authentic
Registered User
- Jan 28, 2015
- 25,973
- 11,038
You're mixing up two different things here.
The human body has not evolved in the past 40 years, that's an obvious fact. I would argue that even the "hockey body" has just *barely* evolved during that timeframe. Compare Wayne Gretzky's physique to Patrick Kane's. Compare Carey Price's physique to Patrick Roy's. Compare Alex Ovechkin's physique to Mario Lemieux's. There are some differences (players are taller, and they've fine-tuned some aspects of nutrition and training) but by and large, the same general physique that was successful in 1980 is still successful in 2017. People are often shocked at seeing NHL players with their shirts off, because this is one sport where balance, motor coordination, and learned skills are all far more important than muscle mass. If you want to say that today's players are physically superior to those of Orr's era, you're not wrong -- but it's not an overwhelmingly important factor like it would be if we were talking basketball or football.
Separate from that, there's the visible performance on the ice. You're saying we can look at Orr and just "tell" that he's not as good as a modern player. But that's not remotely fair to a guy who's skating on tube skates, carrying a wooden stick, not even wearing a damn helmet, and sweating into a cotton jersey. There are SO many confounding factors involved, it's just crazy. I mean do you really think you could stick Joffrey Lupul in that equipment and he would look like his modern self?
In any case, I hope you don't actually believe your claims that the very best player on earth 40 years ago is worse than the 1000th best today (or whatever a bad AHL player would be). That's a manifestly ridiculous thing to say.
I see no possible way you could definitively say that he's not though. The very best player on earth 40+ years ago was the best player in a drastically different, and far less skilled hockey league. The level of difference there is undeniably vast, and of course it's due to the factors you mentioned I'm not new to the game or it's history, and I'm well aware any modern player wouldn't look nearly as impressive wearing that old equipment.
The main point is, there would be a large period of adjustment, infact it would go far beyond an adjustment, there is no way of telling any player of that time would even easily make the NHL today, including Orr. I get that players have proven to be effective through time and adapt as they got older throughout different eras, and I get that argument, but that's not what's being asked here. I find it extremely hard to believe, that in this time machine scenario, that any version of Orr that actually existed would take a single roster spot from any defenseman if he were invited to training camp. I would like to think he could jump from that time to the current league and be the best, and about a decade ago I convinced myself that may have been true, until I started being honest with myself.