Wayne Gretzky is, without question, the greatest hockey player of all time

To suggest otherwise is blasphemy. Hell, we're practically forbidden by international law from even discussing it.

But there's no way you're going to convince me that a guy with a concave chest who couldn't knock Michelle Kwan off stride was a more dominant player than Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux or, for that matter, Mark Messier.

All the pro-Gretzky arguments are about numbers. Offensive numbers. Well, hockey is a physical game, and just because a guy was the greatest offensive player in a cartoonish offensive era does not mean he's the greatest hockey player of all time.

Just to give you a sense of what NHL hockey was like in the early 1980s, in the1982 series opener before Gretzky's Oilers were shocked 6-5 on six unanswered goals by the L.A. Kings in the Miracle on Manchester, the Kings won 10-8. Think about that. An NHL playoff game with 18 goals. So Gretzky's crazy numbers need to be looked at with some sense of perspective.

But let's look at another number: Gretzky's plus/minus. After leaving Edmonton, where he was surrounded by a bunch of Hall of Famers in their primes, over the last 11 years of his career, he was a net minus. That's right, from 1988-99, when Gretzky was on the ice at even strength, the Great One's teams were outscored by 33 goals. In his last eight seasons, he was a woeful minus-86. You see, backchecking — it turns out — actually helps your team. Crunching a guy into the boards helps your team. Clearing guys out of the crease helps your team. In all these ways and more, Gretzky did not help his teams. Sure, he put up mind-boggling numbers, but wouldn't you rather have your mind boggled than your bones jarred?

Now no one would suggest with a straight face that Gretzky was as good in his own zone as any of the other nominees for greatest hockey player of all time. The case for Gretzky is that he was so much better offensively that it made up for his defensive limitations.

Is this true?

(Sports Nerd Alert: Stat-heavy analysis ahead.)

In his best offensive season, Gretzky tallied a record 215 points. The league average for goals was 7.94 per game. Gretzky's 2.69 points per game average represented 33.8 percent of average goals per game. In his best season, Orr averaged 1.69 ppg, or 24.6 percent of the total goals per game. Do you suppose Orr made up for this gap in his own zone as the best defenseman of all time?

A comparison with Lemieux invites the possibility that Gretzky wasn't even the best offensive player of his generation. In 1988-89, when he scored 199 points, Lemieux's point per game total as a percentage of league average goals was even higher than Gretzky's best year (35 percent to 33.8). So Lemieux not only matched Gretzky as a scorer, but he also lugged the puck from end to end with guys hanging all over him and made goal scorers out of Warren Young, Terry Ruskowski and Rob Brown. Lemieux also had a higher career points per game average than Gretzky before his last two injury-plagued seasons, despite having a career that bridged a high-scoring era and a low-scoring one. As it stands now, Gretzky's career points average (1.92 ppg) is one one-hundredth better than Lemieux's (1.91).

But Orr and Lemieux each won only two Stanley Cups as compared to four for Gretzky. It's hard to argue about the bottom line, which is, after all, winning championships. Given that criterion, however, Gretzky might not have been the best player on those Oilers teams. After Gretz went to L.A., the Oilers' amazing two-way center Mark Messier led them to a fifth Cup. Then, in one of the coolest, most incredibly clutch runs in NHL history, Messier carried the Rangers to their drought-ending title in 1994. So that's six rings for Messier (two without Gretzky) and four for Wayne (zero without Mess).

So if Gretzky might not be the best offensive player and is certainly below-average defensively and didn't win as many Cups as Messier, by what measure is he the greatest player ever?

He's not. It's a lie.

Quelle: http://msn.foxsports.com/story/2579652

Der Autor von dem Artikel wurde sicher kurz darauf auf dem Scheiterhaufen verbrannt.
Aber irgendwie hat er ja auch recht. Gretzky war auch ne ziemliche Pussy.

Magro