Are there any upcoming prospects that will burn the league like Lemieux or Gretzky

[TheBaxMan*]

I agree that Crosby played against tougher competition than Lemieux. There's more parity in the NHL these days, less weak teams, more defensive systems, etc.

But Lemieux was still significantly better, despite all that. So was Gretzky. And it's not particularly close.

Explain

 

[daver]

But i'm talking about an actual prospect, before entering the NHL. Lemieux had 282 points in his last junior season - as great a prospect as Crosby was he just wasn't on that level.

Sure he was. He dominated the Q in a very similar manner as Mario did once you look what at what the rest of the league scored. He was scoring at almost a 3.5 PPG after the WJCs and could have been even more impressive if he skipped the WJCs like Mario.

Crosby was an absolute phenom in every sense and was doing things at a very young age that put him closer to Wayne and Mario as a prospect than McDavid was to Crosby.

I think he was as NHL ready as any prospect ever was which is why he reached his prime almost immediately but that doesn't take away from how good he was coming out of the CHL.

 

[bobholly39]

Explain

What's there to explain?

Gretzky and Lemieux are both better than Crosby.
Crosby has faced tougher competition.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Crosby's best season was 120 points? Or do you consider it his 104 point season?
Gretzky had 215 points, Lemieux 199. If all 3 players had peaked in the same year - Gretzky/Lemieux would have outscored Crosby's best by a significant margin. Maybe not as big as 215 to 104 once you adjust for tougher competition and such - but still a significant margin. Because they were better.

 

[Windy River]

McDavid/Crosby never seemed quite that good as prospects, in contrast.

I recall hearing about Crosby and how he was the next multi generational elite, in 1999, when he was 12.

 

[FVM]

It won't happen. Gretz/Lemieux were like 100m sprinters who could run it in sub-10. They raced against guys who could only run it in 16 seconds.

Now everyone can run it sub-11 and many sub-10, so good luck trying to "burn" guys in the 100m when the competition can run it just milliseconds slower (as opposed to multiple seconds).

100m example is actually interesting. Because we have witnessed the most dominant sprinter ever in our own lifetimes - Usain Bolt. The guy who stopped running and started celebrating 10 meters before the finish line in an Olympic final. Because he's that dominant, that much ahead of his peers. His competition is better than anyone had in their times, and he dominates them like never seen before. Usain Bolt proves that impossible is possible.

None of the players in the league are as dominant as Lemieux and Gretzky were. That much is obvious. But just like Bolt, there most likely will come someone who obliterates the league even worse than Gretzky did. It's just that he might come in 10 years, or in 100 years. But someone will destroy the league like never before. Human potential is so vast.

 

[Frk It]

McDavid is the best bet. Probably won't be another one that good for another 5-10 years.

 

[FVM]

McDavid is the best bet. Probably won't be another one that good for another 5-10 years.

He's not a good bet. I don't see him ever posting a 150-point season, even.

 

[Frk It]

He's not a good bet. I don't see him ever posting a 150-point season, even.

If that is the standard (kinda ridiculous), I would agree. I guess we have different definitions of what "burning the league" would be in today's NHL.

 

[FVM]

If that is the standard (kinda ridiculous), I would agree. I guess we have different definitions of what "burning the league" would be.

That has to be the standard, if we are looking at Wayne/Mario level of dominance. Like someone mentioned in this thread, in 1987, Gretzky won Art Ross with 183 points. Second best player had 108. Let that sink in. 150 points today would not even be enough, if someone else breaks 100 too. It's all about the margin you dominate all your peers with. That's how we truly find the generational superstars.

 

[TheBaxMan*]

100m example is actually interesting. Because we have witnessed the most dominant sprinter ever in our own lifetimes - Usain Bolt. The guy who stopped running and started celebrating 10 meters before the finish line in an Olympic final. Because he's that dominant, that much ahead of his peers. His competition is better than anyone had in their times, and he dominates them like never seen before. Usain Bolt proves that impossible is possible.

None of the players in the league are as dominant as Lemieux and Gretzky were. That much is obvious. But just like Bolt, there most likely will come someone who obliterates the league even worse than Gretzky did. It's just that he might come in 10 years, or in 100 years. But someone will destroy the league like never before. Human potential is so vast.

You make a good point, but Usain Bolt is not a parallel to Gretzky. The sprinting equivalent of Gretzky is someone who wins by extremely high margin. He wouldn't necessarily have to be the fastest because people would call him the greatest based on his winning margins alone.

If there were no stopwatches, Usain Bolt wouldn't look as good as a slower sprinter who won races by 5 seconds.

