Something you need to know right off: This is NOT coming from a stubborn and blinkered traditionalist.

Heck, if Ted Turner wanted to colorize "Casablanca" and make Ingrid Bergman look as if she had jaundice, that's OK. It didn't ruin the dialogue or the story.

	Dave Andreychuk, now with the Lightning, is 28 goals away from 600.

And in sports, there is no denying all the evidence of progress.

For example, those who watch Babe Ruth waddle around the bases in an all-white, all-North American game of 16 teams in a nation with a much smaller population, then maintain baseball just ain't as good as it used to be, are burying their heads in the bullpen mound.

In hockey, the dynamic has changed so much, in so many ways, it makes the comparison of eras even more difficult in this sport than the others.

So as Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille and Steve Yzerman -- and a host of others -- wind down their NHL careers with numbers that seem so glittering and impressive, it just doesn't feel right to ascribe charismatic greatness to them just because of their longevity and numbers.

They have been terrific, in the context of their times, but they also have gotten their due.

Or to put it another way: Dino Ciccarelli.

What's that got to do with anything? Well, Dino Ciccarelli scored 608 career goals before retiring, and Robitaille is on the verge of catching him. But does anyone really want to ascribe "greatness" to Ciccarelli? He was a fine, gritty, fiery, fun player who made the most out of his size and talent. But great?

How about Dave Andreychuk? He has the wing span of a condor, he has been an effective scorer for his 37 years in the league (or however long it is). He has latched on with the Lightning and seems determined to hang on until he gets the 28 more goals he needs to crack 600. That's greatness? Of course not.

Yes, we've been talking about only goal-scoring. Yzerman has that ineffable quality of leadership, and the obvious all-around talents, to go with the numbers he has put up over the years with the Red Wings. And greatness involves so much more than the measurable, so maybe he qualifies.

Greatness involves an aura. Maybe that's unfair to the athletes of today in the sense that the sense of mystery has been erased. We know damn near everything, both what we want to know and what we would just as soon not have heard, about today's players. We see the highlights on ESPN and TSN and around the world, and that arm's length sense of mystery that added to the greatness of Rocket Richard and Jean Beliveau and Eddie Shore.

Greatness also is one of those things you sometimes can't explain, but you can point to and say: That's it! He's got it!

Greatness involves an aura. Maybe that's unfair to the athletes of today in the sense that the sense of mystery has been erased.

Wayne Gretzky had it and Mario Lemieux has it, and so does Jaromir Jagr. They played and have played in the post-expansion era, so to point at the 30 teams and to franchises based in such places as the home of the Grand Ole Opry is oversimplification and a copout.

Yes, there are those out there who ignore all the other factors and can't get beyond the basic but very misleading math: Six teams through the 1966-67 season and 30 today, so it's a 500 percent dilution.

Hogwash, and most of us acknowledge that, don't we? The internationalization of the NHL talent pool, and even the increased hockey-playing population in North America, has lessened the magnitude of the dilution far more than the hard-core traditionalists want to acknowledge. Yes, 30 is too many, and a 24-team NHL would be about perfect -- for marketing, for the game itself, for about everything. But to harken back to the six- or even 12-team NHL as the benchmarks of perfection is naïve.

Those are the folks who want us to believe that if you stuck players who spent years with the Seattle Totems and the Portland Buckaroos and the Rochester Americans in a time machine, they would be 400-goal scorers or decade-long great defensemen in this era.

Not so.

So if this seems all over the map on this issue of whether we are watching, and perhaps underestimating, greatness in the modern and internationalized NHL, the point is this:

This is the league that has changed the most. The eras, the talent pool, the equipment, the travel, the training techniques and the players' off-ice habits, the game itself, all have been radically transformed. But it seems unlikely that in a time when we see and know of everything the instant it happens, we could let greatness escape our notice.

Terry Frei of The Denver Post is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. His feedback address is ChipHilton23@hotmail.com.