Everyone needs to start separating "most skilled ever" from "greatest legacy ever".
Two things can be true at the same time.
McDavid can be the most skilled player ever, but not have the greatest legacy yet.
No one is pushing Orr out of the way in terms of legacy yet, but McDavid going one on one with prime Orr tonight at the local arena...Orr would look like a child in his metal tube skates. Not his fault. He was born too early. Players smoked in the dressing room back then for christsake.
Since you're the one dismissing Orr's skill, fitness, or whatever, plus most likely based on limited viewings of old game footage, the only way to provide realistic context for a valid comparison would be to transport, through wizardry or science, your modern player to the same hockey landscape where you've made your assessment of Orr. That way, you see, you'll be able to watch some old footage of your current player operating in the same environment.
For this exercise:
The modern player is granted his current athleticism gained though the modern nutrition and training regimens he's enjoyed. He retains all the knowledge and experience he's accumulated through his own junior days from the year 2000 until the present. He remains the mighty "superhuman" from the future.
With that, he's dropped naked into, say, the summer of 1972. He'll have enough time to break in a pair of tube skates, figure out how wooden sticks work, collect the rest of his 1972 equipment, and practice with the team. If he wants to wear a helmet, his option, as long as it's one available in 1972.
In return, the games will be played by 1970s rules and their interpretation as they were. The games will have 1 referee. Shifts will be the 1972 norm of 1:00 to 1:30. Infractions will be called and penalties assessed as they were during those times. Fighting will be at one's own discretion. Ejections and suspensions for major incidents, whether on the giving or receiving end, will be time-period appropriate.
The player will not be granted an enforcer from future hockey for protection because 1) enforcers were not invented yet, 2) superhumans almost by definition are their own protectors vs mere mortals with bad diets, and 3) magic hockey time machines only work once.
All medical treatments and surgical procedures, if required, will be 1972 standard. After injury and/or surgery, recovery and rehab physiotherapy will be what is directed by 1972 doctors. Painkillers and any other medicine will be 1972. 1972 expectations of playing while injured or during recovery will be maintained during the regular season as they were, not only the playoffs.
The player can eat and exercise how they want, but consume food of the day and use 1972 equipment, shoes, etc.
In order to hide that time travel has been invented and reduce the chance of mass hysteria that would ruin the season and therefore the experiment, just prior to his arrival a fake bio will be provided through a believable source to the team showing that he was born out of wedlock in a small, un-spellable village in the Northwest Territories learning how to skate on heaving sea-ice floes before he could even mush a team of malamute puppies, then raised in an unpronounceable Swedish village playing organised hockey across the border in Finland on a frozen lake just down the road from Kilpisjarvi where he broke all records, scoring 437 goals during his last year in something called the Reindeer League. In 1972 with no internet, there's no way for anyone to check any of that out, so it'll fly.
Fooled by the aforementioned, his opponents will treat him like any other non-time traveling human who may be bigger (possibly), stronger (possibly), or faster (probably) than they are and try to cut, weaken, and slow him down as they would others using the methods considered normal at the time.
If the superhuman feels the 1972 game is not to his liking, that his youth hockey upbringing didn't prepare him for it, or it doesn't allow his true skills to shine as they did in 2023, he is welcome to try and change it within whatever boundaries the coach allows him to try, but it must be through his play on the ice. He can't change the rule book, the referees calls, or file lawsuits against the League. If players are taking liberties, exploiting injuries, or headhunting after realising how good he is but nobody seems to care except for his fans and own teammates he'll just have to figure out his own way.
Unfortunately, in 1972 and going forward will only get worse, your superhuman skills player will have to learn on the job that NHL checking is not just to "separate the man from the puck" but is done much of the time with intent to injure, or at least weaken and slow down, Especially just before and during the playoffs. Most of them will never get whistled, so he will have to learn to avoid these sort of checks to remain uninjured and super-speedy.
1972 hockey is also a puck-carrying game and there's a 2-line pass rule, so your superhuman will have to adjust to that. Also, there's a lot more congestion in front of the net but it's highly advisable to only remain there for as long as his back can handle the cross checks. Remember, 1972 pads.
He'll have to re-learn the definition of slashing and learn what a wooden stick chopped at the spaces in his pads/gloves feels like. Indeed, all sorts of what constitutes a penalty will be re-defined for him through experience just as all the other players (except him) who grew up and made it to the NHL know it by dealing them out or ensuring. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say this really isn't in his favour unless pain and punishment just make him bigger, stronger, and faster like the Hulk. Does the superhuman, when he gets angry, turn green by any chance? Is that something in the healthy diet? Kale maybe?
Anyway, we can turn your superhuman modern hockey player loose into that mess for a couple seasons or three, and we'll take some footage of your boy to see how he's doing.
Will he still be blazingly fast the same way and fly into the same spaces as you see in today's highlights or will vicious stickwork every game by slower players change his methods and the way he sees opportunities? Does he bruise, bleed, feel no pain? Will being constantly head-hunted change his awareness and vision forcing him to re-examine what used to be considered possible, even safe? Will he be as continuously fast playing long shifts, along with the punishment, or is he so superhuman he doesn't have to pace himself when nobody is changing at 45 seconds? IF he gets "Bossied"..purposely hit from behind headfirst into the boards during his first playoffs in his rookie, Calder-winning season and stretchered-off with neck injury, will it rattle him, break his concentration? Trottier's jaw got broken in the same series. Toronto was out for blood. Will he fight, because it's guaranteed he'll be tested, challenged, and given reason to. Will he rise to every occasion like Orr and happily dish out, or will he go the Bossy-pacifist route yet still be the target. There's no right or wrong way, but the point it you don't know what he'd do. He probably doesn't even know what he'd do because unless I'm missing something, he's never played in any League where that type of hockey is even remotely allowed to exist.
