Wayne Gretzky vs. Bobby Orr

[Louisville 112]

I'm writing a research paper on Gretzky vs Orr, and comparing the two. I have some sources but I was wondering if anybody has some websites I could use to help my paper (not just Wikipedia or anything like that). Also what do you guys think? Who do you think was the better player? What are some memories of either that made them both so great?

John Buccigross wrote a great column on the issue, but I can't go that far back in his archive without being an insider (if someone is an insider and they can send the piece to me I would love you )

Thanks for any opinions or sources!

Edited March 19, 2007 by Louisville

[toby91_ca 620]

It is pretty much going to be opinion based, but even if you ignore the fact that Gretzky has more assists than anyone else has points, forget about the fact that he played in a high scoring era, he still dominated his era like no other. I haven't tried to check, but I would be willing to bet you could eliminate all of his goals each year and he still would have won quite a few Art Ross trophies.

[Barrie 900]

Here's how I rank the top 3:

Orr

Howe

Gretzky

[Sparty13 0]

If you ever wondered why some people believe Bobby Orr, and not Wayne Gretzky, is the greatest NHL player of all time, read the new book titled, "Searching for Bobby Orr." It's on stands now and the author is Stephen Brunt.

What clearly separates Orr from Gretzky is his on-ice toughness. He fought, sometimes savagely, with a barroom Irish temper. If Gretzky was ABBA, Orr was The Clash. That's not necessarily an endorsement. It's just the way it is.

Every person who plays or even loves hockey is an emotional person. That is the common denominator of the hockey culture. Orr's emotion is much like that of another Boston legend, Larry Bird.

The cover sets the entire tone of the book. It is Orr, probably from his rookie season, holding his wooden Northland stick with gloves that almost go to his elbows. He is helmetless, freshly shorn, pimpled, 18, the highest-paid player in the game. He is looking off into the unknown. Small-town boy in a big city. The leading man behind the greatest transformation the sport will ever see. It is incomprehensible that Robert Gordon Orr will turn 60 in 15 months.

I see an Orr movie coming, and I see Matt Damon playing Orr.

"Searching for Bobby Orr" is a textbook of NHL history that does what any good read should: raise more questions about the league's most poetic player.

Question from John Buccigross: Why did you write the book?

Answer from Stephen Brunt: For a bunch of reasons. Obviously, it's a subjective, personal opinion, but I think Orr was the greatest player who ever lived, or at least the greatest of my lifetime. I didn't see [Maurice] Richard in the '50s or [Gordie] Howe then. To me, there are only two players in the discussion -- Orr and Gretzky.

They're the two great, original talents the sport has produced, where there's no true precedent and no one could really duplicate the way they played after they were gone. Writing about Orr was an opportunity to explore the whole idea of genius, in sports and in general. I was also very interested in the time during which Orr emerged. It was a pretty significant era for the NHL [leading up to the first great expansion], for pro sports in general, with the emergence of the first unions and player agents, and for Canada, which really began to come of age in the country's centennial year, 1967.

I wanted to write a book in which I could put Orr into that context. And to me, the heart of the story was the most important relationship in the history of hockey, and one of the most important in the history of professional sports -- Orr and Al Eagleson. There was a classical element to the story, with the betrayer figure and with Orr's "fatal" physical flaw, his bad knee. There's a play or a novel in there somewhere, though I'm not the guy to write it. Plus, the story hasn't really been told properly before. There hasn't been an Orr bio written for more than 30 years, and it's pretty clear that he's never going to do his own book.

[As the story goes ... Acting as both Orr's agent and executive director of the NHL Players' Association, Eagleson falsely told Orr that the Blackhawks had offered the star a more lucrative offer when his contract with the Bruins ran out in 1976. It was later revealed that it was the Bruins that offered the better deal, which included an 18-percent ownership take in the Bruins organization. Eagleson's reputation was permanently destroyed in the 1990s when he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud an embezzlement.]

