I was a huge Coffey fan, and he was my fav player for years (despite my jaw dropping at Gretz's plays). I was a defenseman in the minors and both there and in roller hockey (summer leagues) I wore #7 to honor the then still young Oiler spitfire Coffey. He was fast, mobile to adapt offensively and defensively, and while he took risks, they often paid off at both ends of the ice, and when they didn't you shrugged them off because to make a half dozen great plays and one bad one, though all glaring, doesn't leave a bad taste in your mouth. I knew he wasn't a Bourque. There was never a time I thought Coffey a better defenseman than Bourque, though I loved Coffey ten times over Bourque. But Coffey had something I'd never seen (I was too young to appreciate Orr in the late seventies), and when Lumme joined the Canucks, his creativity from the blueline was Coffey-lite in my eyes! I know Erik Karlsson fans wanna compare the Sens player of today to Coffey, but I think him no better than Lumme defensively, though Coffey-like offensively.
I became embarrassed and a bit ashamed of my fanboyhood over Coffey when I was in grad school at the U. of Windsor, across the Detroit river from the Joe Louis arena (you can see the building from my apartment!), and I went to a lot of games and saw Coffey circling center ice like a vulture awaiting a turnover pass to make a spectacular breakaway pass (gawd, it was like I was seeing Cliff Ronning all over again), not at all worried about backchecking, countless times outside of his own zone when goals were scored against, but at times the news highlight reel when he received a pass from the goalie or hard-working teammate who recovered a loose puck in their own zone and forwarded it quickly to him for a rush. I started to wonder: How often did he do this as an Oiler? I only watched Edmonton on T.V. from my homes in the nearby province of B.C., where I grew up (lived there 1969-1990). I was there in the Detroit-Windsor region and at games when he won the Norris trophy as a Red Wing, the 1st team all-star and IT WAS A BIG PAINFUL JOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!! The guy was a "paper tiger" defensively. I saw so many games between 1994-1996 when I was a M.A. student less than a kilometer away from the rink. And I lost respect for him during the very season that a bunch of Norris trophy voters thought him the best defenseman in the NHL??!!! THAT in itself has made me jaded about a whole lot of things in society (whom voters support in elections doesn't surprise me anymore).
The upshot: As a HUGE Coffey fan through my middle school and high school years (1982-1987),
this now 47 year old hockey nut is a person who has no doubt that he became overrated,
though I dunno if it was during his time in Pittsburgh or L.A.,
but certainly by the time he reached Detroit.