Greatest goal scorer of alltime: Pavel Bure

[theman19 47]

thank you toby91, that was my point.

in 1998 Bondra scored 52 goals, So did Selanne

just because Bondra scored a high % of his teams goals doesn't make him any better than selanne.

[Hank 0]

I don't know if I'm alone here, but I truly believe that Pavel Bure was/is the games purest and best goal scorer ever! Why do I say this, well here are some #'s. keep in mind I am in no way taking anything away from Gretzky and the following legends, just offering a topic for discussion.

I have no problem with people saying he's the greatest goal scorer of all time.

One reason why I'm inclined to agree is that he put up unbelievable goal numbers during the dead puck era. He was scoring at 60-goal rates when other 'goal scorers' were putting up 30 or so.

And he put up huge numbers without ever having a true #1 playmaking centre to work with. Brett Hull had awesome totals but not until he had Oates with him.

Bossy had Trottier too.

The only other guy I'd say is close is Lemieux. I'm sure if he wanted to shoot more than pass, he'd have scored more goals himself. He could score so many different ways.

I think Ovechkin could eventually go down as the games best pure goal scorer. Only time will tell.

[DenJ91 0]

thanks hank, at least someone is feeling what i'm saying.

i guess you'd have to take into account, the players linemates, goalies, the era the played in, injuries, games played, all kinds of things and still it would be merely opinion. i'm sticking to my guns and keeping bure in the top 3 no matter what.

[stevie for president 42]

no one can deny that bure was amazing, but theres too many ifs. and your argument doesnt make sense looking at goals per game. you should only include gretzky's prime, hulls prime, et c. bure never played in years of declining talent. And the argument that gretzky played with some of the all-time greats could be easily disputed. Ok, on paper, it cant be disputed, but hypothetically, if gretzky never played for the oilers, who suffers more? gretzky or the oilers? and he stilled scored 30-40 goals with the kings for a few seasons.

I think hypothetically if bure and gretzky switched places gretzky would have scored more goals that bure did and bure would have scored less goals that gretzky did. and why do i say this? the goalies werent that much better in the early years of bures career, and bure was not a playmaker on a team where he was usually the only star. Gretzky not only scored a record amount of goals, but he also set up hall-of-famers with a record number of assists. in short, if gretzky never had super stars on his team, if he HAD to be a goal scorer and not a playmaker, im sure he wouldve scored over 1,000 goals. the fact is he had players to play with that set him up but he set them up a lot more, taking away from his own goal total.

[Hank 0]

thanks hank, at least someone is feeling what i'm saying.

i guess you'd have to take into account, the players linemates, goalies, the era the played in, injuries, games played, all kinds of things and still it would be merely opinion. i'm sticking to my guns and keeping bure in the top 3 no matter what.

I think it'd be pretty hard to dispute he's in the top 3.

It's always tough to rate players who come from different eras and have different teammates. But I have to believe that if Bure had a teammate with the passing proficiency of an Oates, Trottier or Orr he could have broken Gretzky's record of 92.

He was a pure joy to watch and loved to score goals.

I can't remember which book I read but a former goalie said that when he first faced Bure he said it was like 9 of the skaters were standing still while Bure buzzed around everywhere. He said he was so fast, shifty and would shoot from every angle that it was like there were two games going on - one with Bure on the ice, and one without.

P.S. Just checking the teams he was on, these were the top centre's he played with:

Vancouver: Larionov, Nedved, Linden, Ronning, Messier (some good players but not true #1 playmaking centres in the least and one centre who was over the hill)

Florida: Rob Neidermayer, Victor Kozlov, Mike Sillinger, Oli Jokinen (but this was Jokinen's first year with Florida and wasn't even close to being what he is now 80gp, 9g, 20a, 29pts)

NY Rangers: Eric Lindros, Mike York, Messier, Nedved (Lindros wasn't bad at this point, but clearly not what he was in his early years while in Philly).

Now if you look at the other names mentioned in this thread, many of them had some very good playmaking centres to give them the puck during the best years of their careers.

I love Mike Bossy, but I don't think he scores 50+ goals for 9 seasons straight if he's on the Devils or Wings during that time.

For me, the greatest feat for Bure was when he scored 58 goals and 59 goals in the 99-00, 00-01 seasons. That Florida team wasn't very good at all and it was smack-dab in the middle of the dead-puck era.

If the type of hockey that was played during Bossy's, Lemieux's, Wayne's or Hull's best years at this time, I don't think it's a stretch to believe that he scores over 80 goals in either of those years. Maybe even 90+.

Edited February 8, 2008 by Hank