Hey Penguins fans, I just wrote an article on who was better Gretzky or Lemieux, go give it a read, in my opinion, my best and most interesting article.
https://rcsportstalk.wixsite.com/rcsportstalk/post/who-was-better-gretzky-vs-lemieux
Hey Penguins fans, I just wrote an article on who was better Gretzky or Lemieux, go give it a read, in my opinion, my best and most interesting article.
https://rcsportstalk.wixsite.com/rcsportstalk/post/who-was-better-gretzky-vs-lemieux
8 comments
Cool read. Thanks for sharing. I know a lot of people like to overlook how talented those Oiler teams were compared to the players Lemieux had during the first part of his career. Edmonton won a cup a year after Gretzky left. That’s how stacked they were.
Tough choice between Wayne and Gretzky
Pretty accurate article.
You also forgot to mention in the article, that in addition to playing on the same line on Edmonton with two all time greats in Messier and Kurri, that he was also joined on the Power Play by Glenn Anderson. Who made the All-Star team 4 times with Gretzky in Edmonton and averaged close to 100 points a season during the Gretzky years. So a fully stacked deck.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if Mario was able to start his career and pad his numbers surrounded by All-Stars for 6-8 years, that he would have amassed Gretzky-like stats.
And if Gretzky had to start his career the first 5-6 Seasons on a “basement” type team, his numbers would have been slimmed down significantly.
In my book, Mario is the GOAT.
Asking Penguin fans who they’d rather have between Wayne Gretzky and Mario? I have no idea what the people would choose LOL
It’s the same argument you get in chess, Mario is the better player if they both get compared head to Head. But Mario was in an era with different everything from training to information to competition. You can’t compare outside of ego was better than the competition they had at the time.
All good points. I’m going to throw in another idea for consideration. Post 1992 Cup win, the stars started to disappear from the Pens. Besides injuries and cancer, this also impacted Lemieux. It also impacted another GOAT named Jaromir Jagr. In the “what if” scenarios, consider Jagr’s lack of supporting cast in the late 90’s and the myriad of crappy teams he played on throughout the second part of his career. Add the lockout, the years in the KHL, and the dead puck Era to the equation. What does Jags career look like then?
Due to the commas, I read the choices as: Wayne from Letterkenny, Gretzky, or Lemieux.
Gretzky’s 5 extra years in the high scoring 80’s vs Mario’s 5 extra years in the middle of the dead puck era after coming out of retirement is also a factor. Mario actually had a higher ppg than Gretzky until he came back out of retirement and it went down.
I think Mario is the most skilled player to ever play the game easily. We can only imagine both career wise, season wise, and individual game wise what records he could have set if fully healthy. But health and luck are a big factor in sports so the records belong to 99.