 

[TheBaxMan*]

That has to be the standard, if we are looking at Wayne/Mario level of dominance. Like someone mentioned in this thread, in 1987, Gretzky won Art Ross with 183 points. Second best player had 108. Let that sink in. 150 points today would not even be enough, if someone else breaks 100 too. It's all about the margin you dominate all your peers with. That's how we truly find the generational superstars.

That's not truly a fair comparison because the margin you can dominate your peers by gets smaller over time.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Well - I won't deny that Crosby might have done better at the NHL level than Lemieux by 19 years old. In fact i agree - Lemieux started out pretty slow in the NHL for his talent level, whereas Crosby played to his full potential right from the start it seems (very Gretzky-like for Crosby in that sense, who also started great).

But i'm talking about an actual prospect, before entering the NHL. Lemieux had 282 points in his last junior season - as great a prospect as Crosby was he just wasn't on that level.

It's very possible McDavid is also behind Crosby as a prospect, though i don't know to what extent. My point is there was a gap as a prospect between Lemieux and Crosby.

So if there were a junior player alive today with the talent level of a Gretzky/Lemieux - odds are they'd be very easy to spot, as they'd be that much better than even Crosby was as a junior, which is significant.

Gretzky had like 500 points as an 11 year old or such. Lemieux had 282 points in his junior year. Both of them did superhuman feats as teenagers - and as far as i know no one in the world today as a junior approaches that, and if someone did, we'd know about it.

There were 10 goals per game the year in the Q when Lemieux scored 282 points as an 18 year old.

There are many things that show Lemieux was a better hockey player. Juniors performance is not one of them.

 

[FVM]

You make a good point, but Usain Bolt is not a parallel to Gretzky. The sprinting equivalent of Gretzky is someone who wins by extremely high margin. He wouldn't necessarily have to be the fastest because people would call him the greatest based on his winning margins alone.

If there were no stopwatches, Usain Bolt wouldn't look as good as a slower sprinter who won races by 5 seconds.

But Bolt is that guy who wins by ridiculous margins. Look at his world record. 9.58 seconds. No one else has even run under 9.80 without being doped up. There are 7 billion people on this planet. Yet there's one guy who is so much faster than all the other billions, that he doesn't even have to give it his all in the Olympic final.

That's not truly a fair comparison because the margin you can dominate your peers by gets smaller over time.

Usain Bolt literally proves this to be false. Unique super talents pop up very rarely, but they do. And everyone will know when we have such a hockey player in the NHL.

 

[daver]

That has to be the standard, if we are looking at Wayne/Mario level of dominance. Like someone mentioned in this thread, in 1987, Gretzky won Art Ross with 183 points. Second best player had 108. Let that sink in. 150 points today would not even be enough, if someone else breaks 100 too. It's all about the margin you dominate all your peers with. That's how we truly find the generational superstars.

That's a pretty extreme example. Most other years saw the other scorers closer than that to Wayne or Mario.

150 points would be absolutely dominant in the current NHL where only 90 points has been broken twice in the last 3 seasons.

 

[FVM]

That's a pretty extreme example. Most other years saw the other scorers closer than that to Wayne or Mario.

150 points would be absolutely dominant in the current NHL where only 90 points has been broken twice in the last 3 seasons.

150 points would be incredible and if no one else breaks 100 that year, then I'd gladly admit it's on par with Wayne and Mario in their prime.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Lemieux had 282 points in his junior year. Both of them did superhuman feats as teenagers

Actually, since Junior is one of the few areas where we can decently compare across eras since the minutes and bottom end are still consistently un-modern-NHL-like.

282 points in 70 games (4.03 PPG) in a league where the average team allowed 5.01 goals

or individually scored a point on 80% of league average team goals

vs

168 points in 62 games (2.71PPG) in a league where the average team allowed 3.19 goals

or individually scored a point on 85% of league average team goals

Which is actually the more impressive feat?

Surely someone will run faster than Bolt. 9.58 will be broken, eventually. It might take a long while though. But if the one who breaks it is only a couple of hundredths of a second faster than his competition, no, I wouldn't consider them better than Bolt. Faster, yes, but not better. Comparing athletes in different eras can only be done by looking at how they fared against their peers. Everything else falls apart.

A guy who is faster than Bolt is not better than Bolt at the sport of being fast.

Okay.

Totally makes sense.

 

[Frk It]

Is there a site where you can look at league-wide average PPG over multiple years?

Think that would be very helpful in determining what the comparable of a modern day Lemieux or Gretzky type season would be.

