Connor McDavid will go down as the 2nd best player of all-time

[Montreal Shadow]

And McDavid lost to Draisaitl and Kucherov.

Bringing up "they lost to X for an award in a random year" argument is a silly argument. Just look at the overall resume rather than cherry-picking random years where oddities happen.

Kucherov and Draisaitl are far better than Sedin and Benn. Don't even start with this.

And it's not an oddity. Crosby only has 2 Art Rosses. He doesn't have 5-7 and lost once to a random player. He never completely left everyone in the dust. Not once and this is further exacerbated by him losing to a non hall-of-famer in his prime years.

 

[hamzarocks]

He did miss games though. He missed 12 playoff games.

He talks about the situation in his book. Competition was too fierce and contracts weren't guaranteed. He played through the pain because he didn't want to get cut for a healthy player.

That Howe was able to win an Art Ross with a concussion isn't a mark in Lemieux’s favour.

He missed 12 playoff games vs Lemieux missing 500 career games and playign various seasons through injiroes and health problems

I see your not going to change your stance and tbh I wont either

Lemieux is #2 based off his career as of now for a best ability based listing on my list

Howe is #2 based off career total value based listing on my list

No point discussing as we are running in circles. Did learn about Howes injury here and him playing through it which is very impressive. Thanks for the knowledge

Not with half-seasons, he didn't.

2011 on per game basis he was far ahead pacing for about 28 more pts than D.Sedin over full year

2013 again he had 56 in 36 while MSL won the ross with 60 in 48. He was pacing for 15 more pts than MSL in 47 games.

These two years Crosby was to run away with the ross+ hart + lindsay

2008 and 2012 he was going to be top 2 at minimum if healthy

Issue for Crosby is he needed to do 1) be healthy and win out those seasons and then 2) do that again 2 times in 2 of 2015 - 2018 period to get to next top 5 status whicb we saw him unable to accomplish

 

[Montreal Shadow]

I didn't realize 30% and 50% is a similar amount. Maybe Mack goes cold and gets 5 points and McDavid still beats him by 30%. Maybe it's Macks playstyle that gets him injured, so in order to play a full season, he scores at a lower rate. Could be that this year Mack finally learned to play a high level for a full season without getting injured. All unkown.

And MacK this year is keeping up with McDavid. If you're going to be disingenuous, just say so. He played 71 games, that's a huge sample size. He didn't play 40.

The point still stands that beating Ted Lindsay and Maurice Richard by huge margins is far better than doing that to Brad Marchand. If you're going to be dishonest and pretend that MacKinnon wouldn't have considerably shrunken the gap had he been afforded more games, then there's nothing to talk about.

Lemieux on the other hand was the one missing tons of games and still ridiculing the competition.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Kucherov and Draisaitl are far better than Sedin and Benn. Don't even start with this.

And it's not an oddity. Crosby only has 2 Art Rosses. He doesn't have 5-7 and lost once to a random player. He never completely left everyone in the dust. Not once and this is further exacerbated by him losing to a non hall-of-famer in his prime years.

You said Kane, not Benn.

Again, it's a dumb argument to make. Look at the player's overall resume rather than nitpicking random years where odd players win awards. No one is going to remember in 20 years that Crosby lost an Art Ross trophy to Jamie Benn in 2015. All that they'll remember is what he actually accomplished.

I'm not even arguing Crosby over McDavid here, McDavid is firmly on pace to overtake Crosby and end up a top-5 player of all time. I'm just saying "McDavid wouldn't lose an Art Ross to Benn!" is a bad argument for why.

This argument is akin to pointing out that Ovechkin lost a Rocket to Perry in his "prime years", so Ovechkin isn't the best goal scorer of all time. It's a silly argument to make.

 

[archangel2]

Nope 5 to 10 if he is lucky

 

[Montreal Shadow]

You said Kane, not Benn.

Again, it's a dumb argument to make. Look at the player's overall resume rather than nitpicking random years where odd players win awards. No one is going to remember in 20 years that Crosby lost an Art Ross trophy to Jamie Benn in 2015. All that they'll remember is what he actually accomplished.

