If the Top 100 players All-time list is redone today, where does McDavid's career place him?

[Bear of Bad News]

I'm shocked - absolutely shocked - that die-hard fans of a team will vent on an anonymous message board during a playoff series.

 

[The Macho King]

I'm shocked - absolutely shocked - that die-hard fans of a team will vent on an anonymous message board during a playoff series.

Not saying that they aren't right to vent. But the idea that he dominated that series and the team let him down is revisionist - statements at the time recognize that his own performance was insufficient despite the point totals. It's not that they're venting - it's that the contemporaneous accounts recognize that he wasn't playing well, and that's more informative than just looking at the box score and saying "wow McDavid was good."

And again, the circumstances behind the point totals are informative. They scored 3 goals in the last five minutes of a 7-1 game, and he was involved in those goals to get points. That's not making an impact - that's padding your stats.

 

[jigglysquishy]

I'm shocked - absolutely shocked - that die-hard fans of a team will vent on an anonymous message board during a playoff series.

My favourite story relating to this is my aunt calling into the local radio in 1992 bitching about Patrick Roy after the Habs got swept by the Bruins and that he should be traded. Called him a playoff choker and that he could never repeat his fluke of 1986.

He went on to win the Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe 12 months later. And went on to win two more Stanley Cups (and made the Conference Final an additional three times). 3 Stanley Cups and 6 Conference Final appearances in the 10 seasons after 1992. Classic results of a playoff choker.

Needless to say, my uncles still tease her about it

 

[The Macho King]

My favourite story relating to this is my aunt calling into the local radio in 1992 bitching about Patrick Roy after the Habs got swept by the Bruins and that he should be traded. Called him a playoff choker and that he could never repeat his fluke of 1986.

He went on to win the Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe 12 months later. And went on to win two more Stanley Cups (and made the Conference Final an additional three times). 3 Stanley Cups and 6 Conference Final appearances in the 10 seasons after 1992. Classic results of a playoff choker.

Needless to say, my uncles still tease her about it

Roy already had a Smythe and another very deep run under his belt in 1992.

I mean people were calling Kucherov a choker after 2019, but he had numerous good, deep runs prior so that never made a ton of sense. It's not that a player has to be terrific every single playoff year/game/series, but all of these counter-examples have something to hang their hat on.

McDavid at best gets an incomplete for his playoff resume. I personally count it as a mark against him *to date*. Obviously he's talented enough that next season he could rattle off 40 points on the way to a Conn Smythe. But until then, I have to conclude that there's something different about how his style of play works in the playoffs versus the regular season, and since the goal of this sport isn't to win Art Ross trophies but to win the Stanley Cup, that's a huge knock on him.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Not saying that they aren't right to vent. But the idea that he dominated that series and the team let him down is revisionist - statements at the time recognize that his own performance was insufficient despite the point totals. It's not that they're venting - it's that the contemporaneous accounts recognize that he wasn't playing well, and that's more informative than just looking at the box score and saying "wow McDavid was good."

And again, the circumstances behind the point totals are informative. They scored 3 goals in the last five minutes of a 7-1 game, and he was involved in those goals to get points. That's not making an impact - that's padding your stats.

So, 2 main problems with this argument:

1. You're factually incorrect about McDavid's scoring.

He scored only 3 points in game 1, including the first goal of the game and a primary assist on a goal 4:13 into the second to make it 4-2. He actually had only one garbage time point in that game. I have no objections whatsoever if you want to ignore that meaningless point, but that still leaves him with a 2.0 PPG for the rest of the series.

Also, I feel it is only fair to point out that in game 2 McDavid scored a hat-trick in a 6-3 win (goals that made the score 1-0, 2-0 and 4-3), in game 3 he scored the go-ahead goal with 8 seconds left in the second period (giving his team a ~75% win probability), and in game 4 he scored 2 points in a 3-2 loss.

Criticisms of McDavid's defensive performance in game 1 are fully deserved, but saying he did nothing but stat padding in all 4 games seems like a conclusion that is overly impacted by team results. I mean, does Blake Coleman's goal in game 2 of this year's Finals immediately go from the goal that effectively clinched the series to nothing more than empty calorie stat padding if Montreal comes back in win in the 3rd?

2. It seems like you're applying a unique standard to McDavid.

In the last two playoffs, for example, Nikita Kucherov had 4 points in a 7-1 win, 4 points in an 8-2 win, and 3 points in a 8-0 win. He also scored third period points on goals that made the score 6-2 and 5-1. Yet I've never heard anybody bring up all that empty calorie stat-padding. Instead every time people talk about Kucherov's scoring it's always just "30+ points in back-to-back playoff seasons", full stop. Yet at the same time I'm supposed to care that 1 of McDavid's 9 points in 2020 came after a game was fully decided?

