Your favorite player of all time?

[Bane 1]

Sakic!

[Fredrik 0]

Watching Larionov, Krutov, Makarov, Fetisov & Kasatonov playing together (as one) was simply magic. Man how I hated those guys while watching the tv broadcasts as a kid when they played team Sweden in the championships. It was simply brutal.

[The Stranger 0]

Shanahan and LeClair.

[automorph 0]

bobby orr.... greatest player ever to lace the skates. or at least had the potential to be. when your scoring 130pts from the back end...

gretzky was a hack. the majority of his points came in the expansion era. when teams during the 70's-80's were watered down. and goaltending was terrrible. (other than fhur and parent.) all his goals came against teams like minnisota. once roy came into the leauge, and established the butterfly, gretz had two more BIG seasons and then was limited to about 75pts. a season. 50-60 of which were assisits. but then again..... it's easy when you have time and space because no one will hit you. lemuixe, howe all had to fight for every inch of ice.

:( drinking much haterade lately??? The fact you can even THINK of excuses to put Wayne down , proves your stupidity..............if so easy how come nobody else even comes close??? If you think Fuhr was a good goalie, yet proves once again your lack of a brain.......sometimes clutch but Fuhr was a mediocre goalie at best

[whizbang 0]

the reason i even mentioned fhur, is because worsely was past his prime, and i dont even think gretz played against dryden. who else from that late 70/ early 80 era was notable? seriously. orr was healthy, gretz would have had to break his records. and if mario was healthy.... he may have been the better man. dont get mad at me. the truth hurts. pull your head out of your ass and watch some classic hockey.

[tips09 0]

Sakic!

Same here

[Viking 1]

the reason i even mentioned fhur, is because worsely was past his prime, and i dont even think gretz played against dryden. who else from that late 70/ early 80 era was notable? seriously. orr was healthy, gretz would have had to break his records. and if mario was healthy.... he may have been the better man. dont get mad at me. the truth hurts. pull your head out of your ass and watch some classic hockey.

... Really?

[Law Goalie 147]

the reason i even mentioned fhur, is because worsely was past his prime, and i dont even think gretz played against dryden. who else from that late 70/ early 80 era was notable?

Uh... in roughly chronological order...

Vachon. Billy Smith. Vanbiesbrouck. Kirk McLean. Richter. Roy. Hextall. And I know I'm missing a few more.

Yes, goaltending was not as rigorous a position then as it is now. Nobody had really taken Tretiak's lessons (or Glenn Hall's, for that matter) to heart yet. Like almost everything else in hockey, goaltending changed completely in response to Gretzky. The entire idea of low-ice priority was a response to his passing around the net and banking pucks in off people, if we go looking for a single catalyst.

For me, though I suspect Bobby Hull was the most physically dominant hockey player, and thus maybe the most *fun* to watch, in the Ovechkin-esque sense, my favourite player of all time to watch playing the game was Paul Coffey. There was something about the way he skated that was absolutely amazing. I remember watching him in the '87 Canada Cup leading rushes, then outskating the KLM line (and his entire team) to be the first one back to Fuhr's blueline. He never got his due as a defender, largely because he played the angle instead of the man in a way that was about a decade ahead of its time -- but apart from that, I've never seen anyone skate like that before or since.

[automorph 0]

the reason i even mentioned fhur, is because worsely was past his prime, and i dont even think gretz played against dryden. who else from that late 70/ early 80 era was notable? seriously. orr was healthy, gretz would have had to break his records. and if mario was healthy.... he may have been the better man. dont get mad at me. the truth hurts. pull your head out of your ass and watch some classic hockey.

First off it is FUHR.......KEYWORD "IF WAS HEALTHY" ......are you a psychic??? SHOULDA WOULDA COULDA...............you want facts to show you have shit for brains.....look up WAYNE GRETZKY and if that dont convince you.....you should consider "your right to bear arms" and shoot yourself in the head :D

[mack 44]

Wow. This developed nicely.

PS the coke helped ol' #31.

[Law Goalie 147]

I hear it was all prescribed by Randy Gregg...

[mrusse01 0]

Gretzky was winning scoring titles on his assists alone. End of story. With the exception of Babe Ruth, nobody has ever come close to dominating a North American team sport the way Wayne did. My Dad played fantasy hockey back then, and Gretzky was banned, you couldn't draft him because it was too unfair. This was a very common rule. Over the last ten years what player would even be CONSIDERED to be banned from a fantasy game? I've never once heard someone suggest it for anybody.

My favourite player of all-time is Gilmour, but by far the best/most exciting player I've ever seen is Mario. Guys like Yzerman, Sakic, Bure, Ovechkin, Crosby were/are all amazing players, but to me it looked like Lemeuix was playing a different game out there. I've never seen anything like it.

[whizbang 0]

smith and vachon were good.... i even liked resch. and gretz was ahead of his time, and therefore was the catalyst that change the way the game was played. with that said.... i was never impressed with his skating... (paul coffee was a really smooth, fast skater. nice player all around) i was never impressed with his shot. i was never impressed with his physical play, or the fact that no one woud hit him. his passing however did impress me. but with all that time and space..... you can turn svatos tomorrow into a 100 pt. assist man.

i think wayne was in the right place, at the right time, and players went soft on him.

let crosby play under the gretzky rule, in an expansion era, and you'll be singing a different tune.

