Answer this question honestly. Do you see mcdavid at any point from here until he's in his late 30s where he is gonna score 65 69 and 71 in a full season?
Sure, if scoring league-wide drops again by 20%. 20% off what McDavid has today is 47 points in 40ish games.
That will not be a problem with McDavid, the problem is we are still waiting to see him post peak-Jagr leads over the field (outside of the odd year in the North Division). If that does not happen, that would put a lid on how high he can climb in all-time rankings, no matter how many ppg seasons he plays.
Shouldnt the entire scenario come into play when judging someone’s body of work?
Of course not. There is peak, which is the most valuable. Then there is longevity, which many great players do not have - some were not healthy enough (Orr, Lemieux, Bossy, Bure, Forsberg, etc.), some dropped off their peak (Lafleur, Esposito, etc.) Longevity is important, but outdoing someone at his peak is way more impressive than outlasting the same guy. No one is going to rank Lidstrom ahead of Orr just because Lidstrom was "elite" for longer. Most people would balk at ranking Dionne ahead of Lafleur just because Dionne did not drop off his peak that fast.
Lack of longevity is a very weird way to pick on Ovechkin. He does have longevity: he has 14 top20 finishes in points (more than anyone not named Gretzky and Dionne since 1970), he has 12 All-star team selections (and came in 3rd three more times), he has 9 years when he appeared on a meaningful number of Hart ballots (Jagr has 8 such years, for example).
The Moose years are at an older age well out of his prime.
Ovi has a low goal scoring year at age 25, a really lousy year at age 26 then again at age 31.
The order of seasons does not matter when we are talking about seasons that just fill up the resume.
Consecutive years only matter when we are talking about maintaining peak level of play and showing a career season was not a fluke.
"Elite" seasons just measure longevity - a good collection of them establishes that the player did have longevity. It does not matter much whether those elite seasons happened in strict sequence or in three series, alternating with lesser seasons.
Think about Selanne: he has a lot of longevity, and when people mention it, they speak positively of his post-lockout seasons (48 goals at the age of 36! 80 points as a 40-year-old!) Have you ever seen anyone give Selanne grief for posting 32 points in 78 games at the age of 33? 54 points in 82 games at the age of 31? He did look completely done back then, but he bounced back, and the rest is history.
Ovechkin also bounced back from two wrist injuries in 2010/11 and 2016/17. Wrist injuries did in a lot of snipers, but luckily not him, so we are still enjoying the ride.
In 2014-15 OV finished 4th in points, 6 points behind the lead and with nearly a 20 goal advantage on other people in the top 5.
If everyone knows goals are so much more valuable than assists, and this is common knowledge outside of some of these threads, how did OV not sweep the awards that year? Tavares ended up finishing with almost as many hart votes.
That's how he was much higher in Hart voting than any skater, including those with more points.
Carey Price had an insane year, so he took Hart and Lindsay.
