Quote:
Originally Posted by Berklon
Those players today would be facing better defensive players today and MUCH better goaltending - especially when compared to the 80s. Go on youtube and check out how poor the goaltending was. It's actually quite comical. Goalies back in the 70s/80s wouldn't even make the team as a backup nowadays.
Gretzky and Lemieux feasted off the poor goaltending.
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80s hockey had a better talent pool than people give it credit for as the competition of the WHA was eliminated freeing up many NHL quality players to play in the NHL. We also saw an influx of talented European players come to North America that were not an option prior to the 70s. The number of registered hockey players in Canada was also incredibly large so there was a large talent pool from which to draw.
Some of the reasons goaltending was bad was due to the heaviness of pads allowing for a lot less mobility, the size of the protective pads which is lot smaller than today's michelin men, the skates which allowed for a lot less lateral mobility, and the lack of protective padding on the inside of the goalie pads that discouraged goalies from going down on their knees on a consistent basis to cover the lower part of the net unless they wanted to destroy their knees. This has been discussed in detail by many excellent posters on the history section of the hall of fame boards.
When goalies started to see technological advantages by the 90s, a slightly out-of-his prime Gretzky with a bad back was still dominating winning a few point scoring titles while a prime Lemieux dominated (see 150 points in 70 games in 95-96). A nearly broken Gretzky at 37 years of age finished 3rd in NHL scoring in the dead puck era while a 35 year old Lemieux came back from a 3.5 year retirement with a bad back in the middle of the dead puck era in 2000 and had the highest points per game average in the NHL...all this in the modern goalie era with modern goalie equipment.
