Is Wayne Gretzky Getting Underrated on This Board?

[NastyNick]

Lots of people try to transpose the NHL today onto the NHL of the 80s. As someone who watched hockey back then (through good fortune of having one of those giant satellite dishes) let me point out some big differences:

Talent was hyper focused onto a handful of teams. The Oilers and the Islanders were the class of their respective conferences. There were a few teams that could compete, but there were also very many which simply could not. Today this would be like having the Penguins and Capitals, and 29 AHL and ECHL teams. The Oilers of the 80s would be able to hang with NHL teams today, probably dominate. But the rest of the NHL was a pale comparison. This allowed guys like Gretzky and Bossy to put up ridiculous numbers. They'd wrack up 5 or 6 point nights against the bottom feeders, then get the normal 0-1 vs the normal competition.

Once the Soviet Union fell and Eastern hockey became a part of the NHL, the talent pool grew. American hockey started growing around the same time. Talent in the NHL is 30x what it was in the 80s.

Also, goaltending back in the 80s was hideous compared to today. Equipment and technique played a factor. Watch any Gretzky highlight reel and tell me if you think today's goalies would stop half of that. Most goalies struggled stopping low shots until the butterfly technique took hold.

This is why i hate these sort of comparisons. Gretzky was the best of his era. No question. But theres just too much variance to try and compare him to today's NHL. Just about every team has superstar caliber players and goaltending that puts the 80s to shame.

 

[Flamesjustwin]

Gretzky was great but not as valuable as a 1st overall draft pick. Am I doing this right HF?

 

[mr figgles]

Gretzky was great but not as valuable as a 1st overall draft pick. Am I doing this right HF?

But a first overall pick could be anything. It could even be the next Gretzky.

 

[The Panther]

Lots of people try to transpose the NHL today onto the NHL of the 80s. As someone who watched hockey back then (through good fortune of having one of those giant satellite dishes) let me point out some big differences:

Talent was hyper focused onto a handful of teams. The Oilers and the Islanders were the class of their respective conferences. There were a few teams that could compete, but there were also very many which simply could not. Today this would be like having the Penguins and Capitals, and 29 AHL and ECHL teams. The Oilers of the 80s would be able to hang with NHL teams today, probably dominate. But the rest of the NHL was a pale comparison. This allowed guys like Gretzky and Bossy to put up ridiculous numbers. They'd wrack up 5 or 6 point nights against the bottom feeders, then get the normal 0-1 vs the normal competition.

Once the Soviet Union fell and Eastern hockey became a part of the NHL, the talent pool grew. American hockey started growing around the same time. Talent in the NHL is 30x what it was in the 80s.

Are you sure you watched hockey back then? Your comments don't seem like you did.

Talent being "hyper focused on a handful of teams" was probably true, to an extent, in the very late 60s and early 70s, when half the NHL teams were new or recent expansion clubs. But from 1979 to the early-90s, the NHL was stable in franchises, save for the 4 clubs that 'merged' in 1979 (one of which Gretzky played for). Of the top-25 scorers in the 1980s, 18 (72%) did not play for the Oilers or Islanders. If you were there, you may recall some obscure players like Mario Lemieux, Denis Savard, Peter Stastny, Marcel Dionne, and Dale Hawerchuk just to name a few.

In fact, the Islanders weren't even one of the top-5 performing teams of the 1980s, as their period of dominance ended in spring 1984. Edmonton had the best record that decade (that includes two seasons without Gretzky and three without Coffey), with Montreal 2nd, Philadelphia 3rd, Boston 4th, and Calgary 5th. Calgary was also the 2nd-highest scoring teams of the 80s, and Los Angeles was 3rd.

During the Islanders' four-straight Stanley Cups period, they finished in 1st in their division only twice. During Edmonton's dynasty period lasting seven seasons, they finished 1st four times but finished 2nd or 3rd three times as well. The #1 team in 1980 was Philadelphia. Boston in 1983, Philly in 1985, Calgary in 1988 and 1989, Boston in 1990. The idea you've suggested -- that there were two dominant clubs and "29 AHL and ECHL teams" is totally misleading.

