What Montreal fans should I ask about Koivu? The same youngsters who weren't even born then like you? He went from dominating the best league in Europe to have 56 points in 50 games in his injury-struck second season.
Saku Koivu IS the reason I got into hockey in the first place. He was by and far my favorite athlete when I grew up from a snot-nosed brat into a lanky teen and beyond. Somehow I never dug Teemu that much. The small guy and how he always found the way to beat the odds was far more compelling.
But now that I'm all grown up and then some, I can certainly evaluate his value from a more neutral standpoint. He was and still is a neat role model. But among the best in the world, he's still nothing truly special, even if all those newspaper clippings from my youth would tell me otherwise. Yeah, for us Finns he was quite special. But did he make same kind of headlines overseas? Rarely.
Guess our main difference is that I can keep all the fond memories separate from objective evaluation, whereas you can't.
But I still don't know what benefit it has to anyone to compare completely different eras. I would rather find more about what kind of players does the Finnish system produce these days. Are they given the tools to compete with the best of these days, to claim their place in the NHL elite. Anything else is a disgrace to the legacy of the golden generation.
And how many elite talents did that "now-disgraced" golden generation produce exactly? I mean the kind that don't have a younger comparable these days? Selänne... then there's Lehtinen, whose two-way skillset may be unanswered as of now and even if I give you Koivu... that's still just three players. So, three guys with no modern comparables is your superior generation? Especially since the modern-day ratio to slightly (but not much) lesser players is still about 2:1.
It just isn't a wonderful recovery and clear sign of the golden players to come if an individual from Finland has impact of 40 points a season. There has to be guys who can be mentioned on the best NHL LW's list. Or it just isn't a very golden generation.
And did the previous "golden" generation have it any better, with one guy you could mention on the "NHL's best RWs" list? No Finnish centres on those lists. No left wings. No defensemen. One or two goalies, yeah. But those we have these days too. In greater numbers, to boot.
And even if this generation does not see a crapton of guys rise above the 0.5PPG hallmark, it's still going to be a better generation if there'll be more of them. As long as the NT is concerned, at least (which is the point of this thread, please read the title).
The very best NT of our "golden" generation was made up of one superstar who could reach the 80-100 point range on his heyday. Then we had a pair of guys who regularly got into close 80s. One elite two-way talent. Then we had 6-7 middling 0.5PPG guys and the rest were fringe NHLers and eurostars. And oh, elite goalies.
Even if the very best NT of our upcoming generation lacks genuine superstars (save for Barkov), but has elite goalies, and around 20 guys who are in the 40-50p per season range, that still means we at least have no extensive use for the fringes and eurostars. I give that kind of team far better chances to win something than I give the one described above, and consider us to be better off in the future than the past. Especially since said past generation has already shown us all they can win. I love those guys to death, but sometimes it did feel like a genuinely masochistic affair regardless.
However, does this all mean that we should just be happy with what we've got now and can't aspire to get even higher? Well, of course not. But we're in an improved situation even as things stand. And since it's an ongoing process, who knows where we'll be, given enough time? Which means btw that you're messing up a perfectly good thread by taking it off-topic with your grumpy old-timer yapping, gramps.
able that you just refuse to grasp this such a simple concept. What exactly are you trying here? Going for the "thickest hfboarder" award?