[Steve_v3 289]

I'm not the biggest Gretzky fan. But hands down has to be one of the most important players of all time. Besides his incredible talent he sacrificed his own success to try and help the league grow. When did Mario do anything on or off the ice that didn't benefit him first. I never heard Gretzky, Messier, Yzerman, Neely, or any other top players whine like Mario did when he felt their wasn't enough penalties called when he got hacked. Mario is hands down one of the most talented players ever to play the game but I never respected him for all the BS that went along with his personality.

[mrusse01 0]

From 1981-1987 Gretzky won the Art Ross and the Hart EVERY year.

In 85/86 he had 215 points. Ok, maybe he was in the 'right place at the right time', but if that is the case, how come he won the scoring title by 74 points? He scored 52% more points than the next best player. Last year Ovechkin won the title by about 5%, and that's a large margin compared to most years in the last couple of decades.

There were dozens of other all time greats that played under the exact same rules, and against the exact same teams that Wayne did...and he still dominated them all on a scale that has never before or since been seen in the sport.

[flymonty3 0]

From 1981-1987 Gretzky won the Art Ross and the Hart EVERY year.

In 85/86 he had 215 points. Ok, maybe he was in the 'right place at the right time', but if that is the case, how come he won the scoring title by 74 points? He scored 52% more points than the next best player. Last year Ovechkin won the title by about 5%, and that's a large margin compared to most years in the last couple of decades.

There were dozens of other all time greats that played under the exact same rules, and against the exact same teams that Wayne did...and he still dominated them all on a scale that has never before or since been seen in the sport.

jari Kurri.... Without him, Gretz wouldn't have anyone to pass to resulting in not nearly as many points....

Ovechkin is the best player in the NHL right now, but his reckless style of play will most likely lead to a shortened career like orr's. He doesn't play soft or afraid, and that will wear him out earlier..

Getzlaf is a fun player to watch also.

[Law Goalie 147]

Gretzky also turned Bernie Nicholls into a 70-goal scorer. He could have played with a pylon and a steel-toed boot and still had ninety assists a season.

[whizbang 0]

here's my argument. maybe law goalie can help. same argument.... just a different position.

who is the greatest goalie of all time?

now most flip through the record book and say that it was roy. his stats are impressive. even though he is the biggest jerk in all the world. but couldnt you argue that it's brodeur? roy was the catalyst that changed the game. he was good for his time. and he has the stats to prove it.... but for my money (and watching both) marty is better.

same with wayne. put wayne in the howe era, or the post roy era..... and watch him suck.

the best player... skill wise is a toss between orr, and lemuixe.

[flaming_june 2]

yzerman anyone?

[Law Goalie 147]

The record book is only going to indicate Roy for about another six months - then Brodeur rewrites everything, including the one record that nobody thought could ever be touched: Sawchuck's 103 shutouts. Roy's position in the books didn't last a decade.

And the people that say Roy changed the position simply don't know the truth. He merely popularised the butterfly as a style instead of a save, and only after Francois Allaire defined it as such and trained him that way. The 'Quebec Butterfly' school of goaltending belongs to Allaire, not Roy; the proof being that Allaire continued to 'refine' it (by which I mean ossify) and teach it to the next generations of goaies.

I think the statistical argument being made for Gretzky is one of scale. It's not just that he owns the records, it's by how much he broke them. We went from 50 in 50 to... 50 goals in 39 games. We went from around 130 points n a season to... 215. And the most damning one is that he's almost a thousand points (one goddamn thousand) ahead of the next highest all-time scorer. That's the insane part - he is ahead of the class by the number of points that a world-class player would collect in an NHL career... by another star's lifetime achievement.

Best goalie of all time is almost certainly Tretiak. Stick him in a time machine in 1970, bring him to the NHL today, put him in the new gear, and he'd be outclassing everyone. He's a case where the 'Fish Out of Water' test works almost flawlessly. The only time he *might* have had trouble with was the pre-Clint Benedict era, before they allowed goalies to drop to the ice to make saves. I think a case could be made for Glenn Hall's invention of the butterfly being the most influential on the modern game, but Hall's achievements aren't there, and the books Tretiak wrote display a theoretical command of the position that Hall never did.

[lefty57 0]

My avatar gives it away and I was fortunate enough to see Orr play when I was a kid. I have seen a lot of hockey and no one since that could control a game like Orr, especially in his early years. And what a skater ... Paul Coffey had nothing on Orr.

[automorph 0]

same with wayne. put wayne in the howe era, or the post roy era..... and watch him suck.

the best player... skill wise is a toss between orr, and lemuixe.

LOL keep on smoking that crack...............you make absolutely no sense.....Wayne in ANY ERA would still get the job done

[pantherfan 0]

If never heard of this "lemuixe" guy either.

[mgoblue 0]

Kevin Porter, Pavel Datsyuk

[mew1838 0]

Hey blue, you play for Michigan?