The compilation of rankings (lists, Top 10s, Mount Rushmores, etc.) is both a staple and the bane of the modern sports “journalism” existence.

Such endeavors are well-read but lazy. You jot names/teams/events down until you’ve reached your prescribed number. It’s easy to generate debate, especially with yourself to start. You begin alone, then wind up in a circle.

I’m not above such. But I pick my spots and know it’s not that important to get right.

In that vein, ESPN recently ranked the NHL’s Top 100 players and came nowhere close to getting it right.

Fifty experts were said to have been consulted. But I doubt the guy that did it even knows 50 experts. He’s a low-budget hack who tweets more about Star Wars than hockey. He gets paid minimum wage so ESPN can give Pat McAfee a trillion dollars. He’s exemplary of ESPN’s bare-bones commitment to hockey.

John Buccigross immediately said on X that he had not been consulted for the list. That reveals something.

Buccigross is excellent. But when you get past him, Steve Levy, Linda Cohn and maybe a few others, the hockey acumen at ESPN drops off a cliff.

The Pittsburgh Penguins got badly dissed in the rankings, most grotesquely via Evgeni Malkin being left off altogether. Not even honorable mention.

Malkin, 37, isn’t in his prime, though he started the season with seven points in four games to rank second in NHL scoring as of this writing.

But Malkin is for sure better than Tomas Hertl, Ryan O’Reilly, Owen Power, Sergei Bobrovsky, Morgan Rielly, J.T. Miller … you’ve got to go up several dozen from the bottom of ESPN’s list before you even run into any remote debate.

The previously cited low-budget hack then did a podcast where he admitted having erred by not including Malkin. In wrestling parlance, this is called shooting yourself into a work. Hey, I thought this was the result of polling 50 experts. Why are you apologizing?

Malkin was also left off the NHL’s all-time top 100 when the league celebrated its centennial in 2017. That, too, was an atrocity. Jonathan Toews, for example, couldn’t carry Malkin’s jock in a goalie’s equipment bag. (Canada > Russia. Don’t think that didn’t figure in.)

Sidney Crosby was ranked No. 23 by ESPN, just behind Carolina’s Sebastian Aho and Ottawa’s Tim Stutzle.

Those aren’t bad players. But every single GM and coach in the NHL would rather have Crosby. Crosby is 36, but these are ratings for right now.

If the ratings were projected over the next five years, I’d still take Crosby over Aho and Stutzle. He’s still among the NHL’s best 10.

The most egregious faux pas, however, was ranking defenseman Erik Karlsson No. 41. Behind seven other defensemen.

Karlsson is the reigning Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s best defenseman, which is voted on by hockey writers. A panel of experts, to some degree. He got 123 first-place votes. The runner-up, the New York Rangers’ Adam Fox, got 41.

Yet ESPN put seven other defensemen ahead of Karlsson. I guess ESPN’s experts outrank the hockey writers.

Kris Letang was ranked No. 56, Jake Guentzel No. 71. I’d rank Letang a bit higher. Guentzel’s rating seems about right.

The list got people talking, which may be the main objective.

But it also got people ridiculing, and that’s not good. I haven’t seen one person agree with snubbing Malkin.

Maybe the rankings did the Penguins a favor. Crosby might derive motivation. He never forgets a slight.

Perhaps I’m no better when it comes to all this. My reply to ESPN’s stupidity gets me paid for a column.

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