The difference is in Gretzky's IQ.
Gretzky wasn't as physically gifted as Bobby Orr (who should be a kind of co-consideration here), but he was peerless in reading and understanding the game during the era he played.
While it's rational to state that athletes have improved as a result of scientific advancement with respect to physical training and maintenance and knowledge of the game with systems dissecting strategy and game play to the minute detail, it's irrational to extrapolate that Wayne Gretzky wouldn't have processed this information in a similarly stratified fashion commensurate with his era's dominant performance and translated that synthesis to today's game.
Tom Brady is a subpar athlete in terms of combine numbers, but his mind is peerless at his position, in the modern era.
Wayne Gretzky wasn't a subpar athlete, he wasn't a dominant physical specimen, but the man could skate...Now combine the reality of Tom Brady's modern-day performance and his ability to transcend his peers and apply that to Wayne Gretzky with his hockey IQ, but augment it with everything that's afforded athletes today.
Couple all that with the crack down on obstruction and the direction of skilled hockey and I would wager Gretzky would do the same thing again...He would find what could be optimized and exploit it.
Interesting isn't it, with all Crosby's physical tools, all of Lindros's tools, and Fedorov's and Forsberg's and McDavid's, that the kind of separation Gretzky managed has been approached, but not repeated, and at that, managed by a player who has been constantly puzzled over as to how he did so much with seemingly so little.
