Richard was not noted as a defensive standout, and Gretzky was an awesome defensive player. He was oft criticized for not being a good defensive player because he didn’t hit people a lot. But hitting people is a small part of defense. Defense includes positioning, puck retrieval, cutting off passing lanes and moving the puck out of the zone, especially under control. Gretzky was amazing at those things. He didn’t have to level a guy to take the puck away from him. Over and over Gretzky was either the guy to make the first pass out, or he positioned himself to help the guy who had to make the first pass.
The only player who could seriously be compared to Gretzky is Orr, who at his absolute best might have been as great, but his absolute best was only a couple of seasons, regrettably.
As to Gretzky’s skating ability, to be honest I don’t see how it matters. It’s like saying Ted Williams couldn’t have been a great ballplayer because he wasn’t fast, or that Michael Jordan wasn’t the greatest basketball player because he wasn’t especially tall for a basketball player. Whatever Gretzky’s skating ability, the man scored 200 points in a season four times, and he was on the puck more than the NHL crest. He wasn’t nearly as fast as Russ Courtnall, but there’s no Russ Courtnall wing in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He didn’t have nearly the raw strength of Daniel Alfredsson, but Alfredsson still didn’t score as many points in his two best years combined as Gretzky had in, by my count, any one of his FIVE best seasons.
Indeed, I would argue that one of the measures of a player who is truly on another level is the characteristic of playing the game differently from other players. Babe Ruth is the classic example, the guy who started whacking home runs at previously impossible rates. Ruth wasn’t just better, he was different. He approached the sport in a way that nobody had before, and though many have hit like him since he’s still got better numbers in most ways. So it was with Gretzky. Gretzky isn’t really comparable to anyone, because he played the game in a manner so different from anyone else, and it yielded results the sort of which nobody had ever seen before.
That’s why I think Orr - a defenceman who won a scoring title and later a goal-scoring title - is really the only player who even briefly might have equalled Gretzky, in his 70-71 and 71-72 seasons, and again in 1974-1975.
Funny thing… Gretzky was playing in the same talent pool as all the other players, but only he posted numbers that are completely ridiculous. Anyone that knows hockey knows that Gretzky’s number were completely outrageous.
Guys gave blood, sweat and teeth to score 50 goals in 50 games. Bossy (80’s) and Richard (40’s) did it. But Bossy, wow… after all the players through the years who have toiled to do it, actually pulled it off and scored 50 goals in exactly 50 games! WOW. It was BIG hockey news.
Gretzky scored 50 goals in 39 games the next year! THIRTY NINE!
1981–82: 61 in 50 games (50 in 39)
He also scored
1983–84: 61 in 50 games (50 in 42)
1984–85: 53 in 50 games (50 in 49)
What makes this Gretzky talk even more fun is that the players that skated against him would agree. You think the Flyers wanted to give up #48, 49 AND 50 that game? Nobody on that team wanted to be made a fool of, but skinny, small, average-speed Gretzky did it.
And of course, Gretzky was setting up his teammates for enormous numbers of assists.
If you look at most of the other preeminent goal scorers in NHL history, they weren’t big assist men. The year he scored 50 goals, Rocket Richard had just 23 assists, and in his career he had more goals than assists. Mike Bossy also had more goals than assists, as did Bobby Hull, Brett Hull, Pavel Bure, and most of the other guys in NHL history with really high goals-per-game numbers. Gretzky, however, had more than twice as many assists as goals.
But Gretzky always had more assists than goals. The year he scored 92 goals he had 120 assists, and that was the most balanced year of his career. In 1985-1986 he scored 52 goals and still found time to rack up 163 assists. That’s ludicrous. He had four seasons where he would have won or tied for the scoring title even if he had scored no goals at all, just gotten his assists. In fact, that’s true for his career - he has more assists than anyone else has points.
Hey, we need another thread just to discuss his play-making ability. Goes to LA and turns Bernie Nichols into a 70+ goals scorer!! Bernie Nichols!!! Gretzky shows up and Nichols turns into a 70-goal scorer!! SEVENTY!!!
