seventieslord
Student Of The Game
i think if we are comparing crosby to date to mikita, i think we shouldn't go by age but by years in the league.
so up to year eleven, mikita played 768 games, crosby played 707. mikita had missed 20 games over those years (shorter seasons), crosby has missed 195. so that's a big difference.
at the same time, crosby has been the better offensive player, by at least a hair, relative to his peers. crosby is second in points, 28 behind ovechkin who has played 132 more games; and is miles ahead of his nearest competitors, ovechkin and malkin, in PPG. meanwhile, mikita is second in PPG, behind his teammate hull, and tied for second in points with howe, behind hull again.
playoff records: mikita made it to three finals, winning one cup, while leading the playoffs in scoring once in a losing cause. crosby has three finals, two cups, led the playoffs once in a losing cause but his second and third best playoffs are far better than mikita's, winning the smythe this year (albeit a weaker one) and he could have won it the other time too.
in the regular season: from years 3 to 11, mikita had an amazing run of nine straight top four scoring finishes, all but one of them top three, peaking with four art rosses in five seasons. crosby has nine top fours in PPG, with his own peak of four 1st places in five seasons, and if you count the '12 season where he didn't qualify, he that would actually top mikita, giving him five straight 1st places in addition to his earlier 1st place, and a ten year run of top fours, and a career-long eleven year run of top sixes.
but that said, mikita has twice as many art rosses, and in terms of actual, non-prorated production crosby's 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3 is solidly behind mikita's 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4.
hart records are almost identical, with crosby slightly ahead with his 1, 1, 2, 3, 5 to mikita's 1, 1, 2, 5. both have a generational player on their own team to split voting, though crosby has had the "advantage" of malkin being injury prone and also quite a bit more inconsistent than hull, freeing crosby to be "the man" a bit more often.
so yeah, crosby and mikita are very close up to his point, with crosby making up mikita's edge in durability and actual production with slightly higher dominance relative to peers and a better playoff record. after year eleven, mikita never finished top ten in points again, though he did crack the top ten in PPG once. but he still had a very very good back half of his career, and i think it's that back half, where he was still over a PPG over nine post-peak years that vaults him over guys who had similar peaks (your espo, clarke, trots, mess, yzerman, sakic cluster). can crosby do that? can crosby top that? neither would surprise me-- i mean, surely crosby can put up a couple more top five finishes after the age of 28, right? but still, nine more mostly healthy seasons of PPG production is a tall order.
if we're talking about after season 11, give Crosby a 2/3 in hart voting too, since we know he's a finalist but pretty sure not a winner.