Nadal On Clay
Djokovic > Nadal > Federer
- Oct 11, 2017
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I’m surprised, you, of all the people, is asking that question after you clearly acknowledged the posts I added below and even admitted you did not think Crosby had a similar dominance in PPG vs his peers than McDavid.Ok so now I have to ask:
What makes McDavid and Crosby close ?
McDavid has a bigger gap in art ross wins to Crosby than Crosby does to Toews.
They’re definitely in the same tier. They have different skill sets, but bring a similar impact to their team.
FWIW, here is Crosby vs top 10 players in ppg for his first 9 seasons (2006 to 2014) and McDavid vs top 10 players in ppg for his first 9 seasons (2016 to 2024)
2006-2014 (min 300 GP)
Crosby - 1,40
Malkin - 1,22
Ovechkin - 1,20
Thornton - 1,11
Spezza - 1,06
Datsyuk - 1,06
Savard - 1,04
Stamkos - 1,04
Kovalchuk - 1,04
St. Louis - 1,04
2016-2024 (min 300 GP)
McDavid - 1,52
Kucherov - 1,34
MacKinnon - 1,24
Draisaitl - 1,23
Panarin - 1,16
Matthews - 1,15
Crosby - 1,15
Pastrnak - 1,11
Kane - 1,11
Marner - 1,11
Similar environments with Crosby/McDavid separating themselves from the pack with 3-4 other players and then a logjam from 5th to 10th.
Kucherov doesn’t come close to 144 points in the 2010-2014 seasons. You’re really underrating the huge difference in scoring levels. 132 points in 2010-11 would be the equivalent of 149 points today just adjusted based on league GPG. Crosby’s PPG dominance over his peers from 2010-11 to 2013-14 is actually better than McDavid’s over the past 4 years.
2010-2014
Crosby 1.47
Malkin 1.20
Stamkos 1.14
St.Louis 1.05
Giroux 1.05
2020-2024
McDavid 1.74
Kucherov 1.55
MacKinnon 1.52
Draisaitl 1.44
Panarin 1.30
The difference obviously is that competition changes a bit year to year and he didn’t play enough games to suggest it was sustainable. But even if we give him only 1 point per game for the 115 games he missed in that time frame, which is extremely unlikely considering he has a 1.25 PPG for his career, we’d still be looking at a situation where he was well above his peers at a 1.29 PPG (nearly a quarter of a point per game over 4th place).
McDavid’s proved himself over full seasons and he looks like he’s going to be dominant for longer, but in terms of per game production there isn’t a huge gap between them over their first 9 years.
You’re still wrong about the bolded part, though. In fact, Crosby was even better than McDavid at sustaining his pace production (and exceeding it) in the 2nd half of a season having done it in 3 of the 4 healthy seasons (>75% GP) he played going into his age 23 season (2011) compared to McDavid, who had only done it in 2 of his 4 healthy seasons before going into his age 23 season (2021). There’s absolutely no reasons why Crosby shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt for the seasons where he missed games in the middle of his prime, given the track record he had shown us beforehand.
Take a look at what McDavid’s trophy cabinet would look like if he had played the same % of games as Crosby during his age 23, 24 and 25 seasons:
Art Ross x 2
Hart x 1
Lindsey x 3 (Might still have won the Lindsey in 2023, just like Crosby still won it in 2013)
Now this is what Crosby had after his 9th season (where McDavid is at now.)
Art Ross x 2
Hart x 2
Lindsey x 3
Crosby just got really unlucky with the timing of his injuries. That’s it. McDavid should obviously be given more credit, as he actually played these games and made the most of it, but to act like they are not in the same tier as players after their 9th season is just ignorant, especially because Crosby literally won the Ross after his first healthy season in 4 years, in 2014, in a dominant fashion.
I still see a lot of members of the a anti-Crosby police are having trouble to swallow the fact that Crosby has been just as dominant as McDavid in the games he was able to play in their first 9 seasons. Let’s breakdown their first 9 regular seasons in bits and pieces to further prove that claim.
