Two decades have vanished in a puff of smoke since the old conjurer put his false-bottom trunk, fun-loving rabbit and nothing-up-my-sleeve/presto! Jofa top hat permanently into storage.

"There are so many talented players today," Kent Nilsson is saying from a golf course in Orlando, Fla., where he's attempting to abracadabra a par into birdie.

"The skill and hockey sense in the National Hockey League right now is just fantastic.

"No hooking or holding, fighting isn't a part of the game anymore.

"These guys are able to go out and play. To not worry about that other stuff. That first line in Colorado … so good. (Elias) Pettersson in Vancouver, I think, has a chance to be the best Swede ever.

"Wait'll he puts on another 20 pounds.

"I love watching the game today.

"And the guy you're talking about is a part of that."

Way back in the 1980-81 season, the Magic Man - someone so extravagantly gifted Wayne Gretzky once anointed him the purest talent he'd ever laid eyes on - produced his most famous, most enduring trick, the equivalent of catching a speeding bullet between his central incisors or Houdini's Chinese Water Torture Cell illusion:

A Flames franchise-record 131 points.

Since then, that number has taken on the shimmer, locally at any rate, of Wilt's 100-point night or DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak.

Something incandescent. Otherworldly. Bordering on mythic.

And, apparently, unassailable.

Until, Nilsson believes, now.

"Oh yeah, he can break it," he says, referencing the necromancer of today, Johnny Gaudreau. "If not this year, next year. Or the year after that.

"He can do it.

"He's still so young. He's only going to get better.

"I haven't seen him as much this year as in the last two years but he's obviously having an unbelievable season.

"If he can play all 82 games he has a great chance. That's the key. You miss even one or two, you fall behind and it's tough to catch up.

"Very, very smart. I watched him here against the Panthers last year and he was just outstanding. He does things you can't teach.

"He doesn't have to go find the puck; it comes to him.

"That's the way with all great players."