The debate is one of the most under-appreciated driving forces behind the social and cultural juggernaut of sports.

The arguments over players and teams have plagued barstools, benches, message boards, and sports television for decades. The ancient Greeks very well may have deliberated over the next great discus thrower about a jug of red wine and a bowl of olives. 

But the question that hovers over all of the more nuanced sports discussions can be whittled down to one. 

Who’s the best?

Focusing that conversation on college hockey generally emits one solid answer, that the 1992-1993 Maine Black Bears were the best college hockey team to take the ice.

A 2012 poll of fans pitted the Black Bears against the 2009 NCAA champions of Boston University, with the title of Frozen Four's Finest on the line. Like four of the five games played during that 1992-1993 season, the Black Bears topped the Terriers. 

The toasts of Orono, a town with a population of a little over 10,000 located in the eastern half of the state, were loaded with talent. 

The Black Bears featured seven-time NHL all-star Paul Kariya, the program’s all-time leading scorer and current Denver head coach Jim Montgomery, New York Ranger draft picks Peter and Chris Ferraro and a relentless pitbull of a forward in Cal Ingraham.

Don’t forget the luxury of rotating between two future NHL goaltenders in Mike Dunham and Garth Snow, a pair of legitimate No. 1 options between the pipes.  

And on the blue line was an ultra-competitive shutdown defenseman from Birchdale, Minnesota, who would go on to become the team captain, Olympian, and a Hobey Baker Award runner-up in 1995, who nearly ended up in Dinkytown instead of Orono. 

“I had actually written a letter to the University of Minnesota,” Chris Imes said over the phone. 

“And they said they didn’t recruit out of state, so that was kind of out of the question, I guess,” Imes, who attended Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan during his high school playing career. Maine assistant Grant Standbrook offered Imes the chance to compete on the east coast after watching him play for the Hounds' Midget AAA team. 

“The person most responsible for creating that team in 1993 was Grant Standbrook,” Imes said, acknowledging Standbrook’s renowned eye for talent. “What he did, or does, better than anybody is identify players before anybody else.”

Guiding the skilled squad behind the bench was Shawn Walsh, a certifiable legend in the state of Maine and the college hockey universe who tragically passed away from cancer in September of 2001 after winning 399 games as the program’s head coach. 

Highly competitive, Walsh ran marathon practices, those of which Imes said could require a resurface in the middle of the multi-hour workouts. 

“Practices were very efficient, well-run, we were always working,” Imes said. “We may have had twenty minutes for the resurface and (Walsh) would go over video or something,” Imes added with a chuckle. 

The electric mix of talent, intensity, and depth propelled the Black Bears to the national title with a 5-4 win over defending champion Lake Superior State, with the only pock on the season a 7-6 overtime loss to Boston University. 

Capturing the national crown earned the admiration of the entire state, with 5,000 fans packing Alfond Arean to welcome their heroes back to Orono, and an invitation to the White House coming down the pike soon after. 

“We were in the White House not even two weeks later,” Imes said. “The Senate majority leader was from Maine, so he got us into the White House. It was a wild ride.”

In the 25 years since the Black Bears’ historic run, Imes said that the state’s enthusiasm hasn’t wavered in the slightest, evident in how the team was received after the 2013 alumni game in Orono. 

“You get there and sign some autographs and whatnot, and I was amazed,” Imes said. “Like everybody would ask “did you play on the ’93 team?” Imes said with a laugh. “They wanted the ’93 autographs.”

With the overall talent pool expanding and the landscape of college hockey constantly shifting, the presence of Maine in the upper-echelon of programs is probably lost on a large subset of fans, but Orono remains a college hockey haven in the Pine Tree State. 

“I have unbelievable, positive, happy memories from my time in Maine,” Imes said. 

“It was just a great, great place to play hockey.