Or take away a couple of McDavid's Art Rosses when players like Crosby and Kucherov took their foot off the gas towards the end of the regular season.
The shit this site peddles and tries to get away with.
1. Kucherov didn’t let his foot off the gas—it would have been stupid to do so by choice, considering the Lightning and Bruins were battling for the division and #1 seed down the stretch and played each other twice during the final eight games, a period of time where Kucherov whiffed and put up just five points. He also finished behind Giroux.
Or if you like, we can push it back further to try and salvage your comment, to the “insurmountable” 6 point lead he entered March with, and recognize that even then, with 17 games left, the Bruins were right behind them. There was no letting up. He also only owned that 6 point lead over Malkin who played 3 less games and would trim to it to 2, days later.
2. As for Crosby, he has very little history of what he does or doesn’t do when a scoring race seems concluded, since he won a whopping two.
He also trailed for much of the entire second half of 2016-2017, yet seemed to care enough to take a share of the lead on February 10th, with a third of the season remaining.
For the next month, he would trail by as much (or as little since it’s not a lot) as four and seemed to care enough to trim it back to a share of the runner up with Kane by 1 through March 13th, with just 13 games remaining.
Then he collected 6 points over his next 3 games to vault back into a tie with McDavid through March 19th.
Then he slumped. Didn’t take his foot off the gas. Slumped with 4 points in his next 7 games while falling behind Kane and Marchand and into a tie with Backstrom for 5th with 3 game remaining on April 3rd.
Seemed to care enough to enough to put up 5 points in his final 3 games to finish tied with Kane for second, and bow out of every scoring race for the rest of his career.
A stronger argument is that if Crosby played more games, he might have won. But then it’s the same tired argument that it is always is. And he still wasn’t first in PPG.
This wasn’t some strategic move to rest up to defend the Cup because it was more “important” than a scoring title…this was a simple case of watching McDavid in real time leave Crosby in his rearview forever.
I’m calling you out for what we all know this is. A poorly veiled attempt to prop up Crosby by downplaying McDavid in any way possible.
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