Hopefully this table comes out. Categories are: History of Hockey Top-60 D-men rank, Top-5/10/15/20 NHL scoring rank including forwards, Times #1 in D-scoring, Norris & top-5's, All Star Team honors and Era Adjusted points.
Orr is one of the very best players to ever play, there's just no point to try to compare somebody to a Gretzky or Orr until they win multiple Art Ross trophies by a large margin in short order. Jagr in the late 1990's might have been the last time you could actually picture somebody new cracking the top-5 in NHL history.
[table="css=transp;head;”]Player|HOH T-60|T-5|T-10|T-15|T-20|Total|Highest|#1 D-pts|Norris|N #2-5|1-AST|2-AST|T-5 EA Pts|T-5 EA Avg
B. Orr|1|6|0|0|0|6|1st|7|8|1|8|1|129, 124, 117, 117, 117|120.8
Coffey|13|3|3|2|0|8|2nd|8|3|9|4|4|108, 100, 100, 96, 94|99.6
Karlsson|NR|1|1|1|1|4|4th|4|2|1|3|0|92, 86, 82, 78, 73|82.2
Potvin|6|1|1|1|1|4|5th|3|3|4|5|2|86, 85, 85, 72, 67|79.0
Bourque|3|0|1|2|1|4|9th|2|5|14|13|6|84, 82, 80, 79, 76|80.2
Leetch|23|0|1|0|1|2|9th|4|2|4|2|3|91, 85, 81, 81, 78|83.2
MacInnis|18|0|1|0|0|1|9th|3|1|5|4|3|92, 76, 75, 74, 71|77.6
B. Park|11|0|1|0|2|3|9th|0|0|7|5|2|78, 73, 71, 61, 51|66.8
Lidstrom|5|0|0|0|1|1|19th|4.5|7|6|10|2|79, 77, 76, 75, 69|75.2[/table]
These d-men played at an elite level for a heck of a long time. Karlsson may go down as arguably the 3rd best offensive defensemen; that's high praise. But he still needs to continue to add to his legacy to compare to the greatness of their careers.
For now, Leetch is the best comparable until Karlsson puts some distance between he and Leetch. Karlsson has matched and exceeded quite a few of Leetch's peak achievements, but there are a few he's yet to match/exceed. Let's wait until he finishes surpassing Leetch or guys in the same range before we start mentioning anybody in the Top-5/Top-10.