I'm not even arguing Crosby over McDavid here, McDavid is firmly on pace to overtake Crosby and end up a top-5 player of all time. I'm just saying "McDavid wouldn't lose an Art Ross to Benn!" is a bad argument for why.

I mentioned Benn earlier.

Crosby's overall resume is 2 Art Rosses, 2 Harts, 3 Lindsays, and 2 Rockets.

McDavid has 5 Art Rosses, 4 Ted Lindsays, 3 Harts, and 1 Rocket. It's not close and McDavid could add some more trophies to his collection this year.

The only reason this is still debated is because of Crosby's playoff success. In the regular season, McDavid has already run past him.

And for the millionth time, these aren't cherry-picked because Crosby doesn't have like 6-7 Art Rosses to choose from. These are years where he should have won to further cement his legacy. Had he won against Benn and Sedin, he'd be at 4 Art Rosses and possibly another Hart/Lindsay. The argument vs McDavid would be far more interesting.

 

[Regal]

EDIT: I won't delete the post, I can admit I'm wrong here. This is % that say hockey is their favourite sport not who call themselves fans. My main contention still stands however, ice hockey is a niche sport still today much less in the 1920's. Saying hockey wasn't niche back then because it drew a decent number of spectators in two cities globally is crazy.

Ice hockey is still niche today nevermind in the 1920's. 3% of American adults call themselves hockey fans. Outside of like 10 countries the sport doesn't even register.

Favorite Sport	Percent of adults
Football	36
Baseball	12
Basketball	11
Soccer	4
Ice hockey	3
Auto racing	3
Ice/Figure skating	2

But if you’re still calling it niche today then it doesn’t matter that it was niche then by the same standards, only how the two compare. There’s certainly adjustments to consider for talent pool, but I think the point is that it was already a major sport in Canada at the time. It’s not like very few people played it.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I mentioned Benn earlier.

Crosby's overall resume is 2 Art Rosses, 2 Harts, 3 Lindsays, and 2 Rockets.

McDavid has 5 Art Rosses, 4 Ted Lindsays, 3 Harts, and 1 Rocket. It's not close and McDavid could add some more trophies to his collection this year.

The only reason this is still debated is because of Crosby's playoff success. In the regular season, McDavid has already run past him.

Are you even reading the posts you're replying to? I'm not commenting on Crosby vs McDavid here. I'm saying nitpicking random years is a bad argument to make.

Which is why I've posted this multiple times:

Crosby has no business being included in the Lemieux and Gretzky tier because he's obviously not as good as them. Him losing an Art Ross to Jamie Benn in one random year a decade ago is meaningless with that.

If he doesn't win a cup, he firmly ends up the #5 player of all time but most don't think he breaks into the top-4. If he wins a cup, he immediately breaks into that top-4 group and can legitimately end up #2 overall.

And McDavid lost to Draisaitl and Kucherov.

Bringing up "they lost to X for an award in a random year" argument is a silly argument. Just look at the overall resume rather than cherry-picking random years where oddities happen.

 

[Video Nasty]

You said Kane, not Benn.

Again, it's a dumb argument to make. Look at the player's overall resume rather than nitpicking random years where odd players win awards. No one is going to remember in 20 years that Crosby lost an Art Ross trophy to Jamie Benn in 2015. All that they'll remember is what he actually accomplished.

I'm not even arguing Crosby over McDavid here, McDavid is firmly on pace to overtake Crosby and end up a top-5 player of all time. I'm just saying "McDavid wouldn't lose an Art Ross to Benn!" is a bad argument for why.

I think a major difference between Crosby and McDavid is what we’ve been watching unfold in the scoring race this year.

I don’t believe for a second that at any point of his career, Crosby would have made a comeback from 20+ points down against players like Benn, Tavares, or any of the mid-tier stars high in the scoring races during those years, let alone against players like Kucherov and MacKinnon.

He just didn’t have that next gear. We can speculate it’s because of the concussions, but I never saw it from him in reality even before his injury issues.

He would have packed it in after an injury like McDavid had early in the season, that he was required to come back early from because the team continued to sink without him and was in panic mode.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I think a major difference between Crosby and McDavid is what we’ve been watching unfold in the scoring race this year.