Q: Explain the title, "Searching For Bobby Orr."

A: For writers, he has been elusive. He fiercely guarded his privacy, even during his playing days. Where someone like Gretzky is an open book in terms of his family and background, Orr has always closed those doors. Even for guys who played with him and shared the Bruins' locker room, he was a bit of an enigma. So, there's a quest involved. I don't claim to have answered all of the questions, to have "found" him completely. That's why I like the open-ended aspect of the title.

Q: What did you learn about Bobby Orr from writing the book?

A: A tremendous amount about his family, his upbringing, his time in junior hockey and with the Bruins. I also watched hours and hours of Orr on tape, which was a great experience. Anyone who watched hockey back then has a memory of how he played. But it's another thing entirely to go back and see those games and understand just how dominant he was.

Q: How much did Bobby Orr cooperate?

A: My idea was always to write an independent, and in some ways, impressionistic biography. I've been down the "as told to" path with a professional athlete before, and didn't get much out of the experience. Ideally, I would have liked to have written my own book, with access to Orr. But after we met, it was pretty obvious that wasn't going to happen, now or ever. When I made it clear that I was going to write the book in any case, Bobby laid out some ground rules, which I accepted and honored -- I agreed not to approach any members of his immediate family.

Q: What was the biggest challenge during the project?

A: I guess trying to find people who were part of his life 40 and 50 years ago, to try and unlock some of those doors, and to get a feel for what each of those places must have been like at the time -- Parry Sound, Ontario, where he grew up, Oshawa, where he played junior hockey, and Boston in the 1960s. I also wanted to try and get to the origins of the Orr-Eagleson relationship in a fresh way. That required steering away from a lot of what we later came to know, the caricature of Eagleson as a cartoon bad guy, and trying to imagine how he must have appeared then. The main narrative of the book ends with the 1976 Canada Cup, which was the last significant hockey Orr played. He was named the most valuable player in the tournament. I wanted that part of the story to end with him still on top. Then, there's an epilogue that goes into his life after hockey, the Orr-Eagleson split, etc.

Bobby Orr

AP Photo

Few players have been able to skate coast-to-coast like Bobby Orr.

Q: Approximately how many books have you sold and what has been the reaction?

A: The book was No. 1 on The Globe and Mail's bestseller list last week, which is the best reflection of sales in Canada. There are 50,000 copies in print here, which is a pretty significant number in this country. Without tooting my own horn, I'd say the reviews and reaction have been exceptionally positive.

Q: Have you heard from Orr?

A: Not so far.

Q: What hockey book needs to be written?

A: I still think there might be more to be done on Gretzky, warts and all, though, of course, there have been bios written. I'd love to read a real hockey Ball Four. [Phil Esposito's] book was close, but I thought that, in the end, he pulled a lot of his punches. The '80s Edmonton Oilers are ripe for that kind of treatment. And I think the world could use more lyrical writing about the game that's so common around baseball. Ken Dryden's "The Game" is the closest thing to it.

Q: Anything you would like to add about you, the project, Orr, or anything hockey?

A: I think that the whole idea of Orr really strikes a chord for anyone of my generation. I'm 47. Of course, you always think that the greatest times, and the greatest players, were when you were young. But hockey fans especially like to think back to that era, before the world and the sport became so much more complicated. There's something comforting in the nostalgia. But I also think that it's possible to accept our heroes as human beings, flawed like the rest of us, not the one-dimensional image from the front of a hockey card. That's what I was shooting for here, a great hockey player made of flesh and blood, a unique talent who became a star at a very significant moment in the sport's history, and who was one half of a very human drama with Eagleson that on some level we can all understand.

[Louisville 112]

Thanks Sparty13! You've been upgraded to man-love status!

.....just kidding, but seriously you saved me a headache

[cincywingfan 1]

If you ever wondered why some people believe Bobby Orr, and not Wayne Gretzky, is the greatest NHL player of all time, read the new book titled, "Searching for Bobby Orr."

