GMRwings1983

I just realized that if the NHL goes to a 30 team playoff, the Red Wings still wouldn't be in. That's pretty sad.

Oh please. He's finished when the season resumes. He doesn't have that kind of muscle anymore.

Wow! I only have five warnings and that was all during the enforcer debate days. You're lucky all the mods left.

I don't know about buyouts, but I wouldn't mind being traded to a forum of a successful team. Maybe just as a rental for a playoff run. Kind of like Doug Weight in 2006 for Carolina. Playoffs are fun times on hockey forums.

Marco Rossi sounds like some dude who played for Juventus in the 80's.

You're such a size queen.

I think expansion teams were better. Back then, there weren't extra points awarded for OT losses and shootouts didn't even exist.

Yeah. What did you think all the fuss was about all this time?

Any chance the Wings are allowed in the playoffs?

Well, there's always porn sites.

Yeah, some 18 year old Frenchie with rosy cheeks is more masculine. So says a dude living in Seattle.

Well, tough crap. It's an unusual situation for sure, but why reward teams because they may have made a playoff push? It's not like these teams were deliberately waiting to make a move, like in horse racing, in the last weeks of the season. Those teams are in that position for a reason. Their play this year hasn't been as consistently good as the teams that will get in.

This is sillier than the toilet paper craze. Why the urgency to suddenly redo the entire playoff format in some bizzarre way? Just take the 8 teams with the highest point percentage in each conference if the playoffs started today.

It doesn't work that way, though. Imagine Howe playing in the 80's. Imagine Sawchuk wearing a mask and being several inches taller with better equipment. Imagine Athanasiou playing on the Montreal Maroons with his speed. We can only judge players with their peers. Not imagine them playing in another era, but having the same physical tools, equipment, and hockey development as today's era. No doubt it was a higher scoring era in the 80's, but Gretzky scored 626 goals in the 80's. Nobody else scored 500, despite it being an era where supposedly anyone can score lots of goals. Why didn't Kurri or Gartner or Messier score 500 goals in the 80's? How about Andreychuk, Ciccarrelli, etc? Gretzky was a far better goal scorer that decade than his peers. Ovechkin is the same. If we just look at the 2010's, Ovechkin scored 437 goals. The next highest is Stamkos with 348. So pretty significant gap. Would Ovechkin score more than 437 goals in the 80's. Most certainly. Would he score more than Gretzky did that decade? Hard to see how. He'd have to score 65+ goals every season. Regarding Lemieux in the 1980's, see Gretzky, minus the HOF teammates all around him like Edmonton had. The Penguins missed the playoffs in his first four seasons.

Lemieux also scored a ton of goals in the 80's with subpar linemates. He wasn't surrounded by much talent until the early 90's.

Either the voters are too young or are too caught up in the moment. Ovechkin is NOW and is more relevant today than Lemieux. This poll is so lopsided that the voters are basically saying Ovechkin could retire today and still be regarded the best goal scorer ever. Ovechkin has played 200 more games than Lemieux. That's not a small amount, but Lemieux played over 900 games. That's enough of a sample size to me to show how good a goal scorer he was.

Then LaFreniere gets the Corona virus.

What do you expect from a league full of snowflakes?

In a way, but he played for another decade plus after his brother retired. He was on two separate dynasties.

11 Stanley Cups. Always thought he looked like Paul Newman in slapshot.

LOL. Those are big words coming from an Obama supporter.

James Madison weighed less than 100 lbs.

Adjusted scoring has a lot of problems. Never been a complete fan of that. Nor Richard for that matter. Dude never even won his own trophy.

People who talk about hockey history and compare player accomplishments. You've never heard anyone compare players and mention how many Hart trophies or Vezinas someone won? Same with Richard trophies.

The biggest similarity I see is goal scoring after the age of 30. Both players showed they're more than capable of still leading the league in goals in the latter part of their career. After that, there's not much similarity. Howe was a much better all around player. He did have over 1,000 assists in his career. Ovechkin probably thinks assists are only a basketball stat. Howe was also better at the defensive side of the ice. Ovechkin's overall point finishes have dwindled relative to the competition, because his assist numbers have declined. He has three top 10 assist finishes in his career, but none since 2011. That's affected his Art Ross finishes. He's continued to score goals, but is either not passing as often, or his linemates have become worse goal scorers.