Any chance that McDavid could be the GOAT?

[JackSlater]

Not close, but he's probably at the level below the best of the best in terms of ability.

 

[DueDiligence]

Soviet teams won the Super Series with 55 wins, 10 draws, and 33 losses. A pretty good record exclusively on the road. CSKA played Edmonton in 1986 winning 6:3. The NHL might still have been the better league all things considered, but it wasn't the behemoth it is today.

Da Da Canada , Nyet Nyet Soviet.

 

[Realgud]

This forum's obsession with meaningless rankings is fascinating to me.

 

[WillTheThrill]

GOAT skater, maybe

 

[Tkachuky]

No simply because the trajectory right now shows no promise of winning Cups.

not trying to Bash the oilers but as it stands, he might not win a cup for a while.

Talent wise he has all the tools to be GOAT

 

[canuck2010]

Not even close to best ever. Not even close to best offensive ever either. Hed have to have a few cups and at least 10 scoring titles. Gretzky had NINE harts. Is Mcdavid really dominating his peers by all that much? He didn't even outscore his teamate last year. Even if he is the most skilled ever that doesn't make him the GOAT. There are players out there that have a ton of skill but aren't in the top 100.

Loved Gretzky to death but the NHL today is 6 defencemen and 12 forwards, in his day not so much. I think McDavid is the most dominant player to ever play the game.

 

[canuck2010]

When McDavid has Fuhr, Coffey, Lowe, Kurri, Anderson and Messier with him he'll win just as many Cups if that really matters to the conversation.

 

[Waterbuf]

I think there's a really good chance that he's the best player with the worst career of all time.

 

[Minar]

Ask Gretzky if he thinks he was ever a better player than Mcdavid. Oh wait hes already spoken on that... Relative to their peers and absolute best are different things

With this logic the GOAT player will always be a current player and all historic players will be disregarded in the conversation. This is because the players keep getting better. Do we really want to disregard all past players because they hadn't evolved to where the game is at whatever current point in time it is? The only fair and sensible way to evaluate it is the player compared to his peers.

 

[featherhawk]

lol not even close, there is no chance in hell that McDavid will be the greatest of all time. He may not be the greatest in his era...

 

[ijuka]

McDavid would need to be a lot more consistent than he has been. It's possible but he'd need to play at his best all the time.

 

[ijuka]

Ask Gretzky if he thinks he was ever a better player than Mcdavid. Oh wait hes already spoken on that... Relative to their peers and absolute best are different things

Gretzky himself thinks he was barely a 3rd line player and that his neighbour's daughter is a better hockey player than himself.

He's not a reliable source.

 

[DueDiligence]

Loved Gretzky to death but the NHL today is 6 defencemen and 12 forwards, in his day not so much. I think McDavid is the most dominant player to ever play the game.

If McDavid is that good why isn't he leading the Oilers to multiple playoff wins and himself winning multiple scoring titles by 40 or 50 points?

McDavid is capable of fabulous highlight real plays but rarely do I see dominance from him.

 

[lottster14]

He'll turn it around.

 

[Video Nasty]

When McDavid has Fuhr, Coffey, Lowe, Kurri, Anderson and Messier with him he'll win just as many Cups if that really matters to the conversation.

It doesn’t. You’re merely listing teammates and implying that Gretzky achieved success only because of them, while ignoring that he was the straw that stirred the drink.

Obviously the Oilers were more competent then compared to now, but these stances about Gretzky only winning because of the teammates he was miles ahead of or that McDavid would go back in time and do better than Gretzky even though he hasn’t shown separation from his own teammate are super tiresome.

When McDavid can do something resembling this, we can talk.