Thanks Sparty :beerbuddy:

I grew up watching #99 but I wear #4.

as Gramps would always say..."What if Bobby Orr had two good knees???"

[BeeRYCE 2]

Gretzky's records go uncontested. People give me alot of "what ifs" with Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr. What if Mario Lemieux or Bobby Orr played 20 seasons? What if they rarely got injured? What if this, what if that, bottom line is... They didn't! Gretzky's 200 point seasons, his 60 whatever records, his 9 Art Rosses, his 9 Harts, etc, etc. I think his numbers go uncontested, I feel he is the most dominant man in any sport, ever. Maybe Mario could have done more, maybe Bobby Orr did a whole lot in his little time in the NHL as a defensemen, but they didn't do as much as Wayne did, and that's what counts.

[Barrie 900]

Gretzky's records go uncontested. People give me alot of "what ifs" with Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr. What if Mario Lemieux or Bobby Orr played 20 seasons? What if they rarely got injured? What if this, what if that, bottom line is... They didn't! Gretzky's 200 point seasons, his 60 whatever records, his 9 Art Rosses, his 9 Harts, etc, etc. I think his numbers go uncontested, I feel he is the most dominant man in any sport, ever. Maybe Mario could have done more, maybe Bobby Orr did a whole lot in his little time in the NHL as a defensemen, but they didn't do as much as Wayne did, and that's what counts.

It's a great debate. With what you said, I'd still put Howe above Gretzky.

[theman19 47]

we have these alot in the hockey world and people can argue till there blue in the face. It's like what others have said, what if, what if,.....wayne is the most dominate player to ever play a sport period. He has more assist than anyone else has points,..that's insane to even think about. Bobby orr fighting or not, wayne is better for obvious reasons.

[Barrie 900]

I think when it comes down to it, mostly people pick which style of player they want. Orr, Howe, and Gretzky all were a different style of player, which makes it really tough picking who was the greatest.

[toby91_ca 620]

Another what if.....what if Gary Suter (I think), didn't hit Gretzky from behind into the boards halfway into Gretzky's career? He was not the same player since.

Forgot to mention earlier: Orr is a defenseman, Gretzky a forward, very difficult to compare. It's even difficult to compare centermen vs. wingers.

[BlueMonk 102]

Bobby Orr.

[HomeNugget 2]

i think bobby orr was better. he lead the league in scoring as a defenseman. if he played like gretzky and just focused on his offense he coulda scored 200 points in a season.

one way to look at it is who woulda win in a game between a team of gretzkys and a team of orrs. the orrs would pound the gretzkys into the ice.

[Never_Retire_Steve 35]

They both dominated their eras, but as above posters have said Gretzky's records go uncontested and I'll take it another step further to saying that no player in any other sport has dominated like Gretzky has

[theman19 47]

okay i never saw bobby orr play, so i won't comment on his play

but i saw gretzky play and for some odd reason it's become popular to downplay his effect on the sport.

let me end my involvment with this debate like this

30 team nhl? not without wayne. Gretzky almost single handily opened the sport past it's boundaries in the north. Now you can say all day if you'd like, if that was a good or a bad thing, but i'll tell you this one of the chief reasons the NHL has become to big is because of the vacuum a player of the caliber of wayne left, that has yet to filled.

water down talent or not, here are some stats that never ever will lie about who history records as number one

http://proicehockey.about.com/od/waynegret...zky_records.htm

just look at some of them, regular season domination, playoff domination, assists, overtime assists, most playoff goals MOST GAME WINNING PLAYOFF GOALS (that one gets overlooked quite a bit) no one can even come to close to how utterly dominate wayne gretzky was.

