On the other hand, even if you completely ignore the "per game" argument, he's working on his 7th season top-3 in points. If we fairly remove Gretzky and Lemieux, Yzerman only has three such seasons himself (and already fewer top-10s than Crosby, too) and even Sakic, who's clearly a cut above Yzerman, only has three as well.
Sakic has more top-10s (by a margin of 10-8) but consider that Crosby also has 116 games played across three seasons in which he was once 2nd, and twice 1st by a huge margin in PPG. It's not a what-if argument, just pointing out the level he was playing at, even when he wasn't finishing top-3 in points.
Yzerman has one such season (1988) and Sakic has two (1999,2000), though he played enough games to finish 5th and 8th in points those years.
The longevity argument for Yzerman is already a shaky one, and Sakic's won't be on solid ground for much longer, if it even still is at this point.
Yzerman's 11 year prime has him 1st in PPG when Lemieux and Gretzky are removed:
http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points_per_game
I also set the bar at 500 points so that Selanne and Lindros fell off. Yzerman's closest competitors, Messier and Lafontaine, are 5% and 9% behind him.
Sakic's 11 year prime:
http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points_per_game
Again, Gretzky and Lemieux are disregarded, but Sakic was marginally behind the likes of Lindros and Jagr and even Lafontaine over this time, and just a bit ahead of Selanne and Forsberg.
Crosby since entering the league (this might not even be his 11 year prime when all's said and done, it just happens to be his only 11 years currently):
http://www.hockey-reference.com/pla...c4comp=gt&c4val=&threshhold=5&order_by=points
As you can see, in the post-lockout era, the bar for "consistent star/superstar scorer" over this extended period is about 1.0 PPG (Datsyuk, St. Louis, Spezza, Sedins). Only four players at the top really separate themselves from the others, and from eachother. Thornton is clearly ahead of Kovalchuk, Ovechkin/Malkin clearly ahead of him, and Crosby miles ahead of them. How far? 13% ahead of his next closest competitor, Evgeni Malkin, a guy who's won two scoring titles and has finished top-10 in points per game over twice as many times as he hasn't. Again, Remember that Yzerman could only top a player like Lafontaine by 9%, and Sakic was similar to Lindros/LaFontaine/Selanne/Forsberg.
If a Gretzky/Lemieux existed, I'm sure Crosby would be well behind them, but he's still 13-15% ahead of two players, one of whom most would call a generational talent and one who might be called one if not for injuries. He's definitely more dominant in his era than Sakic and Yzerman were in theirs, and the gap there is too wide that no "competition" argument can overcome it, either. I'm huge on longevity and career value but I'm pretty uncomfortable being too hard on a guy who is about to have as many seasons in the top-3 in scoring as
Jean Beliveau and one fewer than
Stan Mikita, and yet is an
even better player than his number of top-3 finishes indicates because of a couple of poorly-timed and badly diagnosed injuries.