For some reason, people love to micro-analyze players on losing teams and deny them credit, in a way that they very rarely if ever do for players on winning teams. Start a thread on Jarome Iginla's 2001-02 season, and 2-3 guys will immediately pop up talking about how his points were meaningless, and yet for some reason it you will never hear about the dozens of points Wayne Gretzky, Guy Lafleur or Phil Esposito scored with their teams already 5+ goals ahead and the other team having a <0.1% win probability.

Almost every time I've looked at this, it is actually star players on very good teams who tend to score substantially more meaningless points than star players on average ones, and yet people rarely care about that. Instead, they try to find even more reasons to blame the guys with worse teammates. In my book, it's fine to either count all the points or only all the meaningful points, but you have to do the same for everyone.

 

[The Macho King]

So, 2 main problems with this argument:

1. You're factually incorrect about McDavid's scoring.

He scored only 3 points in game 1, including the first goal of the game and a primary assist on a goal 4:13 into the second to make it 4-2. He actually had only one garbage time point in that game. I have no objections whatsoever if you want to ignore that meaningless point, but that still leaves him with a 2.0 PPG for the rest of the series.

Also, I feel it is only fair to point out that in game 2 McDavid scored a hat-trick in a 6-3 win (goals that made the score 1-0, 2-0 and 4-3), in game 3 he scored the go-ahead goal with 8 seconds left in the second period (giving his team a ~75% win probability), and in game 4 he scored 2 points in a 3-2 loss.

Criticisms of McDavid's defensive performance in game 1 are fully deserved, but saying he did nothing but stat padding in all 4 games seems like a conclusion that is overly impacted by team results. I mean, does Blake Coleman's goal in game 2 of this year's Finals immediately go from the goal that effectively clinched the series to nothing more than empty calorie stat padding if Montreal comes back in win in the 3rd?

2. It seems like you're applying a unique standard to McDavid.

In the last two playoffs, for example, Nikita Kucherov had 4 points in a 7-1 win, 4 points in an 8-2 win, and 3 points in a 8-0 win. He also scored third period points on goals that made the score 6-2 and 5-1. Yet I've never heard anybody bring up all that empty calorie stat-padding. Instead every time people talk about Kucherov's scoring it's always just "30+ points in back-to-back playoff seasons", full stop. Yet at the same time I'm supposed to care that 1 of McDavid's 9 points in 2020 came after a game was fully decided?

For some reason, people love to micro-analyze players on losing teams and deny them credit, in a way that they very rarely if ever do for players on winning teams. Start a thread on Jarome Iginla's 2001-02 season, and 2-3 guys will immediately pop up talking about how his points were meaningless, and yet for some reason it you will never hear about the dozens of points Wayne Gretzky, Guy Lafleur or Phil Esposito scored with their teams already 5+ goals ahead and the other team having a <0.1% win probability.

Almost every time I've looked at this, it is actually star players on very good teams who tend to score substantially more meaningless points than star players on average ones, and yet people rarely care about that. Instead, they try to find even more reasons to blame the guys with worse teammates. In my book, it's fine to either count all the points or only all the meaningful points, but you have to do the same for everyone.

Clearly my memory fails me here. Fair point on 1 as to the details.

On 2 - I'm really not. When a team scores a lot of goals, the best players are probably getting a lot of points. Just the nature of the sport. McDavid's issue isn't that his points come in garbage time of blowouts, it's that whatever value he is adding on offense has only contributed one win in 8 games the last two seasons - against frankly shit competition. So yeah Kucherov got 3 points in an 8-0 beat down. That 8-0 beatdown was in the conference finals against the New York Islanders. So you're not going to see criticism of that because he also scores 3 points (including the game tying goal with 8 minutes left) in the 5-4 win against Florida. Kucherov, Crosby, Malkin, Kane - pick a name out of a hat - their track record speaks for itself.

Also to that point - a lot of people say Kucherov "lost" the CS in the Finals because he didn't play as well - despite scoring 6 points in 5 games against a team that was up until the Finals locking everything down defensively.

McDavid doesn't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. He's not a young kid. He's not even facing tough matchups. He just isn't doing enough.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

It's too early to draw conclusions about McDavid's playoff performance. After six seasons a single series that his team lost and that consisted of four games is being cited as his best playoff performance. That speaks volumes about how well he's performed so far.

