Is mcdavid too good not to win a cup?
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JFedol
🅱🅱🅱 M.I.P Pac 1971-1996, Makaveli Tha Don 🐐
In way more dominant fashion. This year's depth + team defense is on another level.
It's about as crazy as pointing out how versatile Crosby was as a player that helped his team create depth; something that is always thrown out as lacking on the Oilers.
It's about as crazy as that being an edge that Crosby has over McDavid as a player which closes any gap they may have in their regular season resumes due to Crosby's bad luck and bad timing with injuries in his prime.
Supposedly the discrepancy in goaltending as a factor has be debunked.
I don't have time to check but I think the Pens won 3 Cups. Funny how their 2009 run gets forgotten.
Too bad McDavid isn't good enough to play with lower depth chart forwards, let alone without Draisatil, at ES consistently enough so the Oilers could load up a 2nd line (or even a 3rd line like they did in 2016).
Too bad McDavid is so reliant on his speed to generate offense that he cannot commit to playing as big of a role defensively as Crosby did or that he, and his team, have to be so aggressive offensively which leads to leaky team defense.
This thread is basically giving McDavid full credit for putting up gaudy numbers in shootouts then all the credit when his team actually plays solid all around hockey and his numbers go down.
Fourier
Registered User
I'll address the bolded first. The solid all around hockey the team is playing is ES hockey. That is where the team has improved immensely. How has McDavid done at ES compared to the "run and gun" years when the reached the WCF?
2022 4.82 pts/60
2024 3.17 pts/60
2025 4.51 pts/60
(Crosby in the cup years: 3.34, 1.5, 2.78)
And I will repeat what I said previously: The drop in McDavid's ppg is entirely due to a significant drop in pp points which is a combination of the team's lower success rate and the fact that the Oilers get very few pp opportunities (on average 2.18 per game). Since the cap era started only the 2014-2015 Washington Capitals have had fewer pp opportunities amongst teams playing at least 10 games. During their cup years the Penguin's had 4.04, 3.21 and 3.12 chances per game. And that does not take into account that pp opportunities tend to go down in the later rounds. That would be a difference of between 11 and 22 more pp's for the Oilers.
You are fixated on McDavid playing with Leon yet you ignore that in two of those years one of the main reasons they played together was that Leon was playing with significant injuries that hampered his ability to play center. In 2022 Leon was 1GF and 9GA playing center away from McDavid due to the fact that his high ankle sprain seriously impacted his mobility. Last year he had multiple injuries including broken ribs, a broken finger and an injury to his other hand. But here is the thing: from 2022-24 the Oilers scored 31 goals at ES with McDavid on the ice but not Leon and gave up 23. With neither on the ice it was 33-48.
Now lets talk about who were Crosby's playoff linemates over the cup years. Let's look at 2015-2016 through 2016-2017? His top three linemates over those years were
Connor Sheary 407 minutes
Patric Hornqvist 375 minutes
Jake Geuntzel 294 minutes
The next two were Malkin 54 minutes and Kessel 50 minutes. With Nashville Hornqvist scored 21, 22, 27 and 30 goals in his four full seasons but you seem to think he is a career third liner that Crosby carried. Sheary scored 23 goals in 61 games in 2016-2017 and then 19 goals in 71 games in Washington. He was a tweener but you can't argue he was a plug. Geuntzel scored 16 goals in 40 games as a rookie and quickly became one of the leagues top goal scorers.
Crosby also got a lot of time with Kris Letang when he was healthy in 2016. In those two years with the two of them on the ice together the Pens had 10 ES GF and 7 GA. Letang without Crosby 14-11, Crosby without Letang 29-30. The rest of the team without either 60-41.
Crosby without any of Letang, Malkin or Kessel 25-29 in 2016 and 2017. The rest of the team without any of these guys 26-21.
How is it then that while Crosby was on the ice without any of the team's top stars the Pens were outscored at ES while without any of those same stars on the ice the team managed to win the ES battle unless maybe the Pens depth did actually contribute to the wins. And that depth by the way would include the goaltenders. (And yes I know that Crosby played against the oppositions best a lot. So does McDavid and pretty much every other top star in today's NHL.)
Somehow you seem to want to attribute all of the success the Pens had while Crosby was on the bench to some magical aura that Crosby gave off but the Oilers poor performance when McDavid was not on the ice was somehow a sign of his inferiority as a player. It could not possibly be that the Pens had better depth in those cup years to support Crosby that the Oilers had to support McDavid (and again depth includes goaltending). That would just be too big a stretch.
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That's a lot of work to say "Let's completely ignore what happened in 2009".
By 2016, Crosby had clearly established he could produce with any quality of linemates. He likely had the worse set of career linemates out of any player considered to be in the Top 20 all-time.
He also had crearly established himself as a very good two-way player and having versatility to play a puck possession style affectively as seen the in the 2014 Olympics.
Since you brought up Sheary. He had played 36 games at the NHL level before the playoffs. He was T185th in goals and T293rd in points during those 36 games.
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Fourier
Registered User
In 2009 Crosby had 21 ES points in the playoffs. 14 came playing with Kunitz and 15 with Bill Guerin. 4 came while playing with Malkin in only 60 minutes. 10 of his points were on the pp where he had guys like Malkin, Letang, Gonchar and Guerin to play with, Who are the plugs he carried in 2009 that support your argument?