I don’t believe for a second that Crosby would have made a comeback from 20-22 points down against players like Benn, Tavares, or any of the mid-tier stars high in the scoring races during those years, let alone against players like Kucherov and MacKinnon.

He just didn’t have that next gear. We can speculate it’s because of the concussions, but I never saw it from him in reality even before his injury issues.

He would have packed it after an injury like McDavid had early in the season, that he was required to come back early from because the sink continued to sink without him and was in panic mode.

Again, I'm not comparing McDavid and Crosby with my posts in here. I'm saying that "Crosby lost an Art Ross to Benn in 2015" is a silly argument for why McDavid is better.

McDavid is firmly on pace to end up the #5 player of all time, and the only real arguments against him not being there yet are longetivity (just because he's still young) and a lack of cup wins. By the time his career is over, he is extremely likely going to be that #5 ranked player of all time.

 

[Montreal Shadow]

Are you even reading the posts you're replying to? I'm not commenting on Crosby vs McDavid here. I'm saying nitpicking random years is a bad argument to make.

Which is why I've posted this multiple times:

Changes absolutely nothing. The Ovechkin argument is also nonsense because Ovechkin has what, 9 Rockets? You can bet your ass I wouldn't care if Crosby had lost to Benn and Sedin if he had 9 Art Rosses but he only has 2.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Changes absolutely nothing. The Ovechkin argument is also nonsense because Ovechkin has what, 9 Rockets? You can bet your ass I wouldn't care if Crosby had lost to Benn and Sedin if he had 9 Art Rosses but he only has 2.

Again, I'm saying your argument is bad, not that what you're arguing is wrong.

McDavid's case for ending up better than Crosby in the long-run is that he has been a much more productive player and has won more individual awards. The only argument as of right now for Crosby over McDavid is longetivity (just from Crosby being older) and team success. It's far more likely than not that McDavid ends up surpassing Crosby by the time his career is done, because that longetivity argument disappears with McDavid playing into his late 30s and the "team success" argument goes away entirely if McDavid can win at least 1 cup.

What Crosby did against Jamie Benn in 2015 is completely irrelevant of the comparison. That's the point I'm making.

 

[Tralfamadore]

Over Mack? Doubtful.

 

[Regal]

Kucherov and Draisaitl are far better than Sedin and Benn. Don't even start with this.

And it's not an oddity. Crosby only has 2 Art Rosses. He doesn't have 5-7 and lost once to a random player. He never completely left everyone in the dust. Not once and this is further exacerbated by him losing to a non hall-of-famer in his prime years.

Henrik Sedin was a worse player, but relative to the league his point production that season wasn’t much behind Draisaitl or Kucherov’s wins. This is a problem with focusing on the player names rather than the season at hand, and on winning or losing.

I do agree with your general point, but that season gets focused on too much because of Sedin. Sid’s year was arguably better than McDavid’s first two Art Rosses, and I’d argue it was his best full season.

 

[Video Nasty]

Again, I'm not comparing McDavid and Crosby with my posts in here. I'm saying that "Crosby lost an Art Ross to Benn in 2015" is a silly argument for why McDavid is better.

There’s multiple reasons why McDavid is better and the Crosby finishing behind Benn two seasons in a row fiasco is a mere curio.

You can tell it resonates with people though, because @Nathaniel was crowing throughout the season about how McDavid was experiencing a failure on that level. No, not really. Not when the two players in question are leagues beyond who Crosby lost to during years he had no excuse not winning.

And certainly not since McDavid didn’t pack it in. He’s next level. Crosby never showed he was capable of this level.

Zero doubt in mind that if roles were reversed, 29 year old McDavid wouldn’t have fumbled away the Art Ross to a 20 year old Crosby, and then never be heard of it again in a scoring race.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

What has McDavid even done to consider him to even have a remote chance at taking 2nd place all time?
imo there's no chance in hell anyone ever over takes Gretzky, Lemieux or Orr.

I feel like at most he could become the 5th player all time or get as high as 4th. but 1,2,3 feel pretty set in stone.

 

[HFpapi]

But if you’re still calling it niche today then it doesn’t matter that it was niche then by the same standards, only how the two compare. There’s certainly adjustments to consider for talent pool, but I think the point is that it was already a major sport in Canada at the time. It’s not like very few people played it.

