Parenting & Family Quote by Marcel Dionne

Dionne slips a quiet truth into a name-drop: hockey greatness isn’t a single Mount Rushmore, it’s a relay race, and the baton you see depends on when you’re old enough to look up.

On the surface, he’s doing the polite thing - acknowledging Gretzky and Lemieux, the headline giants most fans reflexively rank first. Then he pivots to the lived reality of a “kid coming into the league,” where mythology is forged less by highlight reels than by proximity. You “play the Boston Bruins” and suddenly Orr isn’t an archive; he’s an opponent’s aura, a problem you have to solve. That detail matters. Dionne is separating mediated fame (watching on TV, absorbing consensus) from the visceral education of facing a team defined by a player’s shadow.

The subtext is partly generational defense, partly cultural correction. By framing it as “maybe it’s the time when you’re playing,” he disarms the argument before it starts, refusing the fan-war absolutism of GOAT talk. He’s not denying Gretzky or Lemieux; he’s pointing out that idolization is contextual, and context shapes what players value: not just numbers, but what a style of play did to the sport. Orr rewired the position, turned defense into attack, made speed and improvisation feel inevitable.

It’s a veteran’s reminder that reverence in sports isn’t only about who was best. It’s about who made the game look different right in front of you.