Mario was the most individually dominant player ever, especially in junior. He could have gone back for two more junior years but came to the nhl and dominated there too. It’s incredible how he dominated junior as an 18 year old. His junior records for points in one year will never be broken.
Was it Ray Ferraro who scored over 100 goals one year in the WHL?
I think you can argue Crosby was more dominant in junior than Lemieux.
In terms of 282 pts, it's hard to imagine that being broken simply because change in the game overall, but also due to star players simply not playing that many games. In terms of dominance though, Mario had 282pts in 70 games that year, #2 had 170pts in 62 games. On a PPG basis, Mario was 47% better. Dominant for sure, but Lafleur had 209pts in 62 games in the 70s, #2 had 144pts in 62 games, 45% difference....so Mario's dominance doesn't look quite as crazy in comparison. Then, with Crosby, he had 168pts in 62 games and #2 had 116pts in 69 games, that's a PPG difference of 61% in Crosby's favour.
EDIT: for what it's worth, Crosby did this in his 2nd year of the Q vs. Mario in his 3rd year....Crosby was almost 1 year younger.....birthday thing that allowed Mario to play 3 years as he would have been just several days too young to miss cut-off for draft the year before.
Also, I don't think we need to reference Lemieux doing it as an 18 year as making that much more impressive because the VERY BEST wouldn't be in junior past 18 anyway. That said, I do discount some big stats in juniors from guys that are 19 or 20 because you never know what the best of the best would be scoring at that age in junior because they had already moved on to the NHL at that age.