Greatest Hockey Player of all time?

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I agree Gretzky wouldn't put up as many points in today's game. I've said so more than once, including on the Oilers message boards where my handle is SuperDave17. (Super Dave was my high school nickname, and Jari Kurri was personally my favorite player so ...)

I think today's game would bring him down from 210+ to about 150 to 160.

As for the Broad Street Bullies ending his career, no ... The Islanders and Flyers and pretty much every other team in the league had players who lived for the chance to level Gretzky. Denis Potvin in particular tried many times to get Gretzky with those open ice smashes he loved to deliver. But Gretzky almost never gave anyone the chance. He kept his head up, and had that radar for when somebody was lining him up. Even Potvin said something along the lines that trying to hit Gretzky was like trying to hug fog, just couldn't do it.

Add to that Gretzky had guys like Dave Semenko, Marty McSorley, Kevin McClelland, and Dave Lumley to keep the other teams honest. Same thing with the Habs and Larry Robinson. Everybody knew not to mess with the Big Bird after he got the better of Dave Schultz, and by extension that also meant not messing with Guy Lafleur and the smaller Habs forwards.

As for Gretzky and Lemieux, it's really an apples and oranges comparison. I've seen Lemieux do skate and deke through everybody highlight reel goals that Gretzky could only dream of pulling off. Gretzky had goal scoring tools too, a laser radar slap shot, a nose for the right position at the right time, the wrap around from his office behind the net that always left the goalie guessing. But Lemieux just had that sick package of reach, moves, skating, hard and accurate shot, size, and ability to protect the puck with his body that was unparalleled.

Gretzky was smaller and slighter, so he had to develop a somewhat different skill set, that shiftiness, that vision, that crystal ball into how the play was going to develop that always left the defenders guessing whether he was going to hit a team mate with an unreal pass that nobody else saw coming or whether he would put it in the net himself.

These are my two best memories of the glory years:



And this beauty:



The only tandems that I've seen come even close to Gretzky and Kurri's chemistry would be the Sedin twins, and maybe Oates and Hull as well. But even then ... for one thing, Gretzky and Kurri in their prime could outskate the twins any day, and that gave them a lot more options.

Not saying it's a wide margin, but I think Gretzky brings a little more in the aggregate. Of course, there's the argument that he played with a stacked team. But Kurri, Messier, Coffey, and Anderson have all said they became the players they did because of what Gretzky taught them. He made everyone around him that much better. Just look what happened when he went to LA. Bernie Nicholls didn't even play on the same line as Gretzky because he was the second line center, but he exploded for 70 goals just because Gretzky was there and rubbed off on him, like a seepage effect.