I disagree with your first response (or perhaps the way you worded it), but I agree with a lot of what you say here. Acknowledging a player's greatness isn't the same as saying that they'd be just as good if they were somehow teleported into 2017. (This is discussed extensively in the History of Hockey forum). I don't think our positions are as far apart as you think.
One general point that I'll make (and this isn't solely directed at you, though you hinted at it in your first post) - people sometimes look at the amazing accomplishments of older players and immediately write them off due to their era. My response is two-fold. First, this knee-jerk reaction ignores context. For example, I mentioned that Howe is the only player (aside from Gretzky) to win multiple scoring titles by 20% margins. The lazy response is to dismiss this as a product of his era. A more insightful approach is to ask how many other players came close to doing that. (In this case, Howe is the only player from his era to win even one scoring title by 20%; during his career Howe won scoring titles by largest, 2nd largest, 3rd largest and 7th largest margins out of all the Art Ross winners). This deeper analysis shows, at least in this case, that Howe's accomplishment was unique. He wasn't a run-of-the-mill scoring leader, he dominated the league to an extent far greater than his peers. Another way of looking at it - if what he was doing was so pedestrian, why did nobody else come close?
Second, a lot of times we make excuses for modern players, saying that they can't surpass older players' accomplishments - until it actually happens. If I would have asked you in 2005 if we'd ever see a defenseman lead the league in assists, or see a player win the Rocket Richard trophy six times (in nine years), or see someone record consecutive 90-assist seasons, you probably would have dismissed these outright. True, Esposito/Gretzky/Orr were able to do that, but surely it's because they feasted on weaker competition in an inferior era. Yet, within the past twelve years, we've seen Ovechkin/Thornton/Karlsson achieve these amazing results, which not to long ago we dismissed as artifacts of the past. This approach actually under-values the players we're currently watching, because it makes unnecessary excuses for them.
Agreed. Howe is probably the 2nd greatest player in hockey history, at worst 3rd. The only way he'd be out of the "big four" is if there were three more Gretzky-level players (which would push Howe, Orr and Lemieux down into a separate tier). Might happen within the next century, but I'd bet against it.
I believe that Crosby can become the 5th best player of all-time, but I also think he's already missed too much prime time to injuries to ever make it indisputable (and turn it into the big five).
Think about it like this. Gordie Howe started playing in the NHL barely a year after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was still playing in the NHL when the Soviet-Afghan War began, and was playing only seven years before Reagan told Gorbachev to "tear down this wall". That's a long time!
Some data to consider:
PLAYERS WITH THE MOST YEARS IN THE TOP THREE IN SCORING AND HART VOTING (1947-2017)
Player|Scoring|Hart|Total
Wayne Gretzky | 15 | 11 | 26
Gordie Howe | 12 | 12 | 24
Mario Lemieux | 8 | 7 | 15
Bobby Hull | 6 | 8 | 14
Jean Beliveau | 7 | 7 | 14
Sidney Crosby*
| 8 | 6 | 14
Maurice Richard** | 7 | 6 | 13
Phil Esposito | 8 | 5 | 13
Jaromir Jagr | 7 | 6 | 13
Bobby Orr | 6 | 7 | 13
Stan Mikita | 8 | 3 | 11
Alexander Ovechkin | 5 | 5 | 10
Guy Lafleur | 5 | 4 | 9
Marcel Dionne | 5 | 3 | 8
Andy Bathgate | 5 | 3 | 8
Ted Lindsay | 6 | 0 | 6
Bryan Trottier | 2 | 4 | 6
Evgeni Malkin | 3 | 3 | 6
Bobby Clarke | 2 | 4 | 6
* We know that Crosby finished in the top three in Hart voting in 2017. We don't yet know what his final ranking will be, but that wouldn't impact this table.
** Note that my Hart trophy voting results are virtually complete from 1947 onward. Richard is the only player on the list who played part of his prime prior to that. I manually looked up data for earlier years for him, but the data may be incomplete.
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