Is McDavid Top 10 For You All Time Already? If Not How Much More Does He Have to do?
- Thread starter NVious
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Talent, absolutely. Career, will take a few more years. But it's only a matter of time and it won't take long.
McDavid makes a bad team at least good, does that count?
none of these players won a cup......they were members of cup winning teams. Maybe you have hockey confused with tennis and golf
JackSlater
Registered User
- Apr 27, 2010
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Probably not but he's close. I don't care about his awards. In terms of peak he isn't a slam dunk top 10 player even though he may be in that group, but his consistency in terms of year to year excellence is already among the best ever. He'll benefit from playing more because margins are small at the very top.
KrisLetAngry
MrJukeBoy
Dr Jan Itor
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guess what every player except 1 has in common. All won cups in pre cap era when you could buy a team to put around your superstar
brain dead argument. The best players play at most 25 minutes a game...so is he responsible for the 35 minutes he is not on the ice? He also plays with 5 other players on the ice the same time. Is he responsible for all the bad plays and mistakes they make? Is it his fault that his team may draft or develop poorly? Is it his fault that he is a superstar and gets paid accordingly thus leaving less room under the salary cap to build a team around him. Is it his fault that he is so good that he elevates his team to a higher finish in the standings thus drafting later in the round.
Another poster posted their top 15 centers with Mcdavid at 15 because he had no cups. !3 of those 14 had somnething in common...no salary cap era...The other was Crosby,,,and if Pittsburgh had not been lucky enough to get Malkin he quite possibly might not have any cups
- Oct 9, 2012
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I'm pretty sure everyone is already aware he's easily head that way if not top 5.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
He's certainly on track for it, and seasons like this one are moving him up the list very quickly.
That being said, let's think through what he's up against in the top-10.
I assume everyone wants to see some goalie representation on that list, and Hasek/Roy are near universal choices for two spots.
I assume everyone also wants to see some defense representation. Orr is a truly universal choice, and everyone has a favorite among Bourque/Harvey/Lidstrom. So let's say it's 2-3 defensemen.
That actually leaves only 5-6 spots for forwards. So the question is really: do you consider McDavid currently a top 5-6 forward all-time?
I'll start with the easy ones that don't leave much room for argument:
Gretzky - Hopefully nobody is seriously putting him over Gretzky at this point in time.
Crosby - At this point McDavid has matched Crosby's regular season peak (e.g. they are tied with 2 Hart trophies) but Crosby has literally twice the career and there's a HUGE playoff gap.
So that leaves 3-4 more spots for forwards, with the following near untouchable:
Lemieux - Consensus big-4 player. McDavid has actually had a very similar career through age 25, which was when Lemieux checked Stanley Cups off his to-do list. There's actually a decent chance for McDavid to catch or exceed Lemieux at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.
Howe - Consensus big-4 player. Probably harder to catch than Lemieux, in that Howe has a lot of appeal for people who value an all-around game and extreme longevity. Again Stanley Cups come into play, in a big way.
That leaves 1-2 more spots for McDavid to challenge. The typical choices for those spots: Bobby Hull, Beliveau, Jagr, Richard, Ovechkin, Messier, Lafleur, Esposito... Howie Morenz if you dig the old times. That's a lot of competition for 1-2 spots, and McDavid needs to make his case against all of them to be top-10. That's going to require a good deal of longevity, and at least some sort of playoff success.
Mind you, having the Regular Season Peak component in place is no small feat. Very few players have ever touched the level he's playing at, so really he has quite an advantage in the race if he can just get the other pieces to fall into place.
That being said, let's think through what he's up against in the top-10.
I assume everyone wants to see some goalie representation on that list, and Hasek/Roy are near universal choices for two spots.
I assume everyone also wants to see some defense representation. Orr is a truly universal choice, and everyone has a favorite among Bourque/Harvey/Lidstrom. So let's say it's 2-3 defensemen.
That actually leaves only 5-6 spots for forwards. So the question is really: do you consider McDavid currently a top 5-6 forward all-time?
I'll start with the easy ones that don't leave much room for argument:
Gretzky - Hopefully nobody is seriously putting him over Gretzky at this point in time.