Age 18 season
Crosby: 102 pts in 81 GP, 6th in PPG
McDavid: 48 pts in 45 GP, 3rd in PPG
Age 19 season
Crosby: 120 pts in 81 GP (1st), 1st in PPG
McDavid: 100 pts in 82 GP (1st), 1st in PPG
Their first 2 seasons are basically a wash. Maybe a slight edge to Crosby for having slightly better numbers vs his peers in 2007, but nothing more.
Age 20 season
Here are what both of them were doing until game 45 of their 3rd season when Crosby suffered his well-documented ankle sprain:
Crosby: 63 pts in 45 GP - 1st in PPG
McDavid: 50 pts in 45 GP - 13th in PPG
McDavid ended up winning his 2nd Ross by having an impressive 2nd half of the season while Crosby was still trying to get back to 100% from the injury. Here’s how they finished the season:
Crosby: 72 pts in 53 games - 2nd in PPG (behind Ovechkin)
McDavid: 108 pts in 82 games - 1st in PPG
You can argue that their level of play was pretty similar during that season; Crosby having the better first half, while McDavid having the de facto better 2nd half. Kudos to McDavid for finishing the season in strength and grabbing some hardware along the way.
Age 21 season
Crosby: 103 pts in 77 GP (3rd), 3rd in PPG
McDavid: 116 pts in 78 games (2nd), 2nd in PPG
Age 22 season
Crosby: 109 pts in 81 GP (2nd), 3rd in PPG
McDavid: 97 pts in 64 GP (2nd), 2nd in PPG
Not much to say about their age 21 and 22 seasons. You can maybe give the edge to McDavid due to the slightly better finishes, but it can be argued that Crosby had the better top end competition (Ovechkin/Malkin vs Kucherov/Draisaitl)
Now it gets interesting…
Age 23 season
Crosby:
First 41 games; 66 pts in 41 GP (1st), 1st in PPG.
McDavid:
- Led 2nd in points by 10, 5th in points by 16, 10th in points by 22
- Led 2nd in PPG by 0,24 (18%), 5th in PPG by 0,37 (30%) and 10th in PPG by 0,52 (48%).
First 41 games: 69 pts in 41 GP (1st), 1st in PPG
Rest of the season: 36 pts in 15 GP (2,40 PPG)
- Led 2nd in points by 8, 5th in points by 21, 10th in points by 25
- Led 2nd in PPG by 0,19 (13%), 5th in PPG by 0,34 (25%), 10th in PPG by 0,50 (42%)
Totals: 105 pts in 56 GP (1,88 PPG)
Comments
- Both Crosby and McDavid had a pretty similar start to their age 23 season (first 41 games). You could even argue that Crosby had the small edge due to the better production margins between him and the 2nd, 5th and 10th scorer when he got injured.
- Nothing that McDavid had done before his 23 y/o season could make us believe that he was able to put that season together. The most points he had scored in the first 56 games of a season before was 84 in 2019-2020 (a mark that was matched by Kucherov in 2019 and beaten by Draisaitl in 2020).
- After the first 41 GP of the 2020-2021 season, Crosby’s and McDavid’s RS resume were really, really similar. McDavid had won an extra Ross and Lindsey in his age 21 season, while at the same age, Crosby had suffered his high ankle sprain at a point in the season where he was leading the league in PPG by a bigger margin than the one McDavid had on the 2nd place at the end of 2018 - the year he won his 2nd Ross (1,40 - Crosby vs 1,38 - Spezza and 1,32 - McDavid vs 1,31 - MacKinnon).
- Crosby would have needed 39 pts in the remaining 41 games to win the scoring title that year, which is good for 0,95 PPG throughout the half of a season, something Crosby never came close of doing, with his worst half season until that point (excluding his rookie season) being 48 pts in 40 GP, good for 1,20 PPG.
