Almost all of Boston's forwards scored 50+ points in those years. NHL wasn't the undisputed global premier hockey league it is today. 90% of the players were Canadian, some of the best players in the world were not allowed to play (predominantly Red Army players), the pool was diluted even more with rival leagues such as WHA.
The WHA started play *after* Orr had already won an Art Ross and had a 139 point season. And it was the only league competing for NHL-level talent, no need to say plural "leagues".
You're right that there were some very good players in Russia who could have played in the NHL and done well (bear in mind this is still true in 2017). The iron curtain had *some* impact on the league but it was not something that would have impacted the way Orr performed.
In the 1976 Canada Cup, a fully international best-on-best, a semi-retired Orr tied for the scoring lead among *all* players including the Russians, with 9 points in the 7 games, and won the MVP award. He would have been just fine playing in a fully integrated league.
and the fact that the game is much more tougher these days to score 152 points for a defenceman is undeniable.
Orr never scored 152 points, his career high was 139.
And yes it would be harder to score that much now. Have you ever tried to put a rough estimate on *how much* harder it is? 10% harder? 20% harder.
You'd have to cut it by 40% to get him down to being even with Karlsson. Surely you acknowledge that arbitrarily cutting someone's scoring by 40% would be absurd. The reality is closer to the 10-20% range, which still leaves Orr comfortably over 100 points in today's game.
Closest thing today is Karlsson.
Thing is, I do agree with this. I think Karlsson's a seriously special talent and people should stop crapping on him long enough to understand that he might just be the biggest talent since Bourque. That doesn't make him anything like Orr, who was without question a higher level talent than Bourque.
The day where a defenceman leads the league in scoring while being elite defensively seems unlikely, based on the evolution of the game in the last 20-30-40-50 years. Even a 100 point d-man seems unlikely unless something changes in the game (a major one like bigger posts or more equipment changes) drastically. [/quote]
And I'll just keep saying again and again, this line of thinking told us that a player like Karlsson would never be seen again. Did they make the nets bigger and I just missed it? Or were we simply waiting on a talented enough player to come along and re-set the bar?
There is a reason why no defenceman hasn't led league scoring in the past four decades - and it's not because the players are inferior these days.
And there's a reason nobody did it *before* Orr either. You keep saying "inferior players" as if defensemen used to regularly win the Ross because the game was so easy.
This is a long post so a lot of people are going to TL;DR it. If you're about to do that, at least take a second to glance at the numbers below.
In 1970, Orr led the league with 120 points. The next highest scorer who wasn't his own teammate was Stan Mikita, a superstar who scored 86. The next highest scoring defenseman was Carol Vadnais, who rode a bad team's PP to 44 points.
In 1971, Orr scored 139 points. The next best non-teammate was Bobby Hull, a generational player who scored 96. Second place defenseman was JC Tremblay, who had an obscene number of PP assists for the Habs and ended up with 63.
In 1975, his final real season, a heavily injured Orr scored 135 points. His nearest non-teammate was Marcel Dionne, another offensive superstar, who scored 121. A cluster of defensemen came close to #2, but were led by a young Denis Potvin with 76.
Did scoring rise during that period? Definitely. Did defensemen start playing more of a role? Definitely. But nobody was even
close to Orr. He
doubled the next highest scoring dman even
after the game opened up and defensemen started scoring more in general. DOUBLED them! And he made first ballot HOF'ers like Mikita, Hull, and Dionne look like second-tier players by comparison.
There's a reason people talk about Orr the way they do. It's not like Paul Coffey scoring a lot in an inflated environment. Orr absolutely
crushed the competition in a way that only Gretzky can really even compare to. We've seen nothing like that in at least 30 years, we're talking about a Mozart-like level of unique talent.
