Quote:Originally posted by artermis@Mar 26 2018, 12:58 PM

What I was going at really goes beyond stats.

For instance, I'm sure, when adjusted, Joe Malone's numbers are huge, but I'd be curious if he could even crack an NHL squad today.

As for Gretzky, I retracted the strongest of my statements, as there are definitely parts of Gretzky's game that fit into today's and he'd likely be adaptable enough to fit in as a potentially strong player, once again I'd just like to to say that it's not my fault that all I've seen of his highlights are unimpressive slapshots and quick stickhandles that are trivial in today's hockey.

The biggest questions to me are if Gretzky can handle the pace and skating style of the new age of hockey (from what I can tell, he has great skating ability, so even if he's not as quick he could likely slow down play) and, most importantly, how Gretzky would fare against modern-day goaltenders. Perhaps today's defenders would be a problem as well, but I don't know any particular attributes that have changed drastically with defence.

I do think it's underappreciated just how much "sports science," training, etc has advanced even within our lifetimes and so I tend to agree with you that if 18 year old Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky, etc somehow time traveled to 2005 and entered the league they wouldn't have been nearly as great as they were in their own era. That said, who's to say that if Gretzky was born in 1991 instead of 1961 that he wouldn't have been just as dominant now than he was with a better body of knowledge about diets, training, etc? To me it's important to keep in mind not only the differences in era for scoring (ie: it's much more impressive to score 100 points in 2001 than it was in 1985) but also the advantage that modern players have with more information available to them.