This is common sense. Back in the 30s there was close to no money in the game. Today top players make over 10 million a year. Of course the game wasn't taken as seriously as in the modern era. Come on!
Played in a world wide league, peaked a lot higher with 149 points in a season and achieved this:
Yep way more impressive than anything in #47. No need to recalculate anything since Jagr was statistically superior.
in what way? I'm surprised no one has broken this down piece by piece yet.
About the 149 points: League offense was up to 6.285 goals per game in 1995-96. In Howe's most statistically significant season, it was 4.790. So right away, in order to compare apples to apples we'd need to adjust based on schedule length and league scoring. Howe's 95 points come out to 146, practically even with Jagr's total.
From there, it doesn't take a brilliant hockey analyst to conclude that 146 points scored while carrying players who scored at 63% and 75% of your level, is a lot different from scoring 149 while playing on the PP and most of your ES time with a player who scored 26.5% more per game than you did.
Olympics: There was no way for Howe to participate in Olympics. During his entire career it was a tournament for sub-NHL level players.
World Championships: See Olympics.
World Cup: No best on best tournaments were played during his career. If they were, Canada would have swept to victory and Howe would have been Canada's premier player in the majority of them.
Junior accomplishments: not worth discussing, really.
Continental cup: What is this really worth in a discussion of top-level NHL achievements?
Stanley cups: 2 is good. one more time as a finalist is good too. But Howe won four cups and was a finalist many other times.
Prince of Wales Trophy: simply restating the point that Jagr made it to three finals.
Art Ross Trophy: 5 is excellent! Among the best all-time. Howe has six.
Hart trophy: One is more than most people have ever won. Five other times a finalist is really rare company. But Howe won six times and I lost count of how many times he was a finalist. 13, maybe?
Pearson trophy: Did not exist during Howe's career. The award can't be used to pump up one player at the expense of another who played before it existed.
Masterton trophy: You don't think they'd have awarded this to Howe at least a couple of times if it existed during his prime? Following his major head injury, for example?