Whoa, not going to follow you on this straw man. Obviously that’s not what I said.
McDavid is perfect and deserves zero criticism. Sorry I even brought up such notion. It’s okay buddy. Take a breath.
Then what is it? I showed you that he doesn’t struggle in elimination games and you scoff and say “but…but 1 goal in 4 games! And his +/- is bad!” It’s a 4 game sample size you’re basing your entire argument on.
There’s a difference between him getting ALL the criticism and some of it. For example, he MUST be a bad leader since he hasn’t magically gotten his team to a championship, because ONE player has done that so many times.
He doesn’t need to be a shutdown guy, he does have to pretend to care that the D zone exists. Whatever balance of offense vs defense him and the coaching staff settle on, he HAS TO win his match ups. When the rest of the team is dogshit this is non negotiable. It doesn’t matter if he finishes his ES minutes 2-1 or 9-7, he simply cannot hand the rest of the team a losing score when his shift ends. For the rest of the team going 0-0 in their minutes is a win.
McDavid’s minutes + special teams net difference (PP minus PK) need to come out positive every single time if you’re praying for the rest of the team to tread water for 35 minutes and go even.
Maybe start by fixing the teams overall defense and goaltending, because those are the biggest issues, not McDavid failing his team because of what he does In his own end. I’m not saying he’s great defensively, but he’s far from the teams main problems.
Again, it can come out positive and his defense goaltending still be shit. He can do all he can in his own end and still not get the secondary support needed offensively.
