The Great Debate: Gretzky vs. Lemieux

In the world of sports, time is the enemy of greatness. As the years go by, retired stars fade in the mind and younger generations convince themselves that there is no possible way the best of a bygone era could stack up against the present's best. Time is also the enemy of nuance, and to be more bold, accuracy, when it comes to judging where stars of different eras place in the discussion of all-time greats. It becomes easier to accept the labels applied to players without delving into the different facets of their careers. That's one of the reasons why most people shrug off Gordie Howe's accolades as a product of his longevity: they remember hearing about him playing for the Hartford Whalers when he was 52 years old, and assume he was just a freak of nature who was able to hang around long enough to wrack up a boatload of career points. What they forget is the dominance he displayed in his prime.

One of the great hockey debates that suffers from this lack of attention to nuance is the unending one that occurs amongst hockey fans: Who was better, Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux? At the time he retired, the answer almost unanimously among the hockey community was Gretzky, no question. In fact, Gretzky's chief competition for "greatest of all-time" honours wasn't Lemieux, but Bobby Orr. The Gretzky/Orr debate was an almost unsolvable one given their different positions, and one that also gave birth to many myths about both players (inevitably underrating Gretzky's defensive contributions, for example). And so the attention began to shift to an easier comparison, one between the two most dominant scoring forwards of all-time, and two players who played in close to the same era: Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.

The recent groundswell of support for Lemieux has emerged largely through a younger generation of fans who were fortunate enough to catch the majority of Lemieux's prime, but may have seen Gretzky only during his later years with the Kings, Blues and Rangers, in which he had evolved primarily into an Oates-like playmaking specialist. Regardless, the debate still is one that deserves consideration. Unfortunately, supporters in each camp tend to put forward arguments that are at best simplistic and, more often than not, inaccurate.

I come down on the side of Wayne Gretzky. I firmly believe that he was the greatest hockey player of all-time, although I acknowledge Mario's place in the (to me inarguable) four-person Pantheon alongside Gretz, Orr and Howe. Yet I am not dogmatic enough to dismiss the case for Mario. A casual hockey fan may look at the bare facts and say that Gretzky clearly was superior: he had nine MVP awards to Lemieux's three; ten scoring titles to Lemieux's six; four Stanley Cup rings to Lemieux's two and the same amount of Conn Smythe trophies with two. But I will acknowledge to the pro-Mario camp that it is not as clear cut as those facts would suggest. Still, when the Lemieuxites (an awkward name, but less clumsy than the Lemieuxophiles) attempt to make their case for Mario, they stumble into a few arguments that sound reasonable enough until they are looked at in more depth. Here are a few:

ARGUMENT #1 - "Gretzky played in a higher-scoring era"

Of course Gretzky had 92 goals in a season...he was facing Greg Millen!

 This may be the most frequent argument, and it is the easiest to deal with, since it can be solved simply by looking at an adjusted-scoring system and league-wide averages throughout the NHL. The Lemieuxites frame things as if Gretzky was playing against a bunch of clueless goaltenders and leaky defences during his prime, while Lemieux was suffocated by the trap era and having to face the likes of Roy, Brodeur, Belfour and Joseph every night. It is true that Gretzky's five first seasons in the league were during the league's highest-scoring five-year period, but it's not as if Lemieux missed that era altogether. When Gretzky had his remarkable 92-goal, 212-point season in 1981-1982, it was at a time when leaguewide scoring was at 8.03 goals per game. In 1988-1989, Lemieux's best statistical season, it was 7.48...lower to be sure, but a far cry from the 5.30 averages that the likes of Jagr, Iginla and Sakic had to deal with in the late-1990s and early-2000s. In Lemieux's equally fantastic 1992-1993 campaign, the top average point totals among the top 20 scorers in the league was the highest in NHL history.

When leveled out for leaguewide averages, things become murkier. In reality, Gretzky scored 1.92 points-per-game while Lemieux scored 1.88. Considering that Gretz was consistently healthier than Lemieux, it would appear to be case-closed for Gretzky. But when adjusted, Lemieux emerges with 1.70 adjusted points-per-game (henceforth referred to as APPG) for his career while Gretzky is at 1.64. More impressive is the disparity in their goal-per-game production: Lemieux is at 0.675 AGPG (adjusted goals per game) while Gretzky stands at 0.502. At this point, Lemieux supporters may be saying "See, Lemieux's average is higher...ergo, he was a better offensive player!". What they fail to see is the flaw behind argument two:

ARGUMENT #2 - "Since Lemieux's adjusted numbers were better, if they had played in the same era and Lemieux had played for as long as Gretzky...he'd be the one with all the records".

