I appreciate your thoughtful and nuanced response. From my standpoint, the word "generational" in almost any context is much closer to 20 years than it is 5-10 years. The reason it's been thrown around in sports so often is because of overhyping. In my eyes, Bedard would either have to be the best player in the prior 20 years OR the prior 10 years AND with no foreseeable prospect realistically better in the next 10 years. Either criteria covers about a 20 year time-frame, and he doesn't come close to meeting either given that Ovechkin was drafted in 2004, Crosby in 2005, Kane in 2007, MacKinnon in 2013, McDavid in 2015, Matthews in 2016, and Jack Hughes in 2019. There's no guarantee he even gets to Matthew's level, who just posted 69 goals in a single season.
Unpopular viewpoint: Dvorsky has a much higher likelihood of become an average 1C than Bedard becoming "generational."
If we're taking generations as 20 years and saying that you can't have overlapping generational players, then Bedard shouldn't have that label. I just think that 20 years is way too long to view a hockey generation. That's the timeline of a generation for the population as a whole, where people have 40+ year long careers and are relevant to society for their entire lives. That's just not the case in sports. A 25 year career is damn near unheard of in hockey and the guys who make it that long certainly aren't in their primes for 20 years. Gretzky won all of his Cups/MVPs by the time he was 28. Sid won all of his Cups/MVPs by the time he was 29. Even for generational players, we're usually talking about 10-12 years where guys are at or around the height of their powers. Crosby is entering his 20th season this year and no one is claiming that we are still in the Crosby generation. That torch passed to McDavid years ago.
I view a hockey 'generation' as roughly a decade. The sport changes so quickly and the careers/primes of players are so short that the league looks completely different every 10 years or so.
The 80s belonged to Gretzky, the Oilers, the Islanders, and high flying goal totals. Gretzky won 9 of the 10 Hart trophies from 1979/80 through 1988/89. Mario snuck one in there, but the trophy belonged to Wayne. The Oilers and Islanders won 8 of the 10 Cups (with the other 2 going to the Habs and Flames). Teams averaged 3.5+ goals per game every single season that decade and averaged 3.7+ in 8 of the 10 years. I'm fine extending this generation a couple years in to the 90s as well. Goals were in the 3.4s the first couple years of the 90s then went up to 3.68 in 1992/93. But that was the last time we've seen teams average 3.5+ goals per game and they plummeted down to 3.24 in 1993/94. The dead puck era was here.
From 1993/94 through the lockout, teams averaged fewer than 3 goals per game in 9 of the 11 seasons. We saw 10 different Hart winners and none of them were Gretzky. We saw 6 different Cup winners and all of them were either first timers or long time drought enders (Rangers, Devils, Avs, Wings, Stars, and Lightning). Gretzky was on his retirement tour. I consider this window to be the generation of the goaltender. The butterfly style had arrived in full force. We had a decade of Roy, Hasek, Marty, and Belfour playing at an absolutely elite level. Hasek won two Hart trophies and then Theodore won another (lol).
The game in 1999/00 is barely comparable to the game in 1980. I just can't lump the mid-late 90s NHL into the same generation as the 1980s.
Then we had a lockout and the league changed dramatically. The league burned an entire season to get a salary cap and then brought in a new rules package and standard of officiating to boost scoring. Sid and Ovi share a rookie season in 2005/06 and are immediately the faces of the league. Crosby won all his Cups and individual awards in the first 12 years of his career. Ovi won his Cup in year 13 and (incredibly) kept winning Rockets through year 15. But now they are in their late 30s and it has been 4 years since either won an award. Neither has won a playoff series since Ovi won his Cup in 2017/18. We're entering their 20th NHL seasons, but it hasn't been their generation for some time now.
I look at a generation as roughly a decade. I think we are over halfway through the generation of McDavid. If Bedard progresses as his resume to date suggests he could, he has a legitimate chance of being better than McDavid in a handful of year. Not better than McDavid's peak, but better than the 30+ year old version of McDavid that will exist at that time. Like Sid passing the torch to McDavid at some point in the late teens, there is a very real chance that McDavid will eventually pass the torch to Bedard at some point in the late 20s. I don't think Bedard being drafted 8 years after McDavid is all that different than McDavid being drafted 10 years after Sid.
