Not challenging you (more just thinking out loud), and you may even agree with me, but why is popularity of the sport always brought up when discussing how good a hockey player is relative to other sports? It’s the ultimate strawman argument and drives me crazy.
There’s this preposterous general consensus that Wayne Gretzky can’t be the most dominant athlete in team sports because hockey isn’t popular enough. But he torched his peers at a level that Jordan, Messi, Brady, etc haven’t even come close to. If you can make the argument that any player is better than the above players (Lebron, Pele, Rice), than it’s a non-starter that they’re more dominant.
You’ve struck a nerve on an open wound.