Difficult to recall many superstar players that hadn't really excelled in the playoffs within six seasons, yet became significantly better after that. Best example might be Sakic, as Espo had a massive change in circumstances.

You might be right about historical comparables if you strictly define your subgroup as a player's first six seasons, although I would mention Bryan Trottier's start of 27 points in 42 playoff games as perhaps the best historical example of early career playoff failure leading to later career success.

I fully agree that the only defensible grade for McDavid's playoff career to date is incomplete. I think it is important to note that even among all-time greats, McDavid's 21-game stretch of offensive underperformance in the playoffs is not even remotely close to an outlier.

Here's a list of forwards in the HOH Top 50 who underperformed their expected scoring results by as much or more than McDavid, over a period of at least 4 consecutive playoff seasons:

Player	From	To	GP	Pts	Exp Pts	% Diff
Phil Esposito	1964	1968	33	11	24.7	-55%
Bryan Trottier	1976	1979	42	27	55.6	-51%
Jean Beliveau	1960	1964	30	20	34	-41%
Mario Lemieux	1993	2001	58	75	120.7	-38%
Stan Mikita	1963	1968	50	43	61.8	-30%
Steve Yzerman	1988	1994	37	39	55.9	-30%
Sidney Crosby	2010	2014	51	55	77.4	-29%
Alex Ovechkin	2012	2017	60	40	55.6	-28%
Jaromir Jagr	1999	2006	45	48	65.4	-27%
Gordie Howe	1950	1954	33	30	40.2	-25%
Joe Sakic	1998	2002	84	78	104.3	-25%
Connor McDavid	2017	2021	21	22	29.4	-25%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

(Expected points are calculated for each playoff season by multiplying playoff games played by regular season PPG)

I am of course cherry-picking endpoints for these guys but not for McDavid, which we should take into account in a direct comparison, and I'm also sure that if you fully adjusted for strength of opposition then some of these numbers would change further still. But it's notable that the periods selected line up almost perfectly with the scoring peaks of several of these players, including Howe, Jagr, Crosby, Mikita and Yzerman, and still those guys were arguably just as "disappointing" in terms of their relative offensive production as McDavid has been to date. Just something to keep in mind, particularly if you fall more on the "talent" side of the evaluation scale as opposed to the purely "accomplishments" end.

 

[ContrarianGoaltender]

Clearly my memory fails me here. Fair point on 1 as to the details.

On 2 - I'm really not. When a team scores a lot of goals, the best players are probably getting a lot of points. Just the nature of the sport. McDavid's issue isn't that his points come in garbage time of blowouts, it's that whatever value he is adding on offense has only contributed one win in 8 games the last two seasons - against frankly shit competition. So yeah Kucherov got 3 points in an 8-0 beat down. That 8-0 beatdown was in the conference finals against the New York Islanders. So you're not going to see criticism of that because he also scores 3 points (including the game tying goal with 8 minutes left) in the 5-4 win against Florida. Kucherov, Crosby, Malkin, Kane - pick a name out of a hat - their track record speaks for itself.

Also to that point - a lot of people say Kucherov "lost" the CS in the Finals because he didn't play as well - despite scoring 6 points in 5 games against a team that was up until the Finals locking everything down defensively.

McDavid doesn't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. He's not a young kid. He's not even facing tough matchups. He just isn't doing enough.

I'm not ripping on Kucherov as a playoff performer, I'm just giving you a baseline rate if you want to properly evaluate the timeliness of McDavid's scoring. All players score points when the game is already decided, and I'll continue to argue it's unfair to discount such points for one guy and not for others.

Maybe I misunderstood your argument. My definition of empty stat padding is scoring when a game is decided, not scoring in a game that your team eventually lost. If we're seriously discussing whether all points that come in a loss are meaningless, I don't know how to better respond than with my Blake Coleman hypothetical from the last post.

Sure, McDavid's team has lost 7 of their last 8 games. It's a little reductive to say that's because of his offensive performance, isn't it?

Team save percentage in the 2020 and 2021 playoffs:
Tampa .932
Edmonton .891

Record when leading at any point in the game:
Tampa 30-5
Edmonton 1-6

If you think that is in large part McDavid's fault, then OK, let's talk about his defence, because there's certainly a conversation to have there. I just think your argument about stat-padding was a weird one to make given the actual facts. To me, a lot of the arguments in this thread still look like giving individual players excessive credit or blame for team results, and that can be true even if everyone agrees that McDavid needs to be better in the playoffs going forward.

 

[The Macho King]

I'm not ripping on Kucherov as a playoff performer, I'm just giving you a baseline rate if you want to properly evaluate the timeliness of McDavid's scoring. All players score points when the game is already decided, and I'll continue to argue it's unfair to discount such points for one guy and not for others.

Maybe I misunderstood your argument. My definition of empty stat padding is scoring when a game is decided, not scoring in a game that your team eventually lost. If we're seriously discussing whether all points that come in a loss are meaningless, I don't know how to better respond than with my Blake Coleman hypothetical from the last post.

Sure, McDavid's team has lost 7 of their last 8 games. It's a little reductive to say that's because of his offensive performance, isn't it?

Team save percentage in the 2020 and 2021 playoffs:
Tampa .932
Edmonton .891

Record when leading at any point in the game:
Tampa 30-5
Edmonton 1-6

If you think that is in large part McDavid's fault, then OK, let's talk about his defence, because there's certainly a conversation to have there. I just think your argument about stat-padding was a weird one to make given the actual facts. To me, a lot of the arguments in this thread still look like giving individual players excessive credit or blame for team results, and that can be true even if everyone agrees that McDavid needs to be better in the playoffs going forward.

So there's a couple of separate things here, but I'll try to get it across.

First - I more just wanted to point out that almost half of his entire playoff points came in the biggest asterisk situation I can think of - that is a bubble series against a team who would not have been in the playoffs in any normal circumstance, and even for bubble teams, was probably the worst defensive team in the bubble. Beyond that, I'm definitely getting to granular on his performance, but the overall point was despite good offensive numbers, by most contemporaneous accounts he did not impress.

Second - team around him is not great - admittedly. But my concern is this - neither are the teams he's playing against.

It's a team sport yes, but when you are standard deviations better (in the regular season) than the second best player in the world, who many think is *also on your team* - you need to win more than one game in eight. So yeah - team sucks, goaltending sucked, defense sucked, etc. At some point though, you gotta steal some games. And I don't think it's too much to want the best player in the world to win some games on his own. Do I expect Cup runs from this team? God no - they are trash after the top 6 and top 2 D. But I need more than first round (or "preliminary round") exits from that best player in the world.

I think it's a little funny that Matthews and Marner are getting a ton of (deserved) criticism for their playoff performances, but McDavid is largely skating by. The teams honestly seem pretty similarly constructed to me. Toronto's third best player is better than RNH, but the same depth issues, the same defensive issues, and the same questionable goaltending exist with both.

 

[edog37]

You never saw me placing McDavid in the top 50.

Besides that… are you seriously claiming that there have been 100 players who routinely could will their shoddy teams to winning records or playoff success?

Yes I am. That's why they are Top 100 & McMuffin isn't.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Yes I am. That's why they are Top 100 & McMuffin isn't.

I'll just leave this at you're quite mistaken.

Some quick examples for you.

- Prime Jagr without Lemieux never got past the 2nd round
- Marcel Dionne...enough said, he could barely will those Kings teams to the playoffs nevermind win a round
- Ovechkin has made it past the 2nd round ONE time in 13 appearances
- Brett Hull never made it past the 2nd round until joining a loaded Dallas team
- Yzerman took Detroit nowhere in the playoffs until they got loaded in the mid 90s

 

[edog37]

I'll just leave this at you're quite mistaken.

Some quick examples for you.

- Prime Jagr without Lemieux never got past the 2nd round
- Marcel Dionne...enough said, he could barely will those Kings teams to the playoffs nevermind win a round
- Ovechkin has made it past the 2nd round ONE time in 13 appearances
- Brett Hull never made it past the 2nd round until joining a loaded Dallas team
- Yzerman took Detroit nowhere in the playoffs until they got loaded in the mid 90s

Everyone on there (except Dionne) won at least one Cup, so it kind of defeats your point. McMuffin played in a disaster of a division this year & couldn't even lead his team to a division title, let alone his disappearance act in the playoffs....again.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Everyone on there (except Dionne) won at least one Cup, so it kind of defeats your point. McMuffin played in a disaster of a division this year & couldn't even lead his team to a division title, let alone his disappearance act in the playoffs....again.

I sincerly admire your commitment to this bit.

 

[edog37]

I sincerly admire your commitment to this bit.

I'm committed to facts, not hype. McMuffin hasn't led his team to anything.

 

[blogofmike]

I'm committed to facts, not hype. McMuffin hasn't led his team to anything.

I wonder where you'd place Ray Bourque if he never left Boston? Did he magically become a Top 10 player by virtue of his last playoff run?

Also Marcel Dionne and Joe Thornton are in the Top 100...

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I wonder where you'd place Ray Bourque if he never left Boston? Did he magically become a Top 10 player by virtue of his last playoff run?

Also Marcel Dionne and Joe Thornton are in the Top 100...

Bourque? Please. He had nowhere the leadership qualities and playoff acumen that noted Stanley Cup warrior Chris Dingman had.

 

[jigglysquishy]

A player can't win a Stanley Cup by themselves. In 1981-82, Gretzky put up an insane 212 points in the regular season, 12 points in 5 games in the first round, and couldn't win the series.

Joe Thornton never won a Stanley Cup, never went above a PPG in the playoffs, and consistently underperformed in impact games. We still had him in the top 100. Marcel Dionne didn't even manage 50 playoff points, despite playing in the highest scoring era for 18 seasons. Still in the top 100.

McDavid's playoff performance absolutely impacts his legacy and is the single biggest thing hurting his ranking. But I can't automatically exclude someone for not winning games by themselves.

 

[K Fleur]

Bourque probably does rate alot lower with some people if he doesn't get that cup at the end. Wouldn't have made him any worse of a player but it still would have affected his legacy.

 

[Albatros]

A player can't win a Stanley Cup by themselves. In 1981-82, Gretzky put up an insane 212 points in the regular season, 12 points in 5 games in the first round, and couldn't win the series.

It wasn't just Gretzky though, the Oilers were huge favorites in that series but blew a 5:0 lead in game three and never recovered. Gretzky may not have been the main culprit, but it was a losing team effort that he was a part of.

 

[Dennis Bonvie]

It wasn't just Gretzky though, the Oilers were huge favorites in that series but blew a 5:0 lead in game three and never recovered. Gretzky may not have been the main culprit, but it was a losing team effort that he was a part of.

Although Gretzky was a -4 in Game 7.

 

[daver]

Far too much focus on team results, and not on one's individual contribution, or lack thereof, to one's team's performance.

It is fair to say that McDavid was reasonably going to be put under the microscope this year given his regular season numbers and his two prior playoff runs. You could critique his 2017 performance but reasonable context such as his age brings that performance into appropriate perspective. You could highlight his 9 points in 4 games in 2020 and ask what else do you expect from him but reasonable context also puts that performance into appropriate perspective.

This season, there should be no excuses for him not meeting the reasonable expectation that he would put up elite offensive numbers, especially as he is positioned to do just that on his team. He is used almost exclusively as an offensive weapon. After Game 1, the gameplan of separating McDavid and Draisaitl to try to create some offensive depth was thrown out the window which, IMO, indicates a lack of confidence in one of them to not be able to carry a line offensively with lower quality linemates. One expects a player of McDavid's caliber to produce regardless.

The question of whether McDavid's game is versatile enough to be as dominant in the playoffs as he is in the regular season has yet to be answered.

 

[daver]

Bourque probably does rate alot lower with some people if he doesn't get that cup at the end. Wouldn't have made him any worse of a player but it still would have affected his legacy.

I doubt there would be more than one or two posters on the HOH that would take this stance.

 

[GuineaPig]

If this were the '90s still, there would definitely be at least one journalist writing a "Maroon > McDavid" op-ed. Sure, those fancy moves are nice. But when it comes to playoff time you want a seasoned warrior like Maroon. The results speak for themselves. 3 straight cups vs. 3 straight disappointments.

 

[The Macho King]

Bourque probably does rate alot lower with some people if he doesn't get that cup at the end. Wouldn't have made him any worse of a player but it still would have affected his legacy.

The thing with Bourque is despite never winning the Cup until Colorado, playoffs would still be a positive, or at worst neutral, part of his resume. His offensive production was in line with his regular season production, and until Boston started really suffering from talent/depth issues in the 90s, he was a + player in all but 3 (short) outings while playing more than half the game. When they made the Cup Finals, he was second in team scoring. When they lost in the semis (back when they still had some forward talent), he was first, third, and third those seasons. There was also a significant runs, and his QoC was much higher. This was the era of dynasties, not "any team gets into the playoffs has a roughly equal shot to win the Cup."

I don't find their situations terribly similar at all.

 

[Dingo]

jim paek was a true winner. he played for two years, won the Cup twice, and went home like Alexander, knowing that there was nothing left to conquer.

Fancypants pretty boys Jagr and Lemieux played 30 combined seasons without paek and won a combined fart all.

Luckily for them they got to ride a real winner’s coattails twice, tricking people into thinking they were once winners and not heartless, gutless dipsydoodling pansies.