Crosby - At this point McDavid has matched Crosby's regular season peak (e.g. they are tied with 2 Hart trophies) but Crosby has literally twice the career and there's a HUGE playoff gap.
So that leaves 3-4 more spots for forwards, with the following near untouchable:
Lemieux - Consensus big-4 player. McDavid has actually had a very similar career through age 25, which was when Lemieux checked Stanley Cups off his to-do list. There's actually a decent chance for McDavid to catch or exceed Lemieux at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.
Howe - Consensus big-4 player. Probably harder to catch than Lemieux, in that Howe has a lot of appeal for people who value an all-around game and extreme longevity. Again Stanley Cups come into play, in a big way.
That leaves 1-2 more spots for McDavid to challenge. The typical choices for those spots: Bobby Hull, Beliveau, Jagr, Richard, Ovechkin, Messier, Lafleur, Esposito... Howie Morenz if you dig the old times. That's a lot of competition for 1-2 spots, and McDavid needs to make his case against all of them to be top-10. That's going to require a good deal of longevity, and at least some sort of playoff success.
Mind you, having the Regular Season Peak component in place is no small feat. Very few players have ever touched the level he's playing at, so really he has quite an advantage in the race if he can just get the other pieces to fall into place.
- Apr 20, 2016
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If he wins a rocket this year, there's a good chance he ties Crosby in the number of awards for his career. That also is if you count the Messier Leadership award as a major trophy. If you don't, he has an opportunity to pass him at 26 years old.
Great players make GOOD teams great. Edmonton is NOT a good team. Not even remotely. They rode smith to the playoffs because he played like he was on crack on last time before he was toast.
SoupNazi
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- Feb 6, 2010
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I don’t like the ‘no Cups’ narrative when some of the players in front of him played in a 6 team league.
By the time he retires he will clearly be top 10.
By the time he retires he will clearly be top 10.
jigglysquishy
Registered User
Like 98% of us agree with this and most of us are thinking he ends up as the consensus #5.
But he's still in the first half of his career. Are we judging him on what he's done or on what he will do?
He will win a Cup one day and it's on that day you celebrate him as a Cup winner.
When Yzerman and Sakic were his age they weren't Cup winners either. But Detroit didn't have the parade in 1991.
Bobby Orr and Peter Forsberg(not top ten but undoubtedly top 30) don't have 1000 points
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
| Crosby | McDavid | |
| Hart | 2 | 2 |
| Lindsay | 3 | 3 |
| Ross | 2 | 4 |
| Smythe | 2 | 0 |
| Postseason All Star C (1st) | 4 | 4 |
| Postseason All Star C (2nd) | 4 | 1 |
| Richard | 2 | 0 |
| Total | 19 | 14 |
I expect McDavid will catch him soon, but it won't be this year.
It seems inevitable that McDavid passes Crosby in Harts and Lindsays this season, with a good chance to widen the gap by mid-decade. That's a huge deal. There's a massive difference between 2 Harts (19 players have done this) and 4 Harts (3 players have done this). At that point, the only thing keeping him from a Lemieux or Orr level legacy would be Stanley Cup rings -- and that might be the hardest hill to climb.
Came here basically to say this and put another way he has a killer cake just needs to touch up on the icing.
- Oct 9, 2012
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Takes more than just trophies to be a top player
Crosby is the better two way player
Crosby is the better leader
The thing is that his insane 7 year prime and then his rookie seasons give him one of the top 5 primes ever.
That really pushes the needle for me especially after his last playoff performance.
As of today, maybe not, but he'll definitely be there when all is said and done.
The whole Cups thing doesn't resonate for me. It'd help, but it does not define one's legacy. Ray Bourque would not be a lessor all-time d-man if he didn't chase a Cup with Colorado.
There is only so much he can do. He's not the GM of his team like LeBron James and Jack Eichel.
The whole Cups thing doesn't resonate for me. It'd help, but it does not define one's legacy. Ray Bourque would not be a lessor all-time d-man if he didn't chase a Cup with Colorado.
There is only so much he can do. He's not the GM of his team like LeBron James and Jack Eichel.
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