JP's Playoff predickshuns - Round One

[Brew Engineer]

Mario in his tighty whiteys ... smoking a cigarette ... eating a bowl of cereal, eagerly awaiting his prodigal, puffy lipped 19 year old boy to wake up from a good nights sleep in his basement ... creepy ...

Yeah, that's a much better picture, thanks Tampa...

[Brew Engineer]

I don't think we can really say who was the greatest of all-time.
To many factors come into play. Speed, different gameplay, goalie /player equipment....


Maurice Richard
Jean Béliveau
Gordie Howe
Bobby Orr
Wayne Gretzky
Mario Lemieux
and so on...

I know this wasn't meant ot be an all inclusive list, but how can you miss Messier? Arguably the best captain in all of organized sports!!!

[Field]

even though jp started this thread, which automatically opens it up for some degree of gayness, i believe the word you are searching for is mentoring. It's THE greatest hockey player ever, teaching the next greatest hockey player ever how to do things the right way. Besides, Mario needs someone to cut his grass.

Huh? We weren't talking about Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe.

[TampaBrew]

BE .. you know he hates the Rangers for some reason or another. The guy has a hockey hall of fame in his basement with NO Messier gear ... balsphemy!

I'd probably add Espo to that list as well. Hull too. Shunt is right though, you can't really say ... however it is REALLY hard to make an argument against Gretsky being the best ever. Longevity and endurance is all part of greatness as well.

So when the Penguins guy says, "well if lemiuex played more ... blah blah blah" ... Gretsky still amassed over 500 more points than Mario did in the same time period (915 games). Thats astonishing and there is no way Mario was touching those numbers.

[Dubba_Brew]

Before Mario came back (again) he was averaging 2 points a game. No one else was doing that. I know the longevity thing is important... and Gretzky owns almost all the records, but I'm going to have to agree with Shunt on this. You can't say who the greatest is because of equipment technology, size of players, goalies have changed... it should be the greatest players of each generation or who dominated while they played. Gretzky dominated for most of his career... most. You can't say he was doing all that great when he was a Ranger. He was good... he wasn't great.

That was a time when Lemieux started to dominate. Even he dropped off when he came back. Right now... you can't say who's dominant. Crosby is awesome... but so is Malkin, so is Ovechkin (the scoring leader THIS year). But this one is going to come down to longevity, too. Who can be at that level for longer?? I'm voting for Crosby... maybe I'm biased.

[Field]

Can't leave out Eddie Shore either, and we haven't even started on goalies.

Some players revolutionize the game, some are simply very very good.
Mario Lemieux for as good as he was, didn't do anything Gretzky didn't.

I'm not the biggest Gretzky fan, and I don't even consider him as revolutionizing the game but Gretzky > Lemieux.

The biggest knock on Gretzky was how great his supporting cast was, well Lemieux had Francis, Jagr, Recchi, Murphy and others. Barrasso wasn't that great but neither was Fuhr, and Ranford did nothing when he wasn't on the Oilers either.

[shunt]

I don't think we can really say who was the greatest of all-time.
To many factors come into play. Speed, different gameplay, goalie /player equipment....


Maurice Richard
Jean Béliveau
Gordie Howe
Bobby Orr
Wayne Gretzky
Mario Lemieux
and so on...

I know this wasn't meant ot be an all inclusive list, but how can you miss Messier? Arguably the best captain in all of organized sports!!!

the best captain is already on that list.

Rocket.

read up on him, and you will be amazed.
if ever you can get your hands on the movie that was done on him you will flip out.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TkcFx1p4-Cg&feature=related
in the movie, Maurice Richard beats the crap out of Sean Avery....

[Steelers&Beer]

i agree with shunt. it's impossible to actually say who is the greatest. IN MY OPINION Lemieux was the best. none of those others on the list ever came back from cancer or led all scorers in the playoffs with a broken wrist or saved a franchise because previous owners were fricken idiots, not to mention all the scoring titles, mvp's, unbelievable goals with guys draped all over him, olympics...others may have some better stats (ron frances has more points, is he better than Lemieux, Dionne, Espo, yzerman?) but I honestly believe that Mario is the best ever. Untill he came out of retirement to play a couple of more years, he was the only player to average over 2 pts a game. He was just fuckin awesome.