There is nothing in hockey like the way Gretzky dominated from 1981 to 1987. It's shocking. He's the greatest hockey player of all time, to me. Orr and Lemieux arguments just seem like things that people want to say to pull the reins back on the obvious. The second highest scoring player in the league for like six years in a row had barely 2/3s of Gretzky's scoring. That's just fucking crazy. I think I read that if you take the lowest number of points that Gretzky lead the league by during that period -- around 65 or so -- nobody in NHL history has ever even led the league by half that in a single year.
I think there's also a myth that Gretzky piled up points that others didn't because he was given an assist just for being on the ice. I haven't tried to google research it, but my understanding that has been de-bunked like the AFC East fallacy. And I also think I remember reading some research that the vast majority of Gretzky's assists were primary not secondary assists -- to a greater percentage than many other hockey greats.
Anyway, whether or not that's true, I don't dispute that the nature of the game at the time Gretzky played was highly suited to his specific strengths. But that's not an argument against calling him the hands down greatest of all time. Every player plays under the conditions they play under. I love hockey -- it's my favorite sport to attend. And I love the 2019 version. But in many senses it's more boring than hockey was in 1980, because it has become much more analytical. Even putting aside the rules changes, there's a sameness to the game now. By and large, the angles are understood. Leverage is understood. Plays look the same. There's still a ton of creativity in the game, but it's all within this very common and similar kind of defensive posture and framework. Yeah, some teams are better than others at execution, but absent the 3 on 3 stuff in OT, you know what the game is going to look like. You know what the shape of the teams is going to be.
Like if a guy sneaks off the boards and takes a back door pass for a tap in today, the commentary is likely to be how the defense screwed that up and how it should never happen. In Gretzky's day, this play would have made Don Cherry fall of his chair with glee.
So, I think what Gretzky had that has really not been seen before in the game, is, to use chess as an analogy, the ability to see more moves ahead than anyone else. There was more discretion in hockey in 1980s, and a game with discretion is where he was king, because he just knew what was going to happen on the ice better than anyone else. He almost always did the right thing with the puck. He knew the odds. He knew which guy was better to pass to, and when the best option to shoot was. He was a constant WPA calculator on skates and he played the game in a way that made it look like he had ESP.