Quote:
Originally Posted by nobles_point
I watched him several times live & all the time growing up. He played against chain smoking alcoholics.
The original poster made a valid statement. The only thing in Gretzky’s defence is you can’t compare eras, the game has evolved.
Gretzky would get buried in the fitness, analytics & coaching in today’s game if you dropped him into today’s game. Maybe if he grew up in this era Gretzky’s skill would rise, but he never had speed. It’s far from a cut & dried decidion. But he could only be measured against the quality of his competition at that time. He dominated.
If you look at the history of the game, it was played like rugby until 1929/30, when the forward pass was introduced. The cultural legacy of “the puck hog” still persists from this era. Gretzky was the opposite of the puck hog & his career culminated the exploitation of the forward pass. Today the game is at another level with the speed & the ability of 4th liners never greater. Combined with coaching this has enabled unseen parity of the league that is self evident. Any team can win on any night.
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Yes there were a few guys like that, but for the most part they were all still professional athletes and best in the world at what they did. Some of you make it sound like guys couldn't skate or shoot or anything at a high level.
Unequivocally false.
Also i have seen it mentioned a few times that there wasnt the same talent pool as there is now, and that is true. Its also true that there werent nearly as many jobs available back then either. When Gretzky scored 215 pts, there were only 21 teams in the league so the battle for jobs was just as fierce as it is now and there was not a lot less talent proportionally than we see today.
Go back to the original 6 era and it was even that much harder to be good enough to make the NHL, which makes the accomplishments of guys like Howe, Richard, Belliveau etc all that more impressive.