Very few people did play it though. The entire league was Canadian, like literally 98+ %. Canada had a population of 17 million. How can that not be a niche sport? That's the definition of a niche sport, a sport played by literally only one country.

The modern equivalent is Aussie Rules Football. A sport played by only one country that has a pop of 20 million. Do you want to make the argument that Aussie Rules Football is not a niche sport because it's widely played and attended in Australia?

 

[cupface52]

And MacK this year is keeping up with McDavid. If you're going to be disingenuous, just say so. He played 71 games, that's a huge sample size. He didn't play 40.

The point still stands that beating Ted Lindsay and Maurice Richard by huge margins is far better than doing that to Brad Marchand. If you're going to be dishonest and pretend that MacKinnon wouldn't have considerably shrunken the gap had he been afforded more games, then there's nothing to talk about.

Lemieux on the other hand was the one missing tons of games and still ridiculing the competition.

I simply don't know, and don't credit players for if/maybe. Do players deserve credit for games missed playing a playstyle that comes with a higher risk of injury? If Mack wanted to be afforded more games, maybe he needed to switch to a style of hockey which might have come at a cost of production. Mack has been notorious for missing games.

 

[Empoleon8771]

There’s multiple reasons why McDavid is better and the Crosby finishing behind Benn two seasons in a row fiasco is a mere curio.

You can tell it resonates with people though, because @Nathaniel was crowing throughout the season about how McDavid was experiencing a failure on that level. No, not really. Not when the two players in question are leagues beyond who Crosby lost to during years he had no excuse not winning.

And certainly not since McDavid didn’t pack it in. He’s next level. Crosby never showed he was capable of this level.

Yeah I agree, I just don't know why people focus on a dumb one

The only argument for Crosby at this point is longetivity, just because you know he'll finish with 1700+ points in the NHL while McDavid still has half a career left, and team success. Both of those arguments are flimsy obviously, which is why most people realize McDavid is firmly on pace to overtake Crosby as McDavid plays more in his career and keeps winning more awards. If McDavid wins a cup, it becomes downright inarguable for him over Crosby.

It's even silly that Crosby is being mentioned in this thread to begin with, he's not even the clear cut #5 player of all time. He's significantly closer to #10 overall than he is to #4 overall, just because of the large difference between #4 and #5 as of right now.

 

[Montreal Shadow]

Again, I'm saying your argument is bad, not that what you're arguing is wrong.

But it isn't. You accused me of cherry-picking. This is what cherry-picking is:

Cherry-picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data

The bolded is vital because you used a perfect example with Ovechkin. He has 9 Rockets so losing to Perry in his good years is merely an anomaly. Crosby, however, only has 2 Art Rosses to choose from. What do you want me to pick exactly? You're talking as if he had 10 and I only selected two seasons where he failed to prove my point. I'm not deliberately omitting valid data. There are no other valid data.

For years, people argued that McDavid hadn't reached Crosby's level even in the regular season and this was shaky as soon as McDavid's 3rd Art Ross. If Crosby was the offensive juggernaut that so many thought he was, he wouldn't have had a problem securing an Art Ross from the likes of Benn and Sedin. We cut him some slack in his injured years and those past his prime. As you can see, however, there aren't that many to choose from because Crosby's most dominant seasons were cut short. Otherwise, he was elite but never completely blew away the rest of the league.

What Crosby did against Jamie Benn in 2015 is completely irrelevant of the comparison. That's the point I'm making.

No, it's 100% relevant because this is two Art Rosses that he should have won that he lost. You made weak counter-arguments by bringing up Kucherov and Draisaitl who are far better players than Benn and Sedin, and then you equated Crosby's 2 Art Rosses to Ovechkin's 9 rockets. Come on man. 12 Art Rosses instead of 10, meh who cares? 4 instead of 2? Quite a big gap there, chief.

If you're going to disagree, at least make it make sense.

 

[Video Nasty]

What has McDavid even done to consider

This is how I know you just won’t give the player a fair shake.