It's true that there were certain franchises that seemed to perpetually be stuck at the bottom. In the 80s, this was mainly Toronto and Vancouver (formerly Colorado/New Jersey, but even they gained respectability in 1988). But in the case of Gretzky, this idea that he only scored big points against weak competition has been dis-proven so many times, it's hard to believe people are still going there. For one thing, Gretzky's production was higher in rounds three and four of the playoffs than in rounds one and two. Remember 1981? The Oilers were supposed to get killed by mighty Montreal, the best defensive team, but Gretzky torched them for 11 points in three games. Remember Gretzky's five goals to get to fifty-in-thirty-nine games? That was against Philadelphia, a playoff team in the top half defensively. Speaking of Philly, they were 1st overall in 1985 and were the best defensive team, but Gretzky torched them for 7 goals in the final four games of the Cup Finals and won the Conn Smythe. He also made out all right in the '87 Finals, '88 against Calgary (1st overall team), and the '88 Finals vs. Boston.

I'm not an expert on Mike Bossy's production, but are you considering that he scored 17 playoff goals in three playoff years in a row?

I suppose you're exaggerating in saying that "talent in the NHL is 30X what it was in the 80s". That's nonsense, obviously. There were plenty of European and American players active in the 80s, when the League offered 275 fewer jobs than today. By the mid-90s, there were 24 teams, which to me is about right for today. I don't see the "talent pool" (whatever that is) being bigger today than it was in the mid-90s. Where's this difference coming from? What was noticeably different throughout the 80s was that teams generally had two skilled lines, a checking line, and a 'goon' line (or two checking lines, where the second one had a goon or two). Today, teams generally have three or four skilled lines, but since the League is watered down, few teams can today have two lines of above-average forwards.

I'm not even going to get into the "goalies were terrible" argument, which is irrelevant to the discussion (the 'rating' of Gretzky) as every player faced the same goalies. But you might consider that Gretzky scored the same points in 1981 and in 1991, Sakic scored the same points in 1990 and in 2007, and Lemieux scored at the same rate in the mid-80s as he did in 2007.

 

[The Panther]

Gretzky was great but not as valuable as a 1st overall draft pick. Am I doing this right HF?

Well, he was no Yakupov.

 

[Video Nasty]

I do.

The goalies from that era only look bad because the greats like Gretzky and Lemieux made them look bad!

There are thousands more highlights of great scorers making very good goalies look like donkeys than the other way around. Believe it or not, occasionally those goalies from the ‘70s and ‘80s made great saves, but those clips don’t get as much traction on YouTube as the highlight goals.

People who didn’t actually see that era really don’t know the whole story. The highlight clips don’t do Gretzky or the era enough justice.

Just my opinion.

Very true. I actually admire goalies of the past far more. For all the talk of goalies being better, faster, more conditioned etc today, I feel like goalies of the past actually had to make more athletic moves in making saves to compensate for their lack of beach ball equipment. It also seemed like a much scarier time to stop a puck back then without a ton of protection.

 

[kaiser matias]

text

While I disagree about what you said regarding talent being watered down today, the rest is a good summary of the 1980s and the misconceptions about the era, and glad someone wrote it out.

 

[Mbraunm]

Are you sure you watched hockey back then? Your comments don't seem like you did.

Talent being "hyper focused on a handful of teams" was probably true, to an extent, in the very late 60s and early 70s, when half the NHL teams were new or recent expansion clubs. But from 1979 to the early-90s, the NHL was stable in franchises, save for the 4 clubs that 'merged' in 1979 (one of which Gretzky played for). Of the top-25 scorers in the 1980s, 18 (72%) did not play for the Oilers or Islanders. If you were there, you may recall some obscure players like Mario Lemieux, Denis Savard, Peter Stastny, Marcel Dionne, and Dale Hawerchuk just to name a few.

