No one doubts that secondary assists are important or that they can be "driving forces" behind goals. I've had this conversation before and as I have said then that even though you can find particular examples of secondary assists seeming like the most important contribution to a goal, on average they are much less important than primary contributions. Much of the time a secondary assist is just a generously awarded point, something that never can be said about the act of scoring.
My main point here is not to downplay playmaking, but rather to point out that "points" as a statistical category makes much less sense than most people think, and that we shouldn't take it so seriously. Nevertheless it is clear that many "very serious" rankings are made largely going off it.
Sure, on average the secondary assist has more value. On average. As I said, every player in the NHL has the ability to get s0-called junk and generous 2nd assists. Crosby isn't the only one that can benefit from this. It is like saying, well, Ovechkin only gets more goals because he shoots more. Well..........yeah.
These things always even out though. There are times when a player will get a secondary assist that has little value to the play and other times when a player sets up a teammate perfectly and they hit the post or miss a wide open net. It all evens out.
Even with a defenseman, like say Morgan Rielly. He is leading defensemen in points right now. No doubt he helps lead the rush and slides in as a 4th forward on a rush at times but other times he takes a shot from the point and a Maple Leaf gets a deflection or a rebound. He gets the assist. Or he wraps it around the boards one of his teammates picks it up and centers it in front of the net to someone else and they score. That's a secondary assist from Rielly. It is seemingly a "cheap" assist but they never score if he doesn't start the play either.
In 2008 Ovechkin was simply better, and clearly so. The rest is the grasping at straws, which was used to fuel the "rivalry" by media and fans at the time and ever since then.
Here is a very similar example: did you think that Kane was as good as Crosby in 14/15? They had similar ppg, Kane missed a quarter of the season, but then got the Cup and led PO in points, while Crosby folded in the first round. I can't remember anyone saying back then "look, Kane is at the same level as Crosby this season", it just did not register. Even after 15/16 was well underway and Kane was beating Crosby by a country mile, folks were still saying "nah, just one season, never happened before".
I would say this is a big difference. Crosby and Ovechkin both have staying power, this is why they are comparable. Does anyone think Rantanen is better than McDavid? No. Even if by chance he ends up having more points than McDavid (I doubt that happens) you'll fall on the side of the guy with two straight Art Rosses. Same with Kane in 2016. He had a big year, and he was always a very good player, will make the HHOF one day, but it was a one-off. There was 9 seasons of NHL hockey that showed you Crosby was better than Kane, one season won't change that, and it didn't.
Look at the Hart voting, look at Lindsay/Pearson nominations. In 2009, Ovechkin ran away with both, Crosby is not nominated for either. Just another example that points are not everything, a wrecking ball type of a player who scores goals at will has a lot of value beyond points.
And then again, if you are bringing up ppg, in 2009 the playoff ppg went Ovechkin's way by a lot, 1.5 vs. 1.29. "Much better postseason by Crosby" is just trying to attribute team success to one player and tag on OV the lack of Caps defense that year and a rookie between the pipes.
The Caps being knocked out in 2009 was a direct result of Crosby. Not to mention him showing up in Game 7 right off the bat and getting three points.
Again, you cannot ask for forgiveness for Crosby's 17th place in 2008 unless you grant forgiveness to Ovechkin in 2010. Then the difference becomes 3 Harts vs. 1 Hart. That's a ton of a difference.
Also, their 6th places are different. The only reason Oveckin was 6th in 2006 is that Caps were a horrible team and missed the playoffs. He was nominated for Lindsay in 2006, but snubbed in Hart voting almost the same way McDavid was last season.
Crosby, however, lost his nomination to Malkin and Datsyuk fair and square, both Lindsay nominations and all-star team votes confirm that. So we have 4 MVP nominations vs. 2 MVP nominations. That is not close.
And also we have 4 seasons out of 5 in that time span when Ovechkin was better. Crosby got a ton of praise later on in his career for being consistently great season after season. Let's give similar credit to Ovechkin for consistently beating Crosby in 2005-2010.
How "consistently" are you talking about here? They have pretty much the exact same Hart voting record from 2005-'10. Give the edge to Ovechkin in Hart voting because he won two, but he also didn't have Malkin to share some votes either. This is almost splitting hairs picking between the two of them in their first 5 seasons. If you want to give Ovechkin the edge then that's fine, but the gap was very small if at all.
I will ask this though, when was the last time someone thought Ovechkin was the best player in the NHL? 2010 was the last time anyone would have said this. We are in 2018 right now and everytime someone says McDavid is the best player in the NHL there is always a question mark about whether or not he has clearly surpassed Crosby by now, and in many ways it still isn't clear. Ovechkin's name hasn't come up in years as the best overall player.
Even since Crosby took home the awards in 2014 