Between the goal scoring and the assists, Gretzky made an absolute mockery of the stats. He happened to be a leader, and outstanding spokesperson, too.
In the same way, I hear semi-regularly that Babe Ruth’s records are tainted because he played in the segregated era, and didn’t have to face the top black players.
While there’s SOME validity to that point, it makes one wonder: if it was so easy to hit homers against those lousy white pitchers, why wasn’t EVERYBODY hitting 50+ homers like the Babe?
Then, too, while the talent pool was smaller in the segregated era, there’s no real reason to think that the black players were any better, on average, than the white players. Sure, there were some really great players in the negro leagues that the whites never had to face, but there were also some really great players in the white leagues that the blacks never had to face, and just based on demographics, I would expect there’d be more in that latter category.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that Ruth is really a counterexample to the OP’s premise. Yes, baseball in general is a sport with very rigid positions, but part of what makes Babe Ruth so great is that he didn’t adhere to those rigid positions. Yes, he was an outstanding offensive player, but (if you look at the entire history of the sport) you can find many others who are at least comparable. What makes Ruth the greatest ever was that not only was he one of the best offensive players ever, but he was also great at the most important defensive position. Aside from Ruth, it’s unheard-of for a pitcher to be a great hitter, so it’s very easy to imagine a world without Ruth, where baseball really is divided into pitchers and hitters. And in such a world, there’d be no real way to say whether the greatest baseball player of all time was the best pitcher, or the best hitter.
Yes, but Ruth’s pitching, though great, is not what people mean when they call him the greatest. He could pitch, and pitch well, but he certainly wasn’t the best pitcher of his era. If he stayed as a pitcher, he’d probably be in the Hall of Fame, but he his pitching didn’t even begin to challenge people like Walter Johnson or Lefty Grove.
Ruth is still considered the greatest ballplayer. Greatest pitcher is more debatable, but Johnson or Grove (who actually won more pro games than Johnson) would be up there.
And there really are no players comparable in the history of the sport. People had better seasons, but Ruth dominated the sport the same way Gretzky dominated his.
Anyway, Gretzky is considered the greatest hockey player despite the fact that he never played goal. No one disqualifies him for that.
As for pitching, seven of the first eight players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as players pitched in the major leagues (only Nap Lajoie did not).
Yes, but the pitcher is more important in baseball than the goalie is in hockey. You can’t play at all without a pitcher, but you can play without a goalie, and in fact (as I understand it) teams will sometimes choose to do exactly that. And while Ruth certainly wasn’t the greatest pitcher of all time, he was still pretty darned good, and I maintain that if it were just a matter of his offensive play, while he’d still be a very strong contender for the “greatest ever” title, he wouldn’t be the clear, unambiguous winner without his defensive play.
I disagree. In any given game, I’d say a hockey goalie is more important than a starting pitcher. You say teams sometimes pull the goalie, but every team pulls the starting pitcher every game. Even more to the point, your goalie plays every game while a pitcher doesn’t even participate in four out of five games. (Or however many it is.)
Ah, I see. I was thinking in terms of the position itself being more important, but it probably is better to focus on the individual players. I take it, then, that it’s not routine in hockey to substitute out the player playing goalie for another player?
Sure, as a desperation move in the dying seconds. No ,it isn’t routine; if you tried to play without a goalie on a regular basis you’d lose every game by 25 goals.
In fact, an NHL starting goalie is far more important to his team than any one pitcher in the entire modern history of baseball has been to his team. A quality goalie can make an average team an excellent one. A quality starting pitcher simply can’t have that much impact because, unlike a goalie, he can’t play most of his team’s games.
I’ve never heard a seriouos argument that any pitcher was the best baseball player of all time, not even Walter Johnson or Cy Young.
He would unquestionably have been the greatest baseball player of all time up to the point he played, even had he not pitched. Ruth was far, far greater than any preceding hitter.
Following Ruth, there are a few candidates for whom an argument can be made, but you have to construct the argument pretty carefully, because Ruth is still a better hitter, at bat or at bat, than anyone.