Happy Birthday, Bobby Orr....

Here's a nice tribute. This is from a TV series that was done, oh, ten or so years ago called "The Legends of Hockey". The series attempted to recreate the Burns baseball series for hockey---it didn't ---but still there's some good stuff here. The Lanny MacDonald clip is pretty funny.

http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/?8dpc



And Bobby Hull mentions that when he was a rookie, all the tough guys tried to take Orr on in fights. They didn't do it in the second year.

 

Once again, I completely disagree with Fenian Bastard.
1) Orr
2) Everybody else.

No one — no one — changed his sport more than Orr did. As a defenseman, he wasn't just the MVP, he was also the scoring champ.
Can that correlate to other sports? What if Ray Lewis led the league in passing? If Roy Halladay led in hitting and home runs? If Kobe led in blocked shots and steals?
BTW, Alan Eagleson deserves to rot in hell.

 

I'm a SoCal guy who didn't really follow hockey until the 1980s. I heard and read some about Orr and how he was one of the best ever, and I didn't doubt that at all. However, aside from the clip of the Stanley Cup-winning goal I never really saw footage of him playing.

Finally, about 10 years ago I had a chance to see some of his highlights on a video and it absolutely knocked my socks off. And this is from someone who watched Gretzky in his prime. Yeah, definitely among the greatest in any sport.

 

Orr's highlight film puts Gretzky's to shame, every time.

 

Orr played 200 feet (well, what was the Garden 192 or something), Gretzky wasn't exactly known for his ability to move someone from out in front or blocking a shot and taking it the other way by himself.

From red line in it's Gretzky, but Orr did everything.

 

Mario was the most skilled player ever.

 

Orr did it all, and he started in a six-team league where a majority of the players had to pay their dues.

 

always amazes me how a guy who has more career ASSISTS than anyone else has POINTS can not be given full credit for what he could do

I would suggest that Gretzky has more than a few spectacular highlights as well

 

Let's not get too ridiculous here. Defensive players in football are hardly expected to pass, likewise with starting pitchers on AL teams.

Defencemen in hockey are often expected to contribute to a team's offence.

Well said, B-Dub.

 

The highlights of Orr I watched last night were ridiculous. It's as if the goalies had no chance at all, and they knew it.

 

Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux.

1 a, b & c

Three entirely different players and all of them were artists.

 

Buy the tapes/DVDs and watch them, back to back. It's not even close. I remember watching all the montages when Gretzky retired in 1999, and there were so few plays that were dazzling. He was historically productive, but he didn't have nearly as much flash and style as people think.

And Flash -- defensemen didn't contribute to offense nearly as much as they do now until Orr revolutionized the position.

I have no problem knocking Gretzky down a peg (just one peg, though). His status as "greatest player of all time" is predicated solely on the numbers, and the numbers are absurdly inflated by the era in which he played. The book "Total Hockey" features a section on adjusted stats that makes the gap between Gretzky and the rest of the league's scoring leaders significantly smaller. I'll try to remember to find that list at work.