I didn't see him mention their age 18-27 years in the post you quoted.
He's talking about longevity though. Bourque is playing FULL NHL seasons at 18, he's an elite d-man by 19. Lidstrom starts playing FULL NHL seasons by 21 and isn't elite till 27.
Lidstrom started 3 years later and looks like he's going to finish 1 year later.
Is there another way to read that?
Bourque played his
22nd season at 40, Lidstrom, his 21rst at 41.
You really need to review the numbers you were citing.
They don't reflect what you are trying to state using them at all.
In fact they say that Lidstrom runs about 1.4 r-on from 92-2008 and then he is 1.3. That is 16 years at 1.4ish and 2-3 at 1.3 so far..
Bourque has a blip of 1.7 for 2 years at the start of his career, settles in between 1.4 and 1.5 for 82 to 96 then falls off to 1.0 for 4.
That puts them right in the same range for years and effectiveness for their careers overall.
Now obviously as I said I don't say these are anything conclusive because a myriad of factors come into play with the team stats.. however, if you are relying on these numbers to back up your points - they don't.
Hold on there, it's not just about the R-on numbers here. It's about how the R-on are in relation to the R-off.
It's not about whether both players are 1.4 or 1.3, it's about how Bourque is 1.40 to his teams .97 compared to Lidstrom's 1.4 to his teams 1.2.
That's where the gap is. Look at the numbers agai nwith that in mind and my reading of them makes a hell of a lot more sense.
You're right though, my use of "marginally" better for Lidstrom's last 2 years to Bourque's last 4 years was wrong although you have to admit, those B's teams that make up 3/4's of that data were absolutely brutal.
I'd like to see just Bourque's '01 season if possible.
For the rest of it though, look at the comparison between the two of them for the previous years. Seriously, it's not even close. Bourque made the Bruins a much better team. Lidstrom only made the Wing's better and sometimes only marginally. (There I used "marginally) correctly this time
)
In fact, why don't we do the same thing for Lidstrom that we did for Orr when OP first posted all that data.
We looked at other players from his team to see where they ended up and quickly discovered that not only are they not close, almost every one of them had actually had R-on numbers that were lower than their R-off.
Lets look at Fedorov...hmmm..interesting, he comes back with a 1.35 - 1.09.
Damn, looks like Detroit was an even worse team when Fedorov wasn't on the ice than when Lidstrom wasn't.
Interesting no?
Granted, those numbers are Fedorov's career and I don't know how much that skews them. He had a best 10 seasons list in there, I'll see if I can find it and if Feds is on it.
If being voted the best all around defenseman in the NHL isn't elite, I don't know what possible definition you could be using here, Rhiessan.
Refer back to my baseball HoF post.