It's amazing to see some fans so blinded by goals. It is only one aspect of generating offense and the notion that assists are "compiled" is absurd, especially when they are done so consistently over a career-long sample size.
Those thinking OV's legacy will dwarf Crosby's "because goals" need to look at Beliveau. His all-around game, winning pedigree, and surprisingly similar personal career to Crosby has seen him often ranked the 5th best player of all time, even though he doesn't lead any major statistical categories. 25 years from now, casuals may be wowed by OV's goal totals enough to scoff at Sid's legacy but anyone with the desire to dig beyond the surface will see who the superior overall player was.
And I can't help but get a good chuckle every time I see someone shrug off Crosby's missed games. You know you're fooling yourself.
To me it’s exactly elevating people’s career because of injuries and what ifs, rooted in fantasy. No one is saying Crosby is not one of the best players of all time with a HHOF career+ regardless of injuries. But many are saying Crosby is head and shoulders above Ovechkin - who has an arguably more impressive trophy case and stats - using hypothetical production to fill in the gap.
It’s the same argument - just to much lessor extent - people make Lemieux is greater than Gretzky because of his amazing stretches and hypothetically there is a possibility if he was a durable as (or played as many games as) Gretzky (who also had his share of injuries), he could have been better. Or that Bossy is the greatest scorer of all time by imaginarily lengthening his shortened career by unrealistically assuming he wouldn’t have dropped off, like almost all other players who actually had longer careers.
Nope, very different scenario.
When people try to prop up Lemieux against Gretzky, there are far more hypothetical assumptions that have to be made. With Crosby and Ovechkin, it is a very different scenario. They have roughly the same amount of points and a similar amount of major awards but Crosby has played two seasons worth of games less. And, yet, I have seen people here try to argue that they are offensively equal and any suggestion that Crosby would have pulled ahead considerably, had he played those missed games during his prime/peak, is not fair. Sorry but that's just playing dumb.
People make assumptions about points, awards, Cups, etc. to put Lemieux up on the same level at Gretzky, given all of the games he missed. But, despite all of his injuries, Sid is pretty much OV's equal.
I understand Crosby shouldn't get credit for games he didn't play or awards he didn't win, which is why you can only use so much guesswork to prop up his historical "greatness". But when their careers are so close but one player needed much less time to do it, you can use that to judge who was the better individual talent.