A 38 year-old Gretzky, solely a playmaking specialist, bidding good-bye to his NHL fans.

 Let's set aside for a moment debating the merits of health and longevity when considering a player's place in history. I tend to think that it does have value, even though I'll take a career with moments of transcendence (say, Peter Forsberg's) over one of plodding consistency (say, Dave Andreychuk's) any day. The longevity vs. brilliance debate belongs more in the discussion of whether Gordie Howe should be ranked higher than Lemieux (although I hate to perpetuate the myth that the only reason Howe belongs as high as he does is because of his longevity...his peak was remarkable even if it failed to reach the lofty heights of Lemieux). When it comes to Gretzky, though, some of number 99's supporters (Gretzkyites sounds vaguely Communist) use Gretzky's consistency as a trump card, saying that it should end the discussion of who was the greatest player, since with Gretzky there were no "what-ifs?". I believe this is a mistake for the pro-Gretzky camp...what they should instead focus on is what Gretzky did in the same amount of time as Lemieux.

Here is a simple fact: even though his career totals were immensely helped by his longevity, Gretzky's averages were dragged down by playing nearly 65% more games than Lemieux for his career. The trait that made Gretzky's records among the most untouchable in sports history, his consistent productivity over twenty seasons, is also the very thing that opened the cracks for Lemieux supporters to argue in favour of Lemieux's superiority.

Most hockey fans would agree that forwards' production tends to go down after the age of 30 (there are of course exceptions, but for the most part it's a reality that a superstars' production from the ages of, say, 22-30 will be greater than it is from 31-38). Mario Lemieux played 246 games after his age-30 season, 1995-1996, in which he scored 388 adjusted points (APs we'll call them), for an average of 1.58 per game. Wayne Gretzky played 595 games after his age-30 season, nearly two-and-a-half times as many as Mario. In that time, his adjusted-average was 1.26 per game (which, by the way, while not as high as Mario's average, would still be good enough to lead the NHL in most seasons. We're talking about two incredibly special talents with these guys, in case that wasn't already abundantly obvious).

Let's look at what came before those age-31 seasons. Mario accumulated 1,185 APs in 681 games, for a per-game average of 1.74. Gretzky had 1,781 APs in 949 games, for an average of 1.88 per game. Even their goals-per-game averages are remarkably close during this period: Lemieux is at 0.715 AGPG while Wayne is at 0.625.  So it's not, as some Mario supporters claim, that the only reason Gretzky dwarfed Lemieux statistically is that he was fortunate enough to stay healthy, avoid the nagging back problems that Mario was plagued with, and of course not be unfortunate enough to contract Hodgkin's disease. While they were young and in their primes, and even when adjusted for the seasons they played in, Gretzky still outproduced Lemieux on an average basis...not even factoring that he played over 95% of his team's games during that stretch while Mario played 70%.

Gretzky was more productive each game (granted, by a slim degree) and played far more games. If this were any other sport, it would be case closed that Gretzky was the better offensive player. Since no one, not even the most diehard Lemieux supporter, would make the case that Lemieux was appreciably better than Gretzky defensively, that makes Gretzky the better overall player. No one would make the case that a basketball player who averaged, say, 30 PPG, 7 RPG and 7 APG for 80 games a season during his career wasn't superior to someone who averaged 29 PPG, 8 RPG and 6 APG for only 55 games a season unless the latter player was markedly better defensively than the former (which Lemieux wasn't when compared to Gretzky). No one would argue that they'd rather have a Gold Glove-winning first baseman with an OPS of 1.000 who tended to miss 40 games a year over a Gold Glove-winning first baseman with an OPS of 1.025 who hardly missed any time at all. You wouldn't see that in most other sports. But hockey is a far more subjective game than baseball, which can be quantified almost to the tee, and perhaps a tad more so than basketball, and so once their statistical objections have fallen by the wayside, the Lemieux supporters tend to fall back on difficult-to-quantify arguments, and easily-regurgitated myths are born. Let's look at a few of them:

ARGUMENT #3 - "Gretzky had far better teammates than the no-names that Lemieux was stuck with".

