I dont know, what generational talent means. I sort players into tiers.
For me, tier 1 contains only those 4 players: Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, Howe.
Tier 2: Bobby Hull, Beliveau, Jagr, Roy, Hasek, Lidstrom, Messier etc.
Tier 3: Forsberg, Sakic, Ovechkin, Crosby, Malkin etc., where Ovechkin and Croby might in the future advance to tier 2, if their careers continue similarly for a few more years. Will Malkin be there with them? He would have to do more than he has shown so far.
At the risk of fighting over semantics, this feels about right to me.
Generational Talent to me describes someone who is by a margin the best player (or one of an incredibly small subset) in a particular period. In hockey terms, a generation seems to be ~5-7 years (i.e the most one could reasonably expect a player to be at the top of their game).
Since 1980, there have only been a few instances:
- Gretzky throughout the 1980s
- Lemieux from the late 1980s to the mid to late 1990s
The next closest ones I can see are
- Hasek from the mid-90s to early 00s
- Jagr from the mid-90s to early 00s
- Lidstrom from early to mid/late 00s
The problem with the current "big three" is that it hasn't been as exclusive a club EACH YEAR as we like to think. In the 9 years since the first 00s lockout, outside of the big three:
- Thornton, Sedin, and St Louis have won Art Ross trophies
- Thornton, Sedin and Perry have won Hart trophies
- Cheechoo, Lecavalier, Perry and Stamkos (x2, 1 of which was tied) have won Richard Trophies
They're franchise players - perhaps even a category above franchise players - but I would be hard pressed to say that they show the same level of dominance that some of the aforementioned players did. That's a credit to the improvements in the quality and parity of the league, not the caliber of the athlete, IMO.
