Who is better in their prime....Marner or Patrick Kane?
I went with 7 years in and in his 7th year Marner had 99 points and Kane had 69 points but didn't really hit his prime until 2018/2019 season where he put up 110 points. This is Marners 9th season and he has 677 points. In Kanes 9th season he had 663 points.
Thoughts?
What do these many well known great players, most surely Hall of Famers (I think) have in common?:
Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Jerome Iginla, Marcel Dionne, Ken Griffey Jr. Peter Statsny, Steve Nash, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly.
None of them won a championship.
Coincidentally, you rarely hear any of their names as being even the top three players all time in their position and Nash won back to back MVPs (the only multiple MVP to not win a ring, and he didnt even get to the Finals)!
Individually their stats could match the best of their era in any given, but, the rings mean everything. When the chips are down, who rises to the occasion, and puts the team on their back, refusing to lose?
Jim Kelly took the Bills to FOUR straight Super Bowls. Just an incredible feat when playoffs are one game matches, and he didn't win even one.
Imagine how much Jim Kellys name would be repeated if he won all four straight? How many more jerseys would be in circulation?
There are only a handful of players who people can argue that they were the best/most dominant in their positions without a ring that I can think of off of the top of my head: Barry Sanders, Barry Bonds (this is a no-doubter IMO, "supplements" or not), Ted Williams, Karl Malone/John Stockton, Tony Gwynn.
Few fans outside of Toronto mention Mats Sundins name and he was often a one man army with some thin talent teams early on. There will be little interest in this era of players decades from now unless they win a Cup or two. You see far more Gilmour and Clark jerseys than you do Rick Vaive, even as Vaive was a dominant sniper that was only surpassed by Matthews.
Kane won 3 Cups and a Conn Smythe. In both regular season and playoffs he was the more game changer of a player. Fans 100 years from now will pull out an almanac and see his name and wonder who he was.
Fans and historians love winners. It says more about the player than any single stat can.