The Great One celebrating one of his four championship titles.

 This is the myth that bothers me the most in the Gretzky-Lemiux argument, and it is similar to the Russell/Chamberlain myth (chronicled and refuted so well in Bill Simmons' Book of Basketball) that Chamberlain supporters use to attempt to belittle Russell's eleven titles. There is no doubt that the Edmonton Oilers of the mid-1980s are one of the greatest teams ever assembled. The roster is strewn with Hall-of-Famers. To wit: Messier, Coffey, Kurri, Fuhr, Anderson. They were all at or near their peak production levels during those years...interestingly enough, except for Messier, who's best statistical seasons (when adjusted for scoring averages) actually came with the New York Rangers.

But notice I specify that the Oilers of the mid 1980s were amongst the greatest ever. Gretzky detractors make it sound as if Wayne just walked into an already-established dynasty, as opposed to being the foundation for them, as well as the playmaker who made superstars out of players who may in other circumstances have merely been stars. One need only look at Gretzky's first two seasons as a perfect refutation of that ill-thought-out theory.

In 1979-1980, at the age of eighteen it should be noted, Gretzky led the transition of the Oilers from the WHA to the NHL by walking into the league and tying for the lead in scoring with 123 APs (137 in real life). He averaged 1.52 APPG in this season...higher than any mark that Lemieux put up in any of his first three seasons.

Of course he did, the Lemieux supporters might say...he had one of the greatest outlet passers of all-time (Coffey) feeding him, and had snipers like Messier, Kurri and Anderson to finish his own beautiful passes, right? Nope. Coffey, Kurri and Anderson weren't even in the league yet. And Messier? He was tearing the league up as an obvious Hall-of-Famer-in-waiting with a scintillating rookie season in which he put up 11 AGs, 30 APs and a -15 rating (Gretzky incidentally was a +15 on this "dynasty" team, which finished fourth in the Smythe Division with a record of 28-39-13 and was promptly swept in the first round).

The immortal Blair MacDonald.

Gretzky's best teammates that year? Blair MacDonald, Stan Weir, Brett Callighen, Dave Lumley and Dave (not Dale) Hunter. Not exactly a team that was being mistaken for the '77 Canadiens. Blair MacDonald, by the way, scored adjusted numbers of 41 goals, 43 assists and 84 points as Gretzky's linemate. So he must have been pretty decent, right? Yes, his goal-scoring talent was so prolific and had so little to do with Gretzky's unparalled passing that Edmonton traded him the next season and MacDonald was out of the league two years after that, having failed to match in his remaning three seasons his goal total as Gretzky's linemate for one season. I should just stop right now and drop the microphone, having made my case, but I'll continue.

The next season saw the arrival of Kurri, Anderson and Coffey, so Lemieux supporters may claim that Gretzky only had one season to deal with trashy teammates as opposed to the five that Mario endured. But while Gretzky was now teammates with future Hall-of-Famers, they weren't exactly playing like it at the time. Gretzky once again led the league in scoring with 134 APs and a rate of 1.64 APPG (again, 15% higher than anything Mario produced in his first three seasons). He had more than double the points of any of his Oiler teammates, with rookie Jari Kurri, his new linemate, being the second-highest scorer.

The legendary names were there, but they weren't who we came to know them as (or to be even more daring, who Gretzky helped make them be). Messier wasn't Messier...he had 51 APs and was a -12, frustrating his coaches with his defensive shortcomings, while Gretzky put up a +41 for a sub-.500 team. Anderson wasn't Anderson...he only had 43 APs. And most noticeably, Coffey wasn't the offensive force he would develop into, chipping in only 26 APs. Once again the Oilers finished with a mediocre record but fared better in the playoffs, upsetting the Montreal Canadiens in a playoff win that would set the stage for the dynasty that was to ensue in the coming years.

