Quote:
Originally Posted by CarlosTheGaucho
Let's not forget probably the best single line of all time outside of NHL - Makarov, Larionov, Krutov, Kasatonov, Fetisov.
I would personally be very much interested in how would all time Mario Lemieux stats look like if there was not so much downtime due to the bad health.
Let's phrase the question differently, how about the most gifted player of all time?
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yeah that starting five for the Soviets was probably the best 5 man unit ever - god knows how many years they played together. They were all nearing the end of their careers when they jumped to the NHL. Fetisov is a Hall of Famer for sure, think he already made it actually, to me he was the Russian Dennis Potvin. He adapted well to the NHL, Kasatonov not so much. Krutov was the disaster - I forget who, probably Don Cherry, called him Crouton - he showed up in Vancouver as a little fatso and didn't last long.
Lemieux suffered from the bias most fans have of big men - they never look like they are moving fast or playing hard. It's unfair. Mario though created some of his own problems - he never expressed a passion for the game or displayed it - until he was near the end.
Lemieux may have been the most gifted player of all - simply because of his tremendous size plus the stickhandling skills and scoring touch.
Gretzky did the most with the least by far - I love watching the old videos of his father working with him as a kid, all the tricks, all the magical 'vision' people say he had - none of it was natural, it was his father teaching him and him soaking it up like a sponge for hours and years on the ice and off it.
Nobody mentions Eric Lindros - if you look at his stats for the first few years he was in the league before he started getting hurt - only Gretzky and Lemieux have had a higher point per game average in the NHL.