Gretzky is unmatched at the top. No point discussing that.
Who is second best? Mario Lemieux? Gordie Howe?
Mario Lemieux has the second highest points per game of the top guys, he averaged 1.88.
He’s probably my pick. If I couldn’t have Gretzky on my team, I’d probably want Mario Lemieux.
Thoughts?
When he was healthy, Bobby Orr was on another level, and he deserves some consideration.
Bobby Orr changed the role of the defenseman in hockey. Granted, I grew up on the Bruins of that era but he’d be my pick.
Certainly the cruciverbalists all seem to think it’s Orr. He and basballer Mel Ott show up all the time in puzzles.
For what it’s worth, the rankings by a few publications:
I would say Gretzky.
Orr is number one, of course.
mmm
Bobby Orr if you’re going by PEAK value. He was briefly amazing.
There is an argument to be made for goalies, of course. A goalie affects the game on a regular basis more than any skater.
Hockey Reference, using a formula for win shares I didn’t bother to look at, thinks the second best player of all time is… Ray Bourque. If you think about it that’s not that outrageous, is it? He played a long time and was a tremendous defenseman who scored over 1500 points.
I really cannot with any confidence say who it is. Orr, Bourque, Martin Brodeur, Mario Lemiuex, all contenders. We forget how great Gordie Howe was.
(Not a hockey follower.)
Any current players even in the running? Ovechkin; Crosby?
The Hockey News ranking I linked to looks like it’s from no later than 2021, and lists Crosby at #5 and Ovechkin at #8. Both of them are still playing, of course, and it’s possible that they might be ranked a bit higher now.
The career “point shares” ranking at Hockey-Reference.com, which @RickJay mentioned, lists the top 10 as this:
So, in both cases, these sources are putting Ovechkin and Crosby in the top 10, but not in the top two or three.
I’m not sure how much point shares can be said to be accurate, I just thought the Bourque point was interesting.
Seeing Bobby Lu at number 3… 
Gotta go with the man who has a hat trick named after him, Gordie Howe.
Those guys are virtual locks for any serious top ten list, but I doubt many would say either is second best.
For other active players, Connor McDavid is closest to getting into the conversation.
That raises an interesting question. Any player will, of course, eventually decline in their abilities with age. But a truly great player, even when they’re starting to show the signs of age, will still be pretty good. On the one hand, so long as a player’s overall ability level is still comparable to that of other players in the league, it makes sense for them to still keep playing, and to only retire once they drop below that “typical player” level. On the other hand, if everyone did that, then you would see everyone, including the true greats, looking mediocre for a few years at the end of their career.
A similar phenomenon might be expected at the start of a career: At some point, every player’s skill must be on the increase, and when you get good enough to play in the Big Leagues, you play in the Big Leagues. You wouldn’t expect someone to be best in the league in their rookie season, because if they’re that good this year, then they were probably also good enough to play in the league last year, so why didn’t they? So you’d also expect even the great players to not look so great when they’re starting out.
Looked at this way, someone could artificially look great, just because they waited to start playing at the top level until they were at their peak, or chose to retire right after hitting their peak. You could get around this by only comparing peak performances, but on the other hand, you also want to recognize someone who stayed great for a long time.
I’m sure nobody is spying on me. However, this video showed up in my YouTube feed this morning:
One, in this AI dominated age, has to be careful vetting any videos, because an increasing number are being made by an AI somewhere, typically with little or no human oversight. This vid appears to be one such. Not only did the vid NEVER go into the “forgotten” skill in question, it contained several factual errors:
Pele is close to 10 years older than Orr and was already a legend in soccer circles before Orr skated his first NHL shift.
It could have explained how he could get away with all of his end-to-end rushes without giving away odd-men ones to the other team, but didn’t. [my hunch is that one of the forwards was assigned to be a quasi-defenseman when Orr was on the rush, plus Bobby was so quick he typically could get back on D without too much trouble]
It kept saying he had issues with his “knees”, but it was just the left one which ended his career. I cannot find the article now, but what I read was his shot style (note he was a lefty shot) left him open to opposition checks which ended up aimed directly at said joint.
After my umpteenth viewing of such a video, where the promised depth is nowhere to be seen (heard, tho the visuals were awesome understand), I have become rather wary of them.
You can’t talk about goalies without placing Bernie Parent on the list.
The question of peak versus career greatness has long been one of the debates that keeps this sort of discussion interesting.
It’s standard play for a forward to shift onto defense when a defenseman is on the rush. Typically it’s whatever forward is on the same side.
This isn’t advanced play; kids are already doing it in metro leagues.
He’s in the Hall of Fame for a reason. Parent was the number one reason the Flyers went back to back.