Crosby had all of 10 ES points in the 2016 playoffs in 24 games. (McDavid has 16 ES points this year in 11 games). Letang and Hornqvist were on the ice for 8 of those points, Sheary for only 6.
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Namedropping with no context at its best. I am sure you would point out that Crosby benefitted from playing with Mario in his rookie year.
Malkin and Crosby outscored their Pen teammates by 100% in both the regular season and in the playoffs in 2009 while notably not playing with Malkin at ES; a major benefit of the Pens. That points to their linemates being passengers.
How come McDavid couldn't carry a line of lower depth chart linemates so that Draisaitl could play with the Oilers best wingers when he was injured?
It's about as crazy as you not answering the question.
If all these made up spun stories are true as many of you claim, why did he win 1 series in his 30s? Did all these things stop being true over night?
So winning after age 30 is the primary metric for playoff greatness? Guess how many Cups the Big Four won after age 30?
Zero.
How about we focus on what he did win and how he was able to create much needed team depth by performing regardless of who was on his line? This isn't rocket science.
No it's not, but it highlights the importance of good teams surrounding the players and that one guy can't do it on his own.
How does a perfect player/leader get relegated into irrelevancy for a decade when he is still a top 5-10 player? A bad team, in the same way bad D/goaltending has sunk the Oilers.
JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK
Last Real Captain
old ass bill guerin and kunitz with his 1 goal in 24 playoff games
bleedgreen
Registered User
I hope 97 wins this year because he deserves his place and trolls will always troll if he doesn’t win one. Gretzky never carried a team half this bad to anything, and as others have said the Oilers won without Gretzky because they were that strong a team. While you couldn’t say that about Lemieux’s Pens because they never won without him, Lemiuex’s teams were just as stacked if not more so than Gretzky’s.
The true markers of the greatness of these players is too closely tied to the cup wins. Mcdavid is already up with the greatest imo, I hope he has another 8-10 years in him so he can put up the historic numbers where they should be, which is the only downfall of Lemieux with his health.
Watching Mcdavid move up the all time playoff scorers list this year has been fun.
The true markers of the greatness of these players is too closely tied to the cup wins. Mcdavid is already up with the greatest imo, I hope he has another 8-10 years in him so he can put up the historic numbers where they should be, which is the only downfall of Lemieux with his health.
Watching Mcdavid move up the all time playoff scorers list this year has been fun.
McDavid's comparables aren't Wayne and Mario. His offensive comparables are Jagr and Crosby.
This is why people come and "troll" in McDavid's threads.
bleedgreen
Registered User
As someone who’s been around for good portions of all of these careers I feel comfortable disagreeing with you. Jagr and Crosby deserve their tier, and from the day he stepped on the ice Mcdavid’s path has been a cut above it. Hopefully he has longevity to keep backing it up.
Who is arguing that Crosby did it on his own? The argument is he brought more value to his teams than McDavid and that value isn't measured solely by PPG.
Fourier
Registered User
Who are these best wingers you are talking about here??? Zach Hyman??? He actually played with Leon until he got hurt. He is also a guy who came to the Oilers at age 29 having never scored more than 21 goals or had more than 41 points despite playing much of his time with the Leaf's core of Matthews, Marner, Tavares and Nylander. Last year he scored 54. Do you think McDavid may have had some impact on that? Or is it just Crosby that makes guys like Kunitz better? Oh wait Kunitz scored 25 goals and had 60 points playing for the Ducks. So which of these two guys is the plug and which is the top end winger??? Or is it possible that both are neither star nor plug.
When Leon was hurt in 2022 he could barely turn on his skates. Before he got hurt Draisaitl was playing with Hyman and Yamamoto on his own line. McDavid had Kane and the legendary Jesse Puljujarvi. Nuge centered his own line with Josh Archibald and Derek Ryan. So your top 9 wingers were Hyman, Kane, Yamamoto, Puljujarvi, Archibald and Ryan. After Draisaitl got hurt you could have given him a prime Mike Bossy and he still would have been impossible for him to play center effectively. So Leon moved up with McDavid and a revolving door of wingers. By the end of the Colorado series you also had Yamamoto with a concussion and both Nuge and the legendary JP had significant shoulder injuries.
I have never denied that Crosby is a great player who contributed substantially to the Pens wins. But there is no evidence what so ever to support the assertion that had the Oilers had a prime Crosby the last few years instead of McDavid that their outcome would have been a cup.
So we're just ignoring how scoring has gone up recently? McDavid's numbers in the playoffs were pretty poor when goalies were allowed to wear larger pads.
Fourier
Registered User
He's old and not as good anymore? And his teammates declined even more.
But the reason he hasn't won any series after 30 is goaltending. 2012 and 2021 goaltending collapses are something that McDavid has never had to deal with. And in 2022 they dominated but had an AHLer in net
So if he brought more value, what happened in his 30s? It's very clear he was still an amazing player, yet no results at all.
Value isn't solely measured by ppg, except when you are in the historic realm of basically supplanting Lemieux which is where McDavid is at for the playoffs.
Teams matter way more than most think.
