>>>>>Another one....
>>>>>
>>>>>
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.
I would never knock Gretzky. He really was astonishing, but don't forget that he postdated Orr and he came along when there were no more true defensemen to stop him. Back in the day, he would have been a standout, but 200 points? Would never have happened.
>
>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.
>
>Well, here in Chicago we all know Michael Jordan was the best ever ;-)