In fact, the Islanders weren't even one of the top-5 performing teams of the 1980s, as their period of dominance ended in spring 1984. Edmonton had the best record that decade (that includes two seasons without Gretzky and three without Coffey), with Montreal 2nd, Philadelphia 3rd, Boston 4th, and Calgary 5th. Calgary was also the 2nd-highest scoring teams of the 80s, and Los Angeles was 3rd.

During the Islanders' four-straight Stanley Cups period, they finished in 1st in their division only twice. During Edmonton's dynasty period lasting seven seasons, they finished 1st four times but finished 2nd or 3rd three times as well. The #1 team in 1980 was Philadelphia. Boston in 1983, Philly in 1985, Calgary in 1988 and 1989, Boston in 1990. The idea you've suggested -- that there were two dominant clubs and "29 AHL and ECHL teams" is totally misleading.

It's true that there were certain franchises that seemed to perpetually be stuck at the bottom. In the 80s, this was mainly Toronto and Vancouver (formerly Colorado/New Jersey, but even they gained respectability in 1988). But in the case of Gretzky, this idea that he only scored big points against weak competition has been dis-proven so many times, it's hard to believe people are still going there. For one thing, Gretzky's production was higher in rounds three and four of the playoffs than in rounds one and two. Remember 1981? The Oilers were supposed to get killed by mighty Montreal, the best defensive team, but Gretzky torched them for 11 points in three games. Remember Gretzky's five goals to get to fifty-in-thirty-nine games? That was against Philadelphia, a playoff team in the top half defensively. Speaking of Philly, they were 1st overall in 1985 and were the best defensive team, but Gretzky torched them for 7 goals in the final four games of the Cup Finals and won the Conn Smythe. He also made out all right in the '87 Finals, '88 against Calgary (1st overall team), and the '88 Finals vs. Boston.

I'm not an expert on Mike Bossy's production, but are you considering that he scored 17 playoff goals in three playoff years in a row?

I suppose you're exaggerating in saying that "talent in the NHL is 30X what it was in the 80s". That's nonsense, obviously. There were plenty of European and American players active in the 80s, when the League offered 275 fewer jobs than today. By the mid-90s, there were 24 teams, which to me is about right for today. I don't see the "talent pool" (whatever that is) being bigger today than it was in the mid-90s. Where's this difference coming from? What was noticeably different throughout the 80s was that teams generally had two skilled lines, a checking line, and a 'goon' line (or two checking lines, where the second one had a goon or two). Today, teams generally have three or four skilled lines, but since the League is watered down, few teams can today have two lines of above-average forwards.

I'm not even going to get into the "goalies were terrible" argument, which is irrelevant to the discussion (the 'rating' of Gretzky) as every player faced the same goalies. But you might consider that Gretzky scored the same points in 1981 and in 1991, Sakic scored the same points in 1990 and in 2007, and Lemieux scored at the same rate in the mid-80s as he did in 2007.

Wow! This is a well researched and logical response. I completely agree.

 

[Kranix]

I know Wayne is the best of all time, but I like to think of him and Mario as sort of Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter, if Ken had endured cancer treatment and retired due to an extremely bad back.

 

[Shwag33]

Wayne Gretzky is the best player of all time, but he's still overrated in terms of today's game. I think he'd be the best player in the league today, but by how much is greatly exaggerated by a lot of people on this board.

 

[CanadianPensFan1]

Absolutely underrated.

I mean he's regarded by 100% of the board to be one of the two best players ever.

So disrespectful.

 

[libertarian]

In 25 years from now there will be players born in 2019 that will be so much better then those Crosby, OV and McD chumps that played in that horrible 2010-2020 era because hockey is so much better in the 2040's.

These young people today that think Gretzky only produced at the incredible pace he did because of the bad era of hockey he played in will make the same arguments that us older hockey fans are making today about Gretzky to the young fans of the 2040's are wrong about how good Crosby, OV, and McD really were.

What goes around comes around.