>>>>>>>>Another one....
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq4yGWipyBk&feature=autoplay&list=PL963187D07F4AAE24&lf=results_main&playnext=2>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>You couldn't stop him. He was something else.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Like you, I was fortunate enough to see him in the old Boston Garden during his reign. He was just unbelievable. I have been to lots of sports events and have never heard anything louder than the roar in the old Garden when he would rush the puck up the ice. Deafening. It's not exaggerating to say he revolutionized the game.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Not necessarily for the better though. It's one thing to play like that and actually be Bobby Orr, but after Orr everybody wanted to score goals and the concept of a true defenseman pretty much went the way of high button shoes. I used to love to watch Allan Stanley, Dickie Moore, Doug Harvey, Red Kelly and guys like that play defense. It was an art. An art that largely disappeared after Orr changed the role of the defenseman. Like I said, the rest of them were not Bobby Orr.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Yeah, fair point. He was one of a kind. The average defenseman -- if a guy good enough to make the NHL can ever be described as average -- trying to score goals is going to be a sieve back on his own end. Like you, I appreciate the defenders who stay home and lock up their end of the ice.
>>>>>
>>>>>I think it's probably a major part of the reason why back then, being a 20 goal scorer meant something, and now everybody and his mother is a 20 goal scorer.
>>>>
>>>>That's going pretty far back. Wayne Gretzky had his best days in the 1980s, which is going back a way. Granted, he was as much a special case as Orr, but he AVERAGED 200 points a season for about four years.
>>>>
>>>>Bill K. and I were discussing who was better, Orr or Gretzky. That's a choice I never want to make. What's wrong with just feeling fortunate to have seen both of them? Mantle or Mays, Russell or Wilt, Brown or Sayers, on and on. It's missing the point to decide one is "only" the second best ever.
>>>
>>>This reminds me when the people of Sweden were asked to vote who was the best sportsman of all time, Bjørn Borg or Ingemar Stenmark. I don't remember who won the poll, and I think most people don't. It was an impossible comparison, both were outstanding in their field. You earlier pointed to the famous match between Bjørn Borg and John McEnroe, I don't know how famoues Ingemar Stenmark was in USA. If I remeber correctly, he won every competition he participated in two years in a row. The other skiers said openly that the competition was always to become no. two, since the first place was always given. I remember one race where he missed one of the ealier poles, but was able to wriggle in such a way that he got the skies on the correct side of the pole anyway. He lost nearly a second on this pole, but he still won the race with a big margin.
>>>
>>
>>I definitely remember him. He was awesome.
>>
>>I guess the one drawback to Aruba is you can't go skiing ;-)
>
>I don' miss going skiing, but I miss shovelling all the snow and the sore back the shovelling gave me. However, a quick swim in the ocean which holds 26°C, 79°F, helps me forget.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You and the horse you rode in on.
I actually do not mind shoveling snow. Anything that involves bringing order to disorder, I like. There has been very little snow so far this winter. But it's not over yet. I'm sure it still has a trick or two up its sleeve. Last Groundhog Day we got the biggest snowfall in Chicago in a long time, 14 inches. My arms and back hurt for days after digging out of that one.
