Players Who Would Dominate Any Era in NHL History

[Zegras Zebra]

One of the most fascinating things about hockey is how the game has evolved over time, and how certain player characteristics which were valuable at one point in history are irrelevant in another. Other sports talk about how certain players "defy era" and would be great regardless of what time period they would have played. So I'm asking who do you think would have been a dominant player regardless of what era of NHL history they played in?

A few ground rules since comparing players from different eras is often a messy topic. The only thing that changes about a player is his birth date so in theory they would have grown up with era appropriate equipment, and not need an adjustment period. Players would be the same weight as they were when they played in real life (ex. Wayne Gretzky was about 175 pounds in the 1980's so he would be 175 pounds in 1930, and in 2017 as well). Players would play in the same style they did in real life.

Forwards I think would be dominant in any era include: Mario Lemieux, Eric Lindros, Jaromir Jagr, Alexander Ovechkin, Connor McDavid, and Bobby Hull. I think it would be reasonable for Jarome Iginla to dominate every other era besides the era he played in.

Defencemen I think would be dominant in any era include: Bobby Orr, Niklas Lidstrom, Ray Bourque, and Chris Pronger.

I don't know if there are any goalies that could dominate any era based on the fact that goalies were forbidden from leaving their feet in early years, and modern goalies are generally reliant on the butterfly style.

I didn't include players such as Gordie Howe, Rocket Richard, Doug Harvey, and Pierre Pilote because I haven't seen them play, or know enough about them to be able to properly guess if they would be able to dominate modern hockey. I will let other posters lead that discussion.

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[blood gin]

Larry Robinson easy. He was 6'4 225 which was huge back then and is still very big now

fwiw when Gretzky started out he wasn't even 175. Maybe 165 or even a bit less.

 

[BlueBull]

Jagr and Selanne since they both dominated two seperate eras that were almost polar opposites of each other.
And gretzky because he is gretzky.

 

[authentic]

Gretzky IMO wouldn't have been as dominant in most other eras, he was part of a perfect storm for the type of player he was. He would still have been great, just not as great.

 

[sr edler]

I think it would be reasonable for Jarome Iginla to dominate every other era besides the era he played in.

He didn’t even dominate his own era, unless you apply a very generous definition of the word and consider the offensively depleted back-end of the DPE a respectable ”era”.

 

[Howie Hodge]

I didn't include players such as Gordie Howe, Rocket Richard, Doug Harvey, and Pierre Pilote because I haven't seen them play, or know enough about them to be able to properly guess if they would be able to dominate modern hockey. I will let other posters lead that discussion.

Fair picks, and even though I haven't ever seen all them play I'd say Eddie Shore, Milt Schmidt, Syl Apps, Babe Pratt, JC Tremblay, Jean Beliveau, and Stan Mikita.

Robinson was mentioned, but Serge Savard and Guy Lapointe probably too.

Just off the top of my head, and going by my guts. I've done no advanced statistics to prove them either way...

 

[Johnny Engine]

Dit Clapper deserves a mention as the King of adaptability. At 6'2", 195 pounds, he's got modern day size (though modern day trainers might have him well over 200), and he played from 1927 to 1947, breaking in before the forward pass, getting a full season in after WWII had ended, and garnering post season all star recognition at 23, 27, 31-33, and 36. And he can play defense or right wing if you want him to.

 

[Thenameless]

I think any dominant player, would still be dominant in another era.

 

[dr robbie]

I'd like to throw Red Kelly out there. I consider him to be a very well-rounded player that could adapt to pretty much any era.

 

[JackSlater]

I assume that pretty much any great from a relatively modern era of hockey (ie not from 1880 or something) would perform similarly unless there is a big stylistic reason why they wouldn't.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I think any dominant player, would still be dominant in another era.

I'm inclined to agree with this. Hockey changes, but not THAT much. It's still the same game on a fundamental level and someone who's A+ today will still be A+ a long time from now.

 

[Terry Yake]

lindros

 

[Sentinel]

I would add Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Pavel Bure, and Sergei Makarov.

 

[generalshepherd141]

Tanner Glass, he passes the eye test.
IMHO he is a generational player, AINEC.

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

Jagr

 

[VanIslander]

Jagr

January 24th 1955, the actual Nobel prize-winning writer William Faulkner wrote in Sports Illustrated:

.... at Madison Square Garden, where Montreal played the new York Rangers. Afterward Faulkner recorded these vivid impressions of a scene he found...

"discorded and inconsequent...bizarre...almost beautiful"

The vacant ice looked tired, though it shouldn't have. They told him it had been put down only a few minutes ago following a basketball game, and after the hockey match it would be taken up again to make room for something else. But it looked not expectant but resigned, like the mirror simulating ice in the Christmas store window, not before the miniature fir trees and reindeer and cosy lamplit cottage were arranged upon it, but after they had been dismantled and cleared away.