Gretzky’s lead on teammates in points each season in Edmonton (1979-1980 through 1988-1989):

43, 89, 107, 90, 79, 73, 77, 75, 38 (playing 13 less games than runner up Messier)

McDavid in comparison:

N/A (played 45 games as a rookie and finished 3rd on the team in points), 23, 38, 11, 2nd on the team in points missing 7 games and scoring 13 less points, currently tied with 7 points in 6 games

Fun fact. Since January 1st, 2019 (753 calendar days), Draisaitl has led McDavid in scoring, a span of 125 team games.

Drai with 177 points (125 games) versus McDavid with 162 points (114 games). 1.416 PPG vs. 1.421 PPG.

It was never that close with Gretzky.

 

[Daisycutter]

Once he scores 92 in a season, i will be inclined.

If we let him play in a league where the talent pool is limited to being 90% Canadian and he is playing against 5' 2" goalies wearing equipment that is half the size and twice the weight then im pretty sure he would have a good shot at that.

 

[Minar]

Loved Gretzky to death but the NHL today is 6 defencemen and 12 forwards, in his day not so much. I think McDavid is the most dominant player to ever play the game.

If he is so dominant than why is kucherov outscoring him? Why is Draistle outscoring him? Where is this dominance?

 

[Tage2Tuch]

haha no win something 1st

there are more teams in the league then when Gretzky played and won. A lot more. Harder to win, and Gretzkys teams were more stacked then mcdavid. And it took Gretzky a few years to win the cup and it’s mcdavids what fifth year? I’m just pointing this out, I’m not saying mcdavid is going to be better or even has a chance to be better I’m just illustrating those facts too...

 

[Minar]

If we let him play in a league where the talent pool is limited to being 90% Canadian and he is playing against 5' 2" goalies wearing equipment that is half the size and twice the weight then im pretty sure he would have a good shot at that.

He would be like an Yzerman. If he doesn't demonstrate that he is 50 pts ahead of everyone else today why would he if he played in the 80s?

 

[MadLuke]

He has goat conversation attribute, flash and is debut made it look like he could end up in the conversation, but a bit like Crosby/Ovechkin before, it seem they were all particularly NHL ready (body, mind and every night effort level) without necessarily having many gears above to reach like Lemieux did after a while.

Gretzky separation is first 5 year's is a bit out of this world and he achieved it early before the Gretzky less Oilers were a machine, he significantly more than doubled any Oilers in points during is first 5 season and is +274 was a different tier than any of them.

Kucherov and Drai would need to turn out to be in goat conversation as well I imagine and for McDavid to start achieving quite the success for him to be in a conversation versus Gretzky.

 

[Bruce Granville]

If we let him play in a league where the talent pool is limited to being 90% Canadian and he is playing against 5' 2" goalies wearing equipment that is half the size and twice the weight then im pretty sure he would have a good shot at that.

But give him also wooden sticks, sucky ice and unsharpened blades, no helmet, paper thin protection, hand slashing and constantly hooking opponents and refs who ´let them playˋ...

 

[JJ68]

Depends on the criteria. If we're talking stats, then there's no way in hell, no one will ever touch Gretzky. But it's pretty obvious that if you take McDavid and place him in his era, he would put up the same stats and perhaps even more. Go watch a vintage game and see how the goalies play and then watch a goalie today, it's pretty hilarious how terrible goalies were back then. I'm pretty sure Lucic today could score 50 in a season back then.

What you dont get when you say this is that if you placed Mcdavid back then he is using the same sort of skates, sticks and other equipment they all did. Same training equipment....just everything.

I mean, imagine if Mario had what is offered up today I could say....or Jagr when he had 150 points in an era where guys were allowed to go for a ride on his back.

 

[JJ68]

Loved Gretzky to death but the NHL today is 6 defencemen and 12 forwards, in his day not so much. I think McDavid is the most dominant player to ever play the game.

except he's not dominating.

 

[JJ68]

Dominance is Jagr for 6 years...just abusing the competition,

Mcdavid is kinda like Pavel Bure.

 

[Ducks in a row]

Technically speaking yes a chance exists but the odds are so extremely low of it happening.