Not orr

Not richard

Not even howe (although gordie would just kick his ass)

he's called the great one for a reason

Edited March 19, 2007 by theman19

[Never_Retire_Steve 35]

I've recently seen some old game films from the early 80s and the entire crowd and announcers are constantly aware of where Gretzky was on the ice the entire game because they knew that anytime the puck came within five feat of Gretzky something very special was very very likely to happen.

[Louisville 112]

One thing I just wanted to note, during the 1970-71 season Orr's plus minus was a +124.

..am I wrong or is that utterly insane? Oh yeah, theres also those 8 Norris Trophies...

Edited March 19, 2007 by Louisville

[Never_Retire_Steve 35]

One thing I just wanted to note, during the 1970-71 season Orr’s plus minus was an +124.

..am I wrong or is that utterly insane? Oh yeah, theres also those 8 Norris Trophies...

Ya, that is insane, so is 215 points, 163 assists and 50 goals in 39 games.

8 Norris trophies!?! I didn't know that one, that is amazing, how many Hart's and Art Ross' did Gretzky have?

Edited March 19, 2007 by Never_Retire_Steve

[theman19 47]

Ya, that is insane, so is 215 points, 163 assists and 50 goals in 39 games.

8 Norris trophies!?! I didn't know that one, that is amazing, how many Hart's and Art Ross' did Gretzky have?

8 norris trophies! you don't say! that's amazing,....gretzky only has,.....oh wait,............8 CONSECUTIVE HART TROPHIES 80-87

that means mr. gretzky has more MVP awards than any other player in north american sports

[HomeNugget 2]

8 norris trophies! you don't say! that's amazing,....gretzky only has,.....oh wait,............8 CONSECUTIVE HART TROPHIES 80-87

that means mr. gretzky has more MVP awards than any other player in north american sports

bobby orr won some harts and art ross trophies too. how many selkes did gretzky have? i believe the number is right around 0. bobby orr played offense as well as defense. gretzky was a better scorer but orr was a better hockey player.

[HUETforLIFE 0]

bobby orr won some harts and art ross trophies too. how many selkes did gretzky have? i believe the number is right around 0. bobby orr played offense as well as defense. gretzky was a better scorer but orr was a better hockey player.

Here's something to keep in mind. Would Wayne Gretzky have been as valuable to his team had he been made to contribute defensively? Would it have been worth it to the 1980's Edmonton Oilers to sacrifice a few goals for some sub-par defense? Gretzky was pretty much the ideal player for his era, much as Orr was to his.

[theman19 47]

bobby orr won some harts and art ross trophies too. how many selkes did gretzky have? i believe the number is right around 0. bobby orr played offense as well as defense. gretzky was a better scorer but orr was a better hockey player.

You miss the point entirely, The selke is awarded to the best defensive forward, Gretzky didn't need to play defense he'd score two and assist on two more for every goal his opponents scored in opposition. The Hart is awarded to the best player in the league and for 8 CONSECUTIVE YEARS a north american sports record, the MVP of the league was wayne gretzky. That best than MJ, thats Better than any baseball player you can think of, better than dan marino, steve young, jerry rice or brett farve, simply put Gretzky is the greatest player to ever play his sport and always will be. His records are unbreakable,...sprout off all you want about how orr was a more complete hockey player, hell 90% of the leauge was a "more complete" hockey player when at a very young age a bean pole of a great one shattered one of phil espesitos records for most goals scored buy a player in a season.

but truly the end all by all of it? in 1997 a panel of experts ranked the 100 greatest hockey players of all time

2# orr

1# gretzky

Edited March 19, 2007 by theman19

[HomeNugget 2]

You miss the point entirely, The selke is awarded to the best defensive forward, Gretzky didn't need to play defense he'd score two and assist on two more for every goal his opponents scored in opposition. The Hart is awarded to the best player in the league and for 8 CONSECUTIVE YEARS a north american sports record, the MVP of the league was wayne gretzky. That best than MJ, thats Better than any baseball player you can think of, better than dan marino, steve young, jerry rice or brett farve, simply put Gretzky is the greatest player to ever play his sport and always will be. His records are unbreakable,...sprout off all you want about how orr was a more complete hockey player, hell 90% of the leauge was a "more complete" hockey player when at a very young age a bean pole of a great one shattered one of phil espesitos records for most goals scored buy a player in a season.

