't been for about 5yrs now

when you have the nickname "perfection line" i dont think you can be underrated.

This is the truth, so to put it simply... in this current generation or era, Crosby is by far the best all around player. If anyone wants to say "well Bergeron is better defensively", that's fine, but Crosby is still the best all around... and luckily as pointed out, Crosby definitely doesn't get enough credit for his defensive play

hasnt been underrated for a bit now but calling him the best all around of all time would make him overrated

Best all round player ever in my opinion is Sidney Crosby and it's not close. On top of his great defensive play, he has never finished a season under a point per game.

Bergeron is old so it's not a great comp, but I can't help but wonder how good a guy like Draisaitl would be if he was flanked by Marchand and Pastrnak.

As great as he is for this era, and I think that he gets the nod over my own Anze Kopitar for guys currently on the ice, Bergeron isn't close to Bryan Trottier -- consistently 100 pts in the regular season and then neutralising Wayne Gretzky in the playoffs. But that was too long ago for most of you guys to know about it.

I love Bergeron, definitely one of the best of all time but Sergei Fedorov probably takes the cake

Peter Forsberg, Ron Francis and Pavel Datsyuk are also in the conversation. Not going back 50 years ago as I didn't see these players play and you can't really compare players from way different eras with a very different quality of competition

I think a guy like Daniel Alfredsson would be very underrated too

Jere Lehtinen would absolutely be there if he just had a bit more offensive production