Then it was filled with motion, speed. To the innocent, who had never seen it before, it seemed discorded and inconsequent, bizarre and paradoxical like the frantic darting of the weightless bugs which run on the surface of stagnant pools. Then it would break, coalesce through a kind of kaleidoscopic whirl like a child's toy, into a pattern, a design almost beautiful, as if an inspired choreographer had drilled a willing and patient and hard-working troupe of dancers—a pattern, design which was trying to tell him something, say something to him urgent and important and true in that second before, already bulging with the motion and the speed, it began to disintegrate and dissolve.
Then he learned to find the puck and follow it. Then the individual players would emerge. They would not emerge like the sweating barehanded behemoths from the troglodyte mass of football, but instead as fluid and fast and effortless as rapier thrusts or lightning—Richard with something of the passionate glittering fatal alien quality of snakes, Geoffrion like an agile ruthless precocious boy who maybe couldn't do anything else but then he didn't need to; and others—the veteran Laprade, still with the know-how and the grace. But he had time too now, or rather time had him, and what remained was no longer expendable that recklessly, heedlessly, successfully; not enough of it left now to buy fresh passion and fresh triumph with.
LIKE THE RAPIER
Excitement: men in rapid, hard, close physical conflict, not just with bare hands, but armed with the knife blades of skates and the hard, fast, deft sticks which could break bones when used right. He had noticed how many women were among the spectators, and for just a moment he thought that perhaps this was why—that here actual male blood could flow, not from the crude impact of a heavier fist but from the rapid and delicate stroke of weapons, which, like the European rapier or the frontier pistol, reduced mere size and brawn to its proper perspective to the passion and the will. But only for a moment because he, the innocent, didn't like that idea either. It was the excitement of speed and grace, with the puck for catalyst, to give it reason, meaning.
He watched it—the figure-darted glare of ice, the concentric tiers rising in sections stipulated by the hand-lettered, names of the individual fanclub idols, vanishing upward into the pall of tobacco smoke trapped by the roof—the roof which stopped and trapped all that intent and tense watching, and concentrated it downward upon the glare of ice frantic and frenetic with motion; until the byproduct of the speed and the motion—their violence—had no chance to exhaust itself upward into space and so leave on the ice only the swift glittering changing pattern. And he thought how perhaps something is happening to sport in America (assuming that by definition sport is something you do yourself, in solitude or not, because it is fun), and that something is the roof we are putting over it and them. Skating, basketball, tennis, track meets and even steeplechasing have moved indoors; football and baseball function beneath covers of arc lights and in time will be rain-and coldproofed too. There still remain the proper working of a fly over trout water or the taking of a rise of birds in front of a dog or the right placing of a bullet in a deer or even a bigger animal which will hurt you if you don't. But not for long: in time that will be indoors too beneath lights and the trapped pall of spectator tobacco, the concentric sections bearing the name and device of the lion or the fish as well as that of the Richard or Geoffrion of the scoped rifle or four-ounce rod.

But (to repeat) not for long, because the innocent did not quite believe that either. We—Americans—like to watch; we like the adrenalic discharge of vicarious excitement or triumph or success. But we like to do also: the discharge of the personal excitement of the triumph and the fear to be had from actually setting the horse at the stone wall or pointing the overcanvased sloop or finding by actual test if you can line up two sights and one buffalo in time. There must have been little boys in that throng too, frantic with the slow excruciating passage of time, panting for the hour when they would be Richard or Geoffrion or Laprade—the same little Negro boys whom the innocent has seen shadow-boxing in front of a photograph of Joe Louis in his own Mississippi town, the same little Norwegian boys he watched staring up the snowless slope of the Holmenkollen jump one July day in the hills above Oslo.

 

[Boxscore]

Interesting.

1. Orr
2. Lemieux
3. Gretzky
4. Clarke
5. Forsberg
6. Potvin
7. Bourque
8. Messier
9. Bure
10. Gordie/Lindros (if they weren't suspended for life)

 

[NewUser293223]

Interesting.

1. Orr
2. Lemieux
3. Gretzky
4. Clarke
5. Forsberg
6. Potvin
7. Bourque
8. Messier
9. Bure
10. Gordie/Lindros (if they weren't suspended for life)

Bure never really dominated even in his own era. I'm having serious doubts regarding Clarke and Messier as well.

 

[Eye of Ra]

Erik Karlsson.

 

[BadgerBruce]

I rarely chime in on these hypothetical discussions, but .... I'll go with the guy who was dominant in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s before finally hanging them up after the 1980 season. His dominance was not hypothetical, it was real and he just kept on adapting over and over again, Era after Era.

 

[tony d]

Gretzky, Lemieux and Orr probably would.

 

[Neutrinos]

I think any dominant player, would still be dominant in another era.

I don't think Phil Esposito would do well in today's game

 

[Neutrinos]

We're 20+ posts into this thread and nobody has mentioned Crosby yet

It's as if you guys have never seen him play

 

[BenchBrawl]

Every superstar since the 50s (I stop there to be on the safe side) would be a superstar in any era.

 

[Thenameless]

I don't think Phil Esposito would do well in today's game

I'm pretty sure he would.