Care to elaborate on the career value thing and who your top 5 would be? I’m not saying you are wrong. Actually when you put it like that it is interesting to consider because of the shortened careers of Orr and Lemieux.
JMO but Howe and Gretzky don't really have any significant weaknesses on their resumes. I guess you could nitpick and say Gretzky wasn't physical.
Orr played half a career - 9 productive seasons, outside of which he was almost worthless. Lemieux played 915 regular season games - which is really not a lot.
A lot of people treat these missed games as if they are nothing. IMO they are not. The whole purpose of being a player is to contribute as much as possible to one's team and help them win. Hockey has a high randomness factor. Virtually any team can lose a game or even a series, and so being there to give your team additional playoff chances - that's important.
Clearly Orr was a better player than Ovechkin or Crosby, but was his per game value really
more than double theirs? I think not.
Of course there is also this concept that concentrated value is worth more than accumulated value. I agree with this but I think people overrate concentrated value by a bit just like we tend to overrate individual impacts on team accomplishments.