Age 24 season
Crosby: 37 pts in 22 games, 1st in PPG
McDavid: 123 points in 80 games, 1st in PPG
Comments
Age 25 season
- That season is really hard to compare between both players because of 2 reasons. 1) Crosby simply didn’t play enough games. 2) The games he played were not consecutive, so it would be unfair to try to compare the 22 games spread throughout the year vs 80 games of dominant hockey, consecutively.
- McDavid won the Ross in a 24 y/o season where he was expected to win, but it wasn’t necessarily done in dominating fashion like his previous one or his next one.
- Although I don’t necessarily think Malkin would have won the Ross if Crosby had played the full season, I think it’s unfair to crown someone who played in 27% of the total available games during a season, even if the likeliness of Crosby winning the scoring title was probably the highest, given his dominance in the previous seasons and in the 2 seasons that followed.
Crosby:
- Got injured at the start of game 36
After 35 games: 56 pts in 35 GP, 1st in PPG (1,60)
McDavid
- Led 2nd in points by 12, 5th in points by 15, 10th in points by 21
- Led 2nd in PPG by 0,30 (23%), 5th in PPG by 0,34 (27%), 10th in PPG by 0,54 (51%)
- Led 2nd in points by 12, 5th in points by 15, 10th in points by 21
After 35 games: 66 pts in 35 GP, 1st in PPG (1,89)
Rest of the season: 87 pts in 47 GP, 1st in PPG (1,85)
- Led 2nd in points by 10, 5th in points by 17, 10th in points by 24.
- Led 2nd in PPG by 0,29 (18%), 5th in PPG by 0,41 (30%), 10th in PPG by 0,58 (44%)
Totals: 153 pts in 82 GP - 1,87 PPG
Comments
Age 26 season
- Once again, McDavid and Crosby are pretty neck and neck in terms of dominance during the first 35 games of their respective season, the main difference is that McDavid actually got to finish the season, which so far has been the best season he’s played in.
- McDavid’s PPG dominance has stayed pretty much the same in the first 35 games (1,89), compared to the 47 last games (1,85). He deserves a lot of credit for that, given it was the first and only time he had shown the world he was able to sustain an extremely high per game productivity for a 82 game season from start to finish, something Crosby couldn’t do, partly due to the freak injuries he suffered.
- Even if Crosby had sustained his pace for the 13 remaining games, chances are that his season would never be seen as being as good as McDavid’s due to it being a lockout shortened season.
Crosby: 104 pts in 82 games, 1st in PPG
McDavid: 132 points in 76 games, 2nd in PPG
Comments
Final observations
- This is a really, really important season for Crosby, which proves his dominance from his previous seasons were no flukes. He wins the Ross in a really dominating fashion with one of the most impressive production margins against his peers in a season of the 21st century.
- Still a very strong season from McDavid despite finishing 3rd in scoring.
Here’s a decent article about Crosby’s misdiagnosed neck injury in 2011: Bell: Crosby's injury no simple matter
- There’s no real justification to put Crosby ahead of McDavid from an offensive production standpoint after their first 9 seasons. Posters doing so are as biased as the ones who put McDavid closer to Gretzky/Lemieux than to Crosby in terms of per-game dominance.
- Throughout their first 9 seasons, the major difference in production between the 2 players have been the key time missed by Crosby because of injuries, which led to McDavid being able to put up video games numbers during those games. When you compare their seasons head to head with how each one of them performed from age 23-25 in the games Crosby had played, it’s really close.
- McDavid clearly has the better regular season resume up to this point, mostly due to him not having as much bad luck than Sid rather than being more dominant as proven by the analysis of this post.
- Trophy counting is absolutely useless without context when comparing players abilities. Both McDavid and Crosby have the same trophy case if McDavid had played the same % of games as Crosby in their age 23, 24 and 25 season.
- Nothing McDavid achieved before his age 23 season could have prepared us for what he accomplished from 23 to 25, anymore than Crosby. Why could have McDavid been able to sustain his paces for full seasons while Crosby wouldn’t?
- If you hold Crosby’s injuries agaisnt him from 2011 and 2013 due to a “lack of durability”, you need to familiarize yourself more with the body’s anatomy and with the science behind sports injuries.
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