 

[Luigi Lemieux]

McDavid is the best bet. Probably won't be another one that good for another 5-10 years.

You can already tell by his junior career that he's a Crosby level player. And as amazing as Crosby was/is, he's no Lemieux or Gretzky. If such a player exists, he's not on the radar yet and probably still a child.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Is there a site where you can look at league-wide average PPG over multiple years?

Think that would be very helpful in determining what the comparable of a modern day Lemieux or Gretzky type season would be.

Not unless you can track down minutes statistics.

In 2001 an old, washed up (by his standards) Lemieux played 24 minutes a game.

Last season the leader in minutes for centremen was prime Anze Kopitar at 20:52 who was the Selke winner first and foremost.

People need to understand it's not just the on-ice difference but guys like Lemieux and Gretzky were playing 29+ minutes a game in their prime.

 

[FVM]

A guy who is faster than Bolt is not better than Bolt at the sport of being fast.

Okay.

Totally makes sense.

Why do you think the runners get faster all the time? Is it because human evolution produces better sprinters in a matter of decades? Or... maybe it's other advances, like better nutrition, training and tracks. Better drugs too, for too many.

So, if a guy runs 9.57 in 2030, but his competition finishes at 9.60 and 9.62, he'd be obviously faster than Bolt was, but he wouldn't be a better sprinter, in my opinion. Because if you could take young Bolt with a time machine and drop him to 2030, give him same nutrition, training and tracks, he'd most likely beat those guys by a huge margin. That's why you can only compare athletes over different eras by their dominance over their peers. That's why a faster sprinter in the future might not be a better sprinter, or a better athlete, or a bigger talent, than Bolt was.

 

[silkyjohnson50]

That's true on ice time. Look up Bure's TOI, especially during Florida. Look at Lemieux's PP time near the end. I remember Kariya had 26 min avg or something around there. Roles have definitely changed a bit.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Why do you think the runners get faster all the time? Is it because human evolution produces better sprinters in a matter of decades? Or... maybe it's other advances, like better nutrition, training and tracks. Better drugs too, for too many.

And those advances are a handicap?

Those advances are what make them better.

If I am out of Olympic shape and I lose a race to Usain Bolt, I am not using his nutrition, training, and tracks as an excuse for why I lost to Usain Bolt.

So, if a guy runs 9.57 in 2030, but his competition finishes at 9.60 and 9.62, he'd be obviously faster than Bolt was

Yes.

but he wouldn't be a better sprinter, in my opinion.

He would be a worse sprinter despite being a faster sprinter.

Sound Logic.

Because if you could take young Bolt with a time machine and drop him to 2030,

But you can't. You can't make Usain Bolt BETTER than he actually was. He was only as good as he was. The constraints of his era don't make him BETTER.

he'd most likely beat those guys by a huge margin.

We're going around in circles here. The margin is huge because the guys he beat were not as good as the guys the guy in the future beat because the opposition in the future (9.60 and 9.62) looked at Usain Bolt, and tried to find runners with similar genetic trains (leg length, muscle fibre etc) and were institutionalized to be great sprinters. But why should that take away from someone who broke Bolt's record?

That's why you can only compare athletes over different eras by their dominance over their peers.

You can't compare athletes over different eras by their dominance over their peers when different eras allow for different levels of dominance.

That's why a faster sprinter in the future might not be a better sprinter, or a better athlete, or a bigger talent, than Bolt was.

So that's why a faster sprinter in the future would be a naturally worse sprinter, worse athelte, and lesser talent than Bolt was. Because his competition was closer in level to Bolt.

I can't be the only one who sees this logic as inherently flawed. George Mikan is a "better" basketball player than LeBron James too?

 

[daver]

Is there a site where you can look at league-wide average PPG over multiple years?

Think that would be very helpful in determining what the comparable of a modern day Lemieux or Gretzky type season would be.

It's been done multiple times. Based on last year's scoring, statistically it is about 140-150 points.

 

[daver]

You can't compare athletes over different eras by their dominance over their peers when different eras allow for different levels of dominance.

If you believe this, why bother engaging in any type of GOAT discussion because GOATs can only be determined by dominance over peers. You can either accept this premise and join the discussion or not.

 

[daver]

So that's why a faster sprinter in the future would be a naturally worse sprinter, worse athelte, and lesser talent than Bolt was. Because his competition was closer in level to Bolt.

I can't be the only one who sees this logic as inherently flawed. George Mikan is a "better" basketball player than LeBron James too?

He said "may" not be better, not that he "would" be. Nice strawman.