And that's the crux of the matter; you don't know how would fare or cope with the 1972, Orr-era game based on his 2023 "skillset", any more than I. But I do know he grew up never tasting that flavour, with those lax rules, or refs, against those types of opponents who are very good at doing that sort of thing. Hockey equipment differences and eating habits are minor details in comparison. Spinach doesn't make you invincible no matter what the cartoons say. Junior hockey was like that, there was just heaps more of it in the NHL and it got more vicious every season while Orr played. Philly's Cup wins accelerated that ball rolling downhill and success breeds imitation. Durability and being able to play a physical game was a major consideration in scouting and the draft because the "physical game" didn't just mean politely separating a man from the puck or digging it out of corner. It meant making sure they felt and remembered it the next day.
I love McDavid, he's an amazing athlete. I love that he's tearing it up with his style that can break up the predictable, overly-systematic, high percentage take-no-risks hockey that is today's "product. He's good enough to break out of it and succeed. A lesser player wouldn't keep his job. That's why I hope he keeps on making his mark in the record books. I'm rootin' for the guy.
But like every player, McDavid is a creature of his time. Present day hockey offers the most player protection there has ever been in terms of rules and, just as importantly, in terms of medicine and procedures designed to save careers plus rehab/physiotherapy to ensure nobody returns too quickly, playoffs or not. Docs make the call and coaches just deal with losing that player. Careers are too valuable now for any other way.
The result is, the players you're watching on TV now during the regular season are almost all healthy and pretty close to 100%. I guarantee you this was not the case in the Orr footage from the past and I'm not just talking about Orr whether it be his infamous knee, collarbone, or shoulder. This was the deal for all players, especially if you weren't a star. They'd let players play if the player wanted to, even when injured or not completely healed. The threshold of what would prevent you from taking the ice then was much higher than it is today.
Just an illustration of the attitude by players, docs, and league then: In 1965 a maskless Gump Worsley took a Bobby Hull slapshot to the side of the head from about 20 feet away. The Blackhawks were up 7-0 with 30 seconds left in the game when the shot was taken. Worsley went down like he was shot and laid on the ice unconscious for 5 minutes. They finally woke him up at which point he stayed in the net, they resumed the game, and finished out the last 30 seconds. Only then did he go to the hospital for the night. So, to just review;
Maskless, helmetless goalie. Shelled all night. Bobby Hull slapper. Makes the save with his head but lights go out for 5 minutes. Finally wakes up and.....Finishes the game to make sure he's done his best to..... limit to a 0-7 loss?. also...does it change his mind re wearing a mask?....why, of course not. He played another 9 years in the League without one. Tried one a few games in the end, said he hated it, and retired. 9 more maskless seasons of facing Bobby Hull and whoever else's slapshots.
Worsley is on nobody's list of all-time Top 10 goalies or athletes but how many of the Top 10 greats since, say, 1980 would even play the position, let alone step on the ice vs the hardest shot In the league. Then to take that hit from Bobby freakin Hull only to wake up later and finish the game you've already, decisively lost. You'll never convince me that scenario would ever play out with any modern, Michelin man goalie no matter what his personal trainer and sports psychologists say. Gump's owns that Miracle On Ice and it can't be equaled, proven otherwise only if you could transport one back and stick him in that net.
Where it gets stupid is the insistence that a standout in todays "product" is automatically a superstar if transposed into the game as it existed in the past based on "faster!" "better nutrition!!". "weights#". "OMG some player smoked!" as if it's some sort of litmus test while completely discounting and even ignoring the far more important factors of what the game itself was and what was allowed. It wasn't just a little different, it was a LOT different esp in that stars were targeted with very few repercussions. To deny this major difference and that it affects how one plays the game is like denying the moon landings just because they happened in that era too. For all anyone knows, McDavid may be the type who wouldn't even want to play hockey if that's how it was now. Maybe he'd choose baseball or something.
It is true, however, that if he did play McDavid would be scoring, but he wouldn't be doing it for free, rampaging through experts of the cheap shot and similar artists unhindered. He'd be paying a physical price every time even during his successes. Making the best ones pay was a bona fide, accepted strategy vs superior players using whatever means necessary short of outright assault (by 1972 standards) to slow them down and knock them off their game or out of the game. Half the time they went down for something egregious it wasn't even whistled or near the puck because that's where the ref was looking.
But why so vicious? Because in Orr's era if you were an NHL player or coach odds were 2:1 for that you playing/coaching an expansion team with no history. There were 06 dynasties with histories who's best player cores remained largely inact, and the new teams wanted to establish themselves by any way they could. Philly set the tone on how it could be done and that was that, it was a real thing.
So we'll prove or disprove these sort of throwaway, dismissive statements once and for all. Invent a time machine and lets do it. We'll see if McDavid or any other modern player looks any different after few seasons in Orr's time or, not just be tough enough, but owning it his way like a Terminator on skates.