but truly the end all by all of it? in 1997 a panel of experts ranked the 100 greatest hockey players of all time

2# orr

1# gretzky

i don't really buy into the panel of experts thing. and the votes in that were so close that matter is still up for debate.

gordie howe played against both of them and he says orr is better. thats just as reputable as THN's list.

i guess i don't really have a response for all the hart trophies. if you ask me 8 norris trophies is just as impressive. orr dominated his position as much as gretzky dominated his.

[theman19 47]

i don't really buy into the panel of experts thing. and the votes in that were so close that matter is still up for debate.

gordie howe played against both of them and he says orr is better. thats just as reputable as THN's list.

i guess i don't really have a response for all the hart trophies. if you ask me 8 norris trophies is just as impressive. orr dominated his position as much as gretzky dominated his.

I don't buy that,...Howe never ever ever said Orr was better than Gretzky and the only time they played on an NHL level was in Gretzky rookie year, hardly a litmus test of Wayne's talent

in fact Howe and Gretzky had a very good relationship Howe was Gretzky's idol and Howe approved of Gretzky breaking his records. I highly doubt that ever came out of Gordie's mouth and if i did i'd like to see it recorded that way.

Edited March 19, 2007 by theman19

[Louisville 112]

i don't really buy into the panel of experts thing. and the votes in that were so close that matter is still up for debate.

gordie howe played against both of them and he says orr is better. thats just as reputable as THN's list.

i guess i don't really have a response for all the hart trophies. if you ask me 8 norris trophies is just as impressive. orr dominated his position as much as gretzky dominated his.

Let's also be clear that those were 8 consecutive Norris Trophies. I'm not pushing for Orr, either way both players were the most dominate players to play their positions. I just feel like Orr's amazing career is a little overshadowed by Gretzky's. Of course, it'd be easy to point out the fact that Orr's physical play and bad knees cut his career short.

Here's a a couple great snippets from bruinslegends.blogspot.com:

Often overlooked is Orr's physical attributes. He was a ferocious body checker and an astute shot blocker. People would often tell Bobby not to sacrifice his body, because his knees couldn't handle the punishment, and he was good enough to play without that abuse. Bobby would simply reply "It's the only way I know how to play."

Orr's brilliant career was shortened by bad knees. Had he been able to continue for a few more years, maybe there would be no question as to who is the greatest of all time.

In January 1998, The Hockey News named Orr the second greatest player of all time, behind only Wayne Gretzky. He would finish just 13 polling points out of first, and 13 points ahead of third place Gordie Howe. I think that proves the three stars from different eras are on a level all on their own.

Howe dominated the way hockey was always played, up and down the wing, bash and crash and physically intimidate. Gretzky would dominate the all offense era of fast skating and high scoring. Some how the game had changed between the Howe and Gretzky eras. Bobby Orr was largely instrumental in the revolutionization of hockey. One can only imagine how much more he would have altered the game had he been fortunate enough to stay healthy.

"He's the perfect hockey player."

Those are the words of Boston coach/GM Harry Sinden, who had the best look at Orr on a nightly basis and insists Orr is the best player ever because he blended extraordinary talent and a brand of toughness that no one else has ever possessed.

"(Gordie) Howe could do everything, but not at top speed. (Bobby) Hull went at top speed but couldn't do everything. The physical aspect is absent from (Wayne) Gretzky's game. Orr would do everything, and do it at top speed."

EDIT:

Also, something I did not know until I wrote this paper is that Bobby is currently player agent for NHL players Jason Spezza, Eric Staal and Rick DiPietro.

Edited March 19, 2007 by Louisville