Quote:
Originally Posted by vilzeh
^This, 1000x this.
+ Goalies actually go on knees with those pads, they don't stand and have 70% of the net exposed.
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Why then weren't there more scorers of Gretzky's ilk? People love to bring up the goalies and the systems and the high scoring of the 80s. Problem is, behind Gretzky (and later Lemieux) there was...Bernie Nicholls?
There's 5 players to ever break 150 points, Gretzky, Lemieux, Yzerman, Esposito and Nicholls. Esposito did it in the early 1970s, long before the high scoring 80s era showed up. Yzerman had a great season in 1989, the same season Nicholls broke it as well. And let's not overlook the fact that Nicholls' highest scoring season was 100 points until Gretzky was traded and he sky rocketed from 78 points the previous season to 150 points with Gretzky.
1982 Gretzky had 215 points, Bossy with 147 points took second in the "race."
1983 Gretzky had 196 points, Stastny had 124 good enough for second place.
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1984 Gretzky had 204 points, Coffey (his teammate) had 126 points to place second.
1985 Gretzky had 208 points, Kurri (his teammate) had 135 points to place second.
1986 Gretzky had 215 points, Lemieux 141, and his teammates Coffey and Kurri in the 130s with Bossy and 120 rounding out the top 5 that year.
The race wasn't even close for the scoring titles. It wasn't like Gretzky was narrowly beating the second best player by a couple points, he was slaughtering some of the best players in the world at the time by over 100 points a season. The one year Crosby won the Art Ross he did it by 6 points over Thornton...
And then there's Mario Lemieux. 160 points in 70 games after coming back from Hodgkin's in 1996. What's the excuse for that? The Devil's had already won their first cup with Brodeur and their defensive system, the scoring has been going down, are we just pretending that the 1980s extended to 1996 now? Otherwise how could one of Lemieux's best seasons (189 points pro-reated) come in the dead puck era if his scoring was a product of the 80s? Something doesn't add up for me.
Crosby's the best player in the world today, I don't buy that he's the best player of all time.