I should have him take some lessons from my wife
Prospect Info: [2024 - 21st] Michael Hage, Chicago Steel (USHL), Committed to U of Michigan
- Thread starter LastWordArmy
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I should have him take some lessons from my wife
bsl
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Bobby Orr is the most talented player ever with Mario Lemieux.
Yes more than Gretzky and Mcdavid
HuGort
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Vachon23
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ChesterNimitz
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In my long history of following the Canadiens these are the players who I believe were the team's 'best' skaters, both of their respective eras and irrespective of their eras: Cournoyer, Gainey, Malakhov and Richer.
Honourable Mention (at their peak) : Backstrom, Lafleur, Robinson, Chelios, Courtnall, Petry, Matheson.
Just my opinion.
HuGort
Registered User
Murray Wilson was fast skater. Newhook is good skater. Anderson is too. We have a lot of speed on Habs
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Good list. Paul Byron might be the fastest straight line skater ever on the Habs. He could fly at his peak.
ChesterNimitz
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No doubt. Murray had elite straight forward speed but had the turning radius of the HMS Queen Elizabeth II. Those 1971-1975 era teams had several players that would be fast by even today's standards. Players like Chuck Lefley and Frank Mahovlich,
We had many elite skaters over the past 70 years. We didn’t win 24 Stanley Cups because we were slow.
One of the best skaters I ever saw was Serge Savard before his two devastating leg injuries. His potential was really displayed in the 1969 playoffs when he won the Conn Smythe Trophy. But for those injuries, this Hall of Fame player, may well have equaled or surpassed Orr's brilliance.
HuGort
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Cournoyer could blend the speed with the shot. He had that quick short stride acceleration.
Grate n Colorful Oz
The Hutson Hawk
He said fastest, not fatter
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JianYang
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Straight line speed, russ courtnall was electric.
In terms of turning on a dime, I'm having trouble thinking of someone better than hutson.
Kovalev had some real tricky feet as well especially for his size.
Kudo Shinichi
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Boris Le Tigre
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
If the NHL kept statistics on over-skating the puck Courtnall would be the all-time leader. Courtnall was just faster than the puck a lot of the time.
David Suzuki
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Estimated_Prophet
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That is a silly statement imo....I have watched all 4 and making these comparisons is a waste of time. There is literally nothing that anyone can definitively say that Orr had over McDavid or vice versa due to different equipment, training, nutrition and the enormous disparity in quality of competition.
McDavid is unquestionably at the apex of speed and the ability to do things at top speed. Orr was never pushed to such limits as he only needed to be faster than his excruciatingly slow counterparts who made up the vast majority of the league. We will never know if Orr would have been able to reach these limits and the question is uninteresting because it is impossible to answer.
All four are imo in the same class and that is as far as the conversation should go, as it is such an entirely subjective and bias driven topic.
JC Superstar
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I liked Doug Harvey, he was deceivingly fast: you had to see everybody trying to catch up to him to realize how fast he was. And, as far as I'm concerned, he was the original spin-O-rama guy, so he could turn on a dime.
Acceleration wise, Cournoyer was the best; he did get the knickname Roadrunner for a reason.
Lafleur was the best all over the ice skater, I mean like now you see him now you don't type of skater. He would be behind you and get the puck on the board bedore you get there. He would be on your left and then shooting on you right. You would enter the Habs zone all alone and the he would steal your puck.
The Artist reminded me of him at times but those were too few.
And nobody could beat Ralph Backstrom on a race behind the opponent's net: he would go around defencemen like they were pylons. Too bad he couldn't make it his office like Gretzky did.
I was surprised by Biron's acceleration quite a few times, like he had a switch that got on when he touched the puck at the O zone blue line.
And the fastest I ever saw on a loose puck was Steve Shutt: loose a puck on the vicinity of the the O net and there he has been, the red light was on before you realize he had been there.
On the fastest moves on a not so fast skater, Hutson is trying to outplay J.C. Tremblay, which is real delight to me. I once saw Rod Gilbert cutting a pass at his blueline on PK and going full speed for a breakaway less for J.C.: he got passed J.C., alone with Vachon and just when he went to shoot, Vachon uncrouched because J.C. had pickpocketed the puck and was at center ice.
I like Newhook but right now he his faster then the puck, like Cournoyer was in his early years: he would turn on the speed just to drop the puck between his skates.
Whalers Fan
Go Habs!
ChesterNimitz
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Better to be too fast than too slow. One is an issue you can address, the other, you can’t. Just ask the myriad of players playing in the AHL who can’t breach the gap to the NHL.
ChesterNimitz
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Lafleur is an example ( if not an exceedingly rare one) of a player materially improving his skating ability once he entered the NHL.
I’m probably one of the few people still alive who actually saw Lafleur play his first NHL exhibition game in person. Readers have to understand that in the early 1970’s we didn’t have the luxury of the internet or much television coverage of junior hockey. So the excitement Canadiens fans were feeling about the drafting of Lafleur was based on written reports and statistical evidence. Most of us had never seen Lafleur play except in short video snippets.
That exhibition game so long ago was my first time I had an opportunity to watch this supposed budding superstar ( the anointed successor to the recently retired Beliveau) play. What I saw was a tall thin player who had, at best, a clunky skating style. He showed great hockey skills, but like many, I wondered what the true upside was to this supposed superstar who lacked good skating, let alone elite skating.
Lafleur’s first three years in the league reflected his deficit in skating as he did not become the play driver / superstar so many had hoped. His elite hockey skills allowed him to score an average of 28 goals per year, but his overall play was a real disappointment to the fan base. It was a disappointment that led to many fans considering/ calling for the trading of Lafleur by the end of his third season.
Then, in the offseason after his third season, Lafleur shed his helmet, and commencing the 1974-1975, there was a transformation in Lafleur’s level of play and skating where he became the NHL’s most dynamic player and the superstar that is now imbedded in every fan’s memory. I’ve been watching this game for close to 70 years and Lafleur’s transfiguration remains a mystery to this writer. Some say it was based on Lafleur’s growing confidence. I just don’t know.
This thread has devolved into a comparative assessment As to the best skaters over the years. I would suggest that such an assessment is fraught with difficulties as the game and the athletic abilities of the players who played over this span has changed dramatically over the decades. The game is now international with the players today being bigger, stronger and faster than the players who played in the 1950s and the 1960s. Most players who played in that era would not have been drafted today let alone play or star in the League.
The stars of forty years ago ( Orr, Hull, Perreault, Lafleur, etc.) would star today. But the average player, would really struggle against today’s bigger, faster, stronger and better trained players.
