The term "Franchise Player" gets thrown around a lot, and I'm not sure there is a consensus about what the term actually means. To many people it seems to designate simply the best player on a team. The star if you will. To me it simply means the backbone of the team to build around. While there is a lot of overlap between the two definitions, there are also differences which I believe need to be stressed.
In both cases the one player a team is putting its bets on, hoping that he will lead them into the promised land and win the Stanley Cup. The biggest difference between the star and the backbone is how they attempt to accomplish this. The star is about skill and talent, attempting to drag up the team by their own effort and contributions. The backbone on the other hand is about leadership and responsibility, furthering team accomplishment by getting other players to play better and impacting the team by doing more than just scoring. He is often tasked with the tough minutes against the opponents top lines and taking the assignments nobody else wants. This also makes him often the prime candidate for the Captaincy of a team.
Of course this doesn't mean that a player can't do both, but it may be a lot better for a team if they don't. Responsibilities should be distributed according to a players capabilities, and one player being forced to doing it all can be very stressful and also break him. Of course a team has a much better chance to succeed if it has multiple players of a "franchise player" caliber, as long as they span both definitions, and they will have it a lot harder if they are missing either or both.
A positive example from the past are the Montreal Canadiens of the 70s and 80s. You had Bob Gainey as the Backbone, and players like Guy Lafleur and Ken Dryden as the stars. Bob Gainey a consummate professional and defensive specialist held the captaincy from 1981 to his retirement in 1989, earning himself the nickname "Le Capitaine". He allowed the Canadians to function and succeed even though his contributions rarely showed on the scoreboard. They even invented an award, the Frank J. Selke Trophy, because they had to give him something.
A modern day example in a similar manner could be the combination of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in Chicago. While Kane is a high-flying superstar, impressing with his scoring ability, Toews takes responsibility in leading the team. Toews is the captain of the Blackhawks and while he leads by example, he also knows how to get his team to perform.
Not being careful in the selection process of the captaincy can also severely backfire, as not every star player is also capable of playing the role of the backbone. Take a look at the Washington Capitals and you know what I mean. While Alex Ovechkin is a bona fide super star, a human scoring machine and a constant threat on the ice, he does not appear to have the leadership qualities required from a captain, as evident by his shrinking presence in the face of adversity. This could be observed throughout the years and the routine early exits from the playoffs, as well as most recently in the Olympics and the poor performance of the Russian national team.
This forces other, more veteran players to speak up, such as was seen in 2010 during 24/7, when Mike Knuble had to speak up and attempt to bring the Capitals out of a slump. The Capitals are also now doomed, as they can hardly take the captaincy away from Ovechkin even if they were to find a player show greater leadership qualities.
Perhaps this also illustrates a different point. When discussing this topic on a hockey board I regularly visit, the main focus was Patrice Bergeron of the Boston Bruins. I consider Bergeron a franchise player by my definition, a player who will take on the tough minutes and get other players to perform while providing constant contributions, even if they aren't earth-shattering. Another poster disagreed, declaring him only an exceptional role player and drawing parallels to Bobby Holik with the implications about Holik's ridiculous contract he signed with the Rangers.
However, the difference between a backbone-type "franchise player" and an "exceptional role player" was left undefined. To me, each player on a team needs a role he has to fulfill, with those roles being distributed according to the abilities of each player. If Bergeron's role is taking the defensive assignments, and is completing his tasks in an exceptional manner to the point where he is a cornerstone of the success of the franchise, he should very well be considered a franchise player.
For my favorite team, I hope that Sean Couturier becomes a franchise player in the same way Bergeron is to the Bruins. Couturier already is one of the best defensive forwards in the NHL, and while his offensive output still needs to improve, he provides great value to the team as a whole. He definitely has the potential to be a fundamental building block for the Philadelphia Flyers and he has to be if the Flyers want to find success in the near future.
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