Because he’s flirting with a 6th Art Ross, 8th consecutive top 2 finish in both raw points and PPG, has 3 Harts, what will be 3 additional finalist nominations + 2 additional top 5 all consecutive, has 4 Lindsays, drops 100+ points virtually every year, is currently 3rd in all-time PPG and building the kind of buffer which could never see him drop back below Orr again, had a 153 point season in today’s environment, and follows it up with a 100+ assist season to be.

What has he ever done? Come on now. Nearly everything he does lately seems to come with the caveat “other than Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, etc.”

You’re close-minded if you can’t conceive of a timeline where this player accomplishes enough to be ranked ahead of everyone but Gretzky, especially with people who favor both talent and longevity, with minimal what if nonsense.

Maybe it doesn’t happen, but he is the first legitimate threat to breaking up the Big Four as it stands.

 

[DingDongCharlie]

The no Cups arguememt doesn’t hold water. The Buffalo Sabres Dominik Hasek was the best goaltender to ever play the game and that was before winning 2 on the stacked Red Wings. At the end the Cups are a team achievement. Even those mentioning the lack of Cups are saying he should leave Edmonton as the organization has “held” him back from winning. Oh, so you’re saying Edmontons lack of Stanley Cups isn’t at all due to McDavid himself? Thanks for proving said point.

He’s not yet top 4. If his production continues into his mid 30s he will be the clear cut #5 and probably a really good argument for being top3. I can’t see him passing Gretzky and Lemieux.

I tried reading thru the whole thread but tapped out at someone saying Mario was #4. No chance he’s behind Howe. Just get real

 

[cupface52]

What has McDavid even done to consider him to even have a remote chance at taking 2nd place all time?
imo there's no chance in hell anyone ever over takes Gretzky, Lemieux or Orr.

I feel like at most he could become the 5th player all time or get as high as 4th. but 1,2,3 feel pretty set in stone.

If you know how the players career is going turn out, who do you pick to keep for 20 years for the most team success.

6 very dominant years, 2 more elite years, and a few injury riddled seasons.
4 very dominant years, 5 more elite years, 3 top 10-15, and a bunch of injury riddled seasons

or

2-3 dominant years, 8 more years as clear #1, another 5 years as top 5, and another 3-5 as top 10. Assuming McDavid keeps it up and stays healthy.

 

[Montreal Shadow]

The no Cups arguememt doesn’t hold water. The Buffalo Sabres Dominik Hasek was the best goaltender to ever play the game and that was before winning 2 on the stacked Red Wings. At the end the Cups are a team achievement. Even those mentioning the lack of Cups are saying he should leave Edmonton as the organization has “held” him back from winning. Oh, so you’re saying Edmontons lack of Stanley Cups isn’t at all due to McDavid himself? Thanks for proving said point.

He’s not yet top 4. If his production continues into his mid 30s he will be the clear cut #5 and probably a really good argument for being top3. I can’t see him passing Gretzky and Lemieux.

I tried reading thru the whole thread but tapped out at someone saying Mario was #4. No chance he’s behind Howe. Just get real

On HF at least, Lemieux is widely considered the 4th best of the Big 4.

Not much of a guy to argue for or against Howe. I tend to avoid debating the modern era vs pre-modern.

 

[Video Nasty]

We cut him some slack in his injured years and those past his prime.

This is a good point (as is your entire post).

Even I cut him slack because though he didn’t win them, I can easily concede that 2010-2011 and 2012-2013 were fairly likely Art Rosses. I’m not comfortable with imaginary trophies in seasons that are written in stone.

And if I were, then I would have to include also imaginary what if accomplishments for McDavid like how he should already have 8 consecutive 100+ point seasons were it not for COVID…or also from the same season, playing through rehabbing a major knee injury sustained in the final game of the prior season that would have sidelined him for a year if he had chosen to get surgery. We learned how severe this actually was through that documentary and it explains some of that year. McDavid has a couple of what ifs like that, but as proving this season, they’re so minor to his overall case, that they’re fairly irrelevant. They’re not heavily relied on like they are for Crosby.

The fact is, Crosby never showed me enough before and after his injuries to give him that automatic benefit of the doubt that others are so loose and carefree giving.

If he had won in the years he didn’t, then he’d be an entirely different player.

A even better one.