I think what separates them is that Bure was more physically engaging plus much more of an all-situations player, otherwise they're fairly similar, yes.
To stardom though also comes external hype. I think Kariya had a lot more media hype than Bure, because the Canadian media always tries to pump up the "next big thing" from Canada. And the league, in this case, also tried to sell its new Disney movie team. Bure's hype was more grassroots with the fans in Vancouver. You can call Bure a YT player all day and everyday, I think that's funny more than anything, but I don't know what a 16 game point streak in the playoffs (second longest of all time in a single playoffs behind Bryan Trottier) has to do with YT. If we're about to shame players for scoring aesthetically pleasing goals, then what about all these Datsyukian Deke videos? Are those also second post-retirement life, or does that only apply to certain players?
Hart ballots is partly popularity contest.
I think there's some media hype in a lot of awards voting. I was convinced at the time, and still am that the 2016 Norris was decided largely on that basis, with the Canadian media wanting to see it go to Doughty. After we discussed Karlsson not too long ago on this board, I went back and did a Google search to see if it would confirm something I thought I remembered. It did. There were multiple preseason articles that said that the 2016 race would be a repeat of a Karlsson vs Doughty finish, and that Doughty would come out on top that time. It was almost as though they had pre-ordained it, and I don't know if Karlsson could have done anything to have overcome that.
So, if it held in 2016, when the game has become even more global, when about half of all NHL'ers are non-Canadians and about a quarter are Europeans, why shouldn't it have held true in the 90s when it was even more of a Canadian game? Don Cherry might have been an extreme example, but there certainly were quite a few people who didn't want to see a massive influx of Europeans into the NHL after the Iron Curtain fell, and not just Canadians. Is it too far-fetched to think that some of those sentiments could have still affected things throughout the decade? It doesn't strike me as being so. In fact, I even read a recent article a few days ago in which part of the author's solution for the NHL to save itself was to go back to being a North American league without a lot of Europeans.
Anyway, my point is, it's not hard to imagine that with two players of roughly the same style, one being Canadian (or North American, period) and one being European, that the media would latch on to the former. It might also be worth pointing out that Disney bought out ESPN, who was then the U.S. broadcaster of NHL games early in Kariya's career. Is that potentially more reason for the media to want to hype Kariya even more?
Oh, I totally plan on scoffing when people rank Pavel Datsyuk and not Henrik Zetterberg.
What I mean by the YouTube comment is that as much as Paul Kariya had media hype in the 1990s, what he didn’t have in Anaheim was people with a VCR set to anything above EP/SLP. I think everyone in Vancouver shot 35mm film and later did 4K digital scans.
In the post-YouTube NHL, every highlight play is documented and accessible in complete clarity. But for many players prior to 2005, you almost have to be lucky that there were super-fans of a specific player that cataloged those things, because the NHL did such a poor job of ensuring archival footage of its stars.
As of yet, Paul Kariya hasn’t had fans making those half-a-million view comprehensive HD highlight reels - or even just documenting the fact that yes, Paul Kariya was a penalty killer like Pavel Bure. All he is to YouTube is off-the-floor-on-the-board. So when people say he wasn’t significant to the collective memory, I think that has more to do with his lack of passionate fans (except Mike apparently) than his on-ice performances or the numbers that came about from that.
Now, lest it seem that I'm trying to bash on Kariya, I'm not. I've got both Bure and Kariya on my list, but Bure's definitely higher, though I can't imagine Kariya not safely making my list. He's a long way from being at any risk of being bumped off. Comparing the two of them, there are a lot of similarities, but Bure nearly being a 60-goal scorer twice in the dead puck era and his physicality win out for me. But, I also think that there's a either a memory loss or a "never saw" factor for those that don't see a strong similarity between the two. They both did quite well with a mainly empty cupboard as well. I know that for some, it would be easy to brush that off for Kariya because of Selanne, but even if he didn't necessarily do it for as long as Bure, he sure as heck did it. Bure was probably a bit more exciting, in my personal opinion, but to say that Kariya wasn't electrifying is dead wrong. I think you're right to hone in on that.
Oh, and don't scoff me too hard when you see I've got Datsyuk well ahead of Zetterberg. LOL