Things finally clicked for the Oilers the next season, as Gretzky put up truly one of the greatest statistical seasons any sport has seen, going crazy on the league with 72 AGs (a record-setting 92 in real-life) and 166 APs. Once again, Gretzky's point total was more than double any of his teammates...but at least now he was getting more support. Messier scored 39 adjusted goals. No one else eclipsed 30. Gretzky had 72. Anderson was second on the team with 82 APs. Eighty-two. Gretzky had 166. I just felt it needed repeating.

Let's call that third season a wash and not factor it into the "bad teammates" era. Even the most entrenched Mario supporter couldn't argue that Gretzky had particularly excellent, or even good, teammates in 1980-1981, and they certainly would acknowledge that the crap stew Gretzky had to work with in his rookie season was the envy of no one, even Lemieux. If Lemieux supporters point to Gretzky's Cup-winning seasons and how everyone was clicking on the Oilers team at just the right time, I don't begrudge them that. But it cuts both ways.

Lemieux with Mario Jr. (Jaromir Jagr).

Here's how Lemieux's teammates broke down. On his 1991 Cup team, he had the following teammates: Jaromir Jagr; Paul Coffey; Bryan Trottier; Ron Francis; Mark Recchi ; Larry Murphy; Joe Mullen. That's five Hall-of-Famers and two future ones (Jagr and Recchi), for a total of seven, compared to Gretzky's five with the Oilers, in case you're counting. Trottier was an aging veteran who was brought in for leadership and a checking role...he was a shell of his former self and nothing approaching a hall-of-fame level player, so let's scratch him from the list. And Jagr was a green rookie, not the dominant scorer he would become, although he did chip in with some key goals in the playoffs. But I didn't even mention John Cullen (28 AGs, 86 APs) and Kevin Stevens (36 AGs, 78 APs). Recchi led the team in regular-season scoring with 103 APs and went to town in the playoffs, as did Stevens and Murphy. Were their inflated numbers the result of playing with Mario? Impossible, as he only played 26 games during the regular season due to back surgery.

This is not to detract from Lemieux, who rightfully won the Conn Smythe award in 1991 with 38 APs in 23 games in the playoffs (44 actual points). It is simply to point out that the early-90s Penguins team were comparable in talent to the mid-1980s Oilers. There is even a case to be made the 1991-1993 Penguins are one of the greatest teams ever assembled.

The serviceable Doug Shedden.

So what of Lemieux's teammates early in his career? I am the first to acknowledge that Lemieux had little to work with...the Penguins' general crappiness is the reason that they landed the lottery pick and drafted Lemieux in the first place. Lemieux's best teammates in his rookie season were Warren Young and Doug Shedden. Ugh. Young was very much like Blair McDonald...someone who benefited for a season or two playing with a transcendent superstar and then faded into obscurity. But Shedden was almost equally as productive in the previous two seasons as he was in 1984-1985 (Lemieux's rookie season), generally falling in the 55-65 AP range. Not spectacular, to be sure, but certainly comparable (and perhaps superior) to Gretzky's teammates in his rookie season, Blair McDonald and Stan Weir. Again, I reiterate: Gretzky put up 123 APs and finished tied with Marcel Dionne for the scoring lead that season; Lemieux put up a still-remarkable 81 adjusted points. But was the talent-level of Blair McDonald, Stan Weir and Brett Callighen really enough to account for those extra 42 points?

In Lemieux's second season, with a core of Mike Bullard (not the talk-show host), defenseman Moe Mantha and Doug Shedden, Lemieux had 112 APs in his healthiest season. The next four scorers on the team averaged 55. In Gretz' second season (in which he had 134), the next four scorers on the Oilers averaged 51. Now, granted, those "next four" included Kurri, Anderson and Messier...but as I discussed before, they weren't producing at the levels we would come to expect.

Well yes, the Lemieuxites might say, but Lemieux had to deal with mediocre teammates for a longer period than Gretzky. Looking at merely the first five seasons of their careers as a sample, I might agree. Gretzky's Oilers were a young team that began to gel and improve exponentially. Kurri and Coffey in particular began to play like true superstars. Lemieux's core was Dan Quinn and Randy Cunneyworth. Quinn had been fairly productive in Calgary before joining the Pens, getting about 60 adjusted points a season. Cunneyworth was more of a 50-point grinder. Neither was setting the league on fire or destined for Hall-of-Fame careers like Gretzky's teammates. But in 1987 (after Lemieux's third season), Pittsburgh acquired Paul Coffey, giving Lemieux a weapon (a puck-moving defenceman) that Gretzky had enjoyed. It bears noting that Gretzky benefited from having Coffey on his team producing at a high level for six seasons (it was seven as a teammate, but I discount Coffey's ineffective rookie season), while Lemieux had him for four-and-half elite years.

