Lidstrom says Lemieux was the best he played against

[Penguinzilla*]

Did anyone catch "Lemieux's 500th Goal" game on NHL Network the other day? I forgot how flippin' good Jagr was, holy poo

 

[Jacob]

That .gif should be mandatory viewing for anyone that gets called for a diving infraction.

 

[billybudd]

Nice find. Fedorov was fun to watch. That Penguins blueline, not so much.

Wings blueline's only a little better. Or else someone didn't do their scouting report. 66 and 68 will make anyone look bad, but they (notably Dandenault and Pushor) keep giving Nedved way too much space with the puck in shooting position. He always lit up teams that did that and did practically nothing against teams that consciously tried to keep him on his backhand.

Anyways, that's a great clip full of some real vintage stuff. It's got everything. Mario high glove on a breakaway and stealing a puck along the boards from nine feet away. Jags being a bull. Nedved with the James Neal wristers. Fedorov doing his patented cut to the net move. Yzerman weaving across the o zone like a water bug. Shanahan's half slapper. Holmstrom running the goaltender to get a goal waived off. Osgood and Lalime floundering like fish.

 

[member 51464]

 

[Mount Suribachi]

A few years ago, I heard someone (maybe a former coach?) on NHL radio say that Lemieux was the 2nd best player of all-time behind Orr. I think he had Gretzky 4th.

How did he come to that? He said if you could clone that player and put him at every position except goalie, whose team would be best? He reasoned that a team of 5 Orrs would be the best, followed by 5 Lemiuex's.

Howe was up there too. It's a different way of looking at it that I found interesting.

The correct answer to this question is actually Sergei Fedorov.

In other news, yeah Mario was awesome. I got into the NHL the year of his cancer, my abiding memory of him that year is watching the highlights every night and seeing him undress a goalie seemingly every single game.