The debate has raged for days, so I’m going to tell you the TRUTH about Mario Lemieux vs Wayne Gretzky. No sugarcoating. All facts. I spent considerable time watching them both play. Lemieux is the most talented player of all time, while Gretzky is the BEST player of all time. In terms of raw talent, you should know by your third YouTube video that Lemieux was and always has been on another planet. The Great One wasn’t wearing an attacker like an overcoat 3/4 of the way down the ice while taking the equivalent of 13 modern minor penalties in route to a goal, as we all saw Mario do in that infamous video. Mario was much bigger, much stronger, much faster, had much better hands, a ridiculous wingspan, a harder and faster shot, and even passed the puck with much more velocity (no idea how Jagr accepted those fuckers). He could stick handle through eight people in a phone booth, and routinely undressed players to the point of naked humiliation. He was a goalie’s worst nightmare on breakaways (it’s well known that Gretzky oddly kinda sucked on breakaways). Lemieux was also known as being a lazy bastard throughout his career. He’d smoke a pack a day and hang out by the red line, waiting for a pass. Pretty sure his diet early in his career was also pretty unbecoming for a professional athlete. Despite all that, he scored just about like Wayne Gretzky did. That all came from raw talent—the best we’ve ever seen. Now, that Wayne Gretzky character couldn’t do most of the things I just outlined. He wasn’t big. He was weak for a pro. Forget who said it, but an 80’s goalie said you could catch one of Gretzky’s shots with a driving glove and it wouldn’t hurt. He wasn’t slow but definitely not a super fast player. Awesome hands but he didn’t really do stuff like Datsyuk and Lemieux. Not to THAT degree anyway… …but the Great One was psychic. He could predict the future and impose his will on it. In chess, he would be a Grand Master, and he would eclipse Magus Carlsen’s highest ELO rating by 37 points. The passes that guy would make—at first you’d think he mistakenly tossed it to a dead part of the ice, just to see a wide open guy come in as if on que to get a shot on goal. He did that like four times a game! Wayne Gretzky scored a point while sitting on the bench (seriously, look it up). He’d score retarded goals, like flipping the puck over the net and watch it trickle down the goalie’s back into the net. He did that all the time. The NHL had to change power play rules because Wayne Gretzky couldn’t stop scoring. You can create a player who is 6’9, 270 pounds and max all of his attributes on NHL 26, and you still won’t score like Wayne Gretzky did if you played the game on beginner. Gretzky wasn’t accused of being lazy much in his career. Those in the know will recall a talk Walter gave him after he mailed in a game as a child. He was the more driven player of the two by a mile. Mario Lemieux simply didn’t see the ice as well as Wayne Gretzky. No one did. 66 has the most badass highlight reel in hockey, but it doesn’t erase the fact that if you erased every goal Gretzky ever scored, he’d still be the all-time scoring leader, which is absolutely insane. 163 assists in one season, what kind of witchcraft is that? The bottom line is Gretzky almost always made the right decision to get the puck in the net, and it’s because his hockey IQ reigns supreme. The puck was crossing that line one way or another with the Great One. So there you have it. Mario was the most talented player of all time. Wayne was the best player of all time.