Paul Coffey does not a team make, though, so I will acknowledge that Lemieux's Penguin teams were still lacking heading into 1989, perhaps Mario's most impressive season, in which he put up an ungodly 168 APs and made linemate Rob Brown, who wouldn't make much of a dent in the league after this season, a near-100 adjusted-point scorer. Coffey was remarkable in this season also, but other than that Lemieux only had the aforementioned Dan Quinn chipping in. So, during their respective career seasons, I will acknowledge that Mario had less to work with than Gretzky, but it wasn't by much.

As already documented, Lemieux's post-1990 teams were excellent for a stretch of three or four seasons, with Jagr in particular coming into his own. It shouldn't be forgotten that Jagr and Ron Francis were among the top point-getters of the 1990s. For anyone who thinks that Jagr's numbers were inflated by Lemieux, look toward the 1994-1995 season, which Lemieux missed, in which Jagr led the league in scoring and won the Ted Lindsay Award (then the Lester Pearson) as MVP as voted by the players. So let's say that Lemieux's early-90s days compare reasonably with Gretzky's mid-80s days.

Bernie Nicholls improved by 72 points with Gretz's arrival

What the "Gretzky had a dynasty" camp tend to forget is only the most important development in hockey during the 1980s: the trade of the Great One to Los Angeles. When Gretzky joined the Kings, they were an untalented bunch who had just finished with 68 points in the standings, 20th in a 21-team league. Marcel Dionne had retired a few seasons earlier. Luc Robitaille was an excellent scoring left-winger, but beyond him, there was essentially only Bernie Nicholls (who had averaged about 75 adjusted points in the previous three seasons) and a past-his-prime Dave Taylor. In Gretzky's first season with the Kings, they improved by 23 points in the standings, and Nicholls blew up for 125 adjusted points as Gretzky's teammate (one point shy of DOUBLE the previous season's total). For the next five or six seasons, Gretzky played for a team that consisted of only one Hall-of-Fame level guy (Robitaille) and relied on consistent contributions from Bernie Nicholls, Steve Duchene and Tomas Sandstrom. Even when the Kings acquired Gretzky's old teammate Jari Kurri, he was far less productive than during his Oiler years. And defenceman Rob Blake, an excellent player who joined the league in 1991-1992, was still extremely green during his first few seasons with the Kings, nowhere near the Hall of Famer he would become.

The Kings didn't do much during Gretzky's tenure, just as the Penguins didn't do much during Lemieux's first few seasons. The exception is of course the 1993 playoffs, which Gretzky described as the best he ever had, leading a Kings team (again, a core of Sandstrom, Robitaille and an aging Kurri) to the Cup finals. It was a matchup against the Canadiens in what may have been two of the great examples of superstars willing mediocre teams to the finals, with Patrick Roy playing out of his mind to lead the Habs to a championship. I defy anyone to argue that that Kings team was anywhere approaching "dynastic" levels.

So to recap: we've established that Lemieux's Penguin teams from about 1991 to 1993 (three seasons) were comparable to the Oilers from about 1983 to 1988 (five seasons). That's two seasons of playing with an elite-level team that Gretz has on Mario. Both had terrible teams in the first two seasons of their career...Mario continued to have a mediocre-to-poor team for the next four seasons. Gretz endured mediocre-to-poor teams after being traded to Los Angeles, while Mario played with a consistently contending (although by no means dynasty-level) Penguin team in the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s. Making nonsense statements like "well, Messier and Kurri won a Cup without Gretzky and he never won one without them" ignores that hockey is a team game and is about as senseless as pointing out that the Penguins with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin developed into an Eastern power and eventual Stanley Cup champion after Mario retired.

Let's look at Mario's first six seasons (in which he had less-than-spectacular teammates, as his defenders always point to) and compare them to Gretzky's first two seasons with the Oilers and his first four with the Kings (which we've established had comparably uninspiring rosters):

Lemieux "Weak Teammate" Era (1984-1990): 438 GP, 289 adjusted goals, 701 adjusted points, 1.60 APPG

Gretzky "Weak Teammate" Era (1979-1981; 1988-1992): 474 GP, 235 adjusted goals, 778 adjusted points, 1.64 APPG

So when we look at how they fared with comparably non-superstar teammates, Gretzky still comes out on top. And that's not even factoring in that Lemieux's "weak teammate" era came when he was in his prime, whereas Gretzky was putting up monster numbers with the Kings at the age of 33 (he led the league in scoring with a non-playoff team in 1993-1994...I didn't even count that season in his "weak teammate" era, although I probably should have).

The "Gretzky strolled into the middle of a dynasty" argument is a myth, plain and simple.

ARGUMENT #4 - "Lemieux was the better pure goal-scorer"

Lemieux unleashing his devastating slapshot from the corner.

Here's an argument that I fully concede, and it may go towards explaining why people consider Lemieux the better player. Lemieux was the more physically dominant player than Gretzky, and a better one-on-one force-of-nature (although Gretzky is underrated in his one-on-one skills). But this does not necessarily mean that Lemieux was the better pure offensive force. It's similar to the Crosby vs. Ovechkin debate: Ovechkin is more awe-inspiring, Crosby is more effective (at least, if he remains concussion-free).

Boiling such multi-faceted superstars as Gretzky and Lemieux down to one-dimensional pegs does a great disservice to both of their skills. As time has gone on, Gretzky's pure goal-scoring ability has been forgotten. During his first eight seasons, Gretzky averaged 55 adjusted goals and twice bested 70. And as I highlighted before, Gretzky's AGPG before his age-31 season was 0.625. Lemieux's was even better at an astounding 0.715, but not by enough that it should belittle Gretzky's goal-scoring.

Similarly, Lemieux's incredible passing should not be forgotten. His assist rate is right up there with Bobby Orr for among the highest in history, bested only by Gretzky's unparalleled marks. Even during the "weak teammate" era that I highlighted, Lemieux averaged nearly an adjusted assist per game. If you watch some of the Penguins' games from the early-1990s, when Lemieux actually had teammates who could keep up with him, it was artistry to behold.

So I will concede that Lemieux was a better goal-scorer than Gretzky by a small margin, although not by nearly as large a margin as their final career adjusted goals-per-game rates would suggest (as mentioned, Gretzky's goal numbers went down as he got older). As Gretzky stayed in the league into his late-thirties, he morphed into an almost strictly passing specialist. This period may have diminished him in the minds of those who were seeing Lemieux tear up the league during that same period. We missed Gretzky's run-and-gun days...he needed to be more cerebral near the end to remain elite. What this meant is that Gretzky doubters began to think that his gaudy point totals were merely the result of getting cheap second assists on superstar-laden teams.

There's something else to be said on this point: Lemieux was the more dominant one-on-one player, Gretzky the more cerebral passer (even though each was excellent at the other's supposed specialty). This to many suggests that, in a vacuum, Lemieux was the better player. But hockey is a team game, and I would suggest that Gretzky's excellence more readily translates to winning hockey than Lemieux's did. Watching some of the Oilers' games of the early-to-mid-1980s, you see the way even journeymen on the team began to see the game differently by virtue of playing with Gretzky. They started making bold passes and seeing angles to open space that may not have occurred to them before. Gretzky's vision for the game wore off on his teammates, even if not to the level of his own genius. I'm not saying that this did not occur with Lemieux, but with Lemieux one was always in awe of his size and control of the puck, and you can see at certain moments even excellent Pittsburgh players looking in reverance at what he does.

Of course you would want Mario Lemieux as a teammate, or on your team as a fan...he's unquestionably one of the four greatest hockey players to ever live (which placement you give to him in relation to Orr or Howe is more up for debate in my mind than in comparison to Gretzky), and arguably the most talented along with Orr. But when you factor in the sustained health and consistency, the superior productivity in both assists and points and the only-slightly-inferior productivity in goals, plus the infectiousness of his vision for the game, while also dispelling the arguments that he lucked into a historically-great team and solely benefited from a high-scoring era, one has to give the edge to the Great One.

Found within this picture: the greatest NHL forward of all time.