An overlooked legend
Much of the hockey-watching public isn’t old enough to have seen Bobby Orr play
Bobby Orr played his last great hockey in the 1976 Canada Cup tournament and it’s far too easy to forget, looking back, that happened 48 years ago.
Orr won his first NHL scoring title in 1970 — as the first and then later the second defenceman in hockey history to win an Art Ross Trophy. The first came 54 years ago.
At the height of his brilliance, in an unmatched sixyear period, Orr scored 734 points, finished first in NHL scoring twice, second three times, third once. Most of that coming more than 50 years ago.
And why does of any of that matter now? Because at all-star weekend in Toronto, when the subject of Sidney Crosby’s place in hockey history was being discussed and debated by younger chroniclers of the sport in the media room, it was remarkable to me how many influencers in the game had little idea of everything and anything Orr had accomplished in hockey.
So many never saw him play. Unless you’re 60 or above in age, there’s a chance you didn’t see enough of him. And those of us who witnessed history sometimes take for granted that we did.
It was like a getting a chance to watch Jim Brown or Johnny Unitas play football at another time. Or a chance to watch Willie Mays in centre field or Mickey Mantle in left. It’s easy to close in on Usain Bolt running the100 in Beijing in 2008 — spectacular as it was, it’s not that many years ago.
Orr, like Brown, like Mays, like Bolt, was one of a kind.
No matter what definitions you choose — modern statistics, old statistics, analytics — Orr is either No. 1 or 2 as the greatest player of my lifetime. And, for reasons mostly unexplained, too many people don’t seem to know that or be aware of all that he accomplished.
It wasn’t just what he did — it was how he lapped the field.
The year before he entered the NHL, Pierre Pilote led all defencemen in scoring with 36 points. Orr scored more than that as a teenaged rookie. By his fourth season, at the ages of 21 and 22, he led the NHL with 120 points.
How was that different than every other defencemen? Jim McKenny and Carol Vadnals tied for second in scoring among defenders in 1970. They were 76 points behind Orr.
And in what was probably Orr’s greatest individual season, he finished second in scoring with 139 points and with a record-breaking plusminus number of +124.
Nicklas Lidstrom, quite possibly the second-best defenceman in history, who came to the NHL decades later, had his best plus-minus season at +50. Paul Coffey, the greatest scoring defenceman after Orr, had his best season with the dynastic Edmonton Oilers finishing at +61.
Half of Orr’s numbers. In Orr’s famous six-year period, he totalled out at +426. Next on the NHL list at that time, not from his powerhouse Boston team, was Montreal’s Serge Savard at +193.
You can disregard plusminus all you want — and coaches and players still pay attention to it — but when your numbers blow away the field, by itself that was more than telling.
Orr had 135 points when the great Denis Potvin had 76. He has 122 when perennial second place Norris finisher, Brad Park, had 82. He had 101 when Guy Lapointe had 54. The gap most seasons between Orr and the rest of the NHL’s defencemen was enormous.
In total, only six NHL defencemen have managed100 points in a season, many of those years happening in goal-happy seasons. Hall of Famers Potvin, Al MacInnis and Brian Leetch have each had one 100-point season. Erik Karlsson had 100 points last season playing shinny in San Jose. Coffey, who was blessed to play alongside Wayne Gretzky in Edmonton and then Mario Lemieux in Pittsburgh, had five 100-point scoring seasons — all of them on teams with Gretzky or Lemieux.
But unlike Orr, Coffey was never close to being the best scorer in hockey. He did place second once in scoring, 79 points behind Gretzky. He once finished third in scoring, 77 points behind Gretzky.
In Coffey’s best seven seasons in succession, he accumulated 735 points, 155 points ahead of Ray Bourque and 233 ahead of MacInnis.
In Orr’s best six seasons, he had 734 points, more than twice of many points as Park (388) or 456 points ahead of Vadnais.
If you love hockey and haven’t seen Orr play — and so many haven’t — you should probably find a way your way to a video or YouTube or someplace that can display his brilliance.
It’s like listening to Sinatra. It’s like getting tickets for Pavarotti. It’s timeless and breathtaking.
Orr was basically done at the age of 28, with his knees giving out on him and surgery nowhere near as sophisticated as it is today. He played nine full years, won eight Norris Trophies, three Hart Trophies, a rookie of the year, two scoring titles, two Conn Smythe Trophies as playoff MVP.
No player has ever separated from the pack the way he did. There was a Lemieux to challenge Gretzky. There are those who challenge Connor McDavid today. There were Bourques and Leetchs to challenge Coffey’s statistics.
Bobby Orr was alone. He turns 76 next month. Being old enough to have seen him at his best — and on that great Canada Cup team of 1976, when we were still discovering international hockey — is one of the great sporting pleasures of my life.
No matter what definitions you choose — modern statistics, old statistics, analytics — Orr is either No.
1 or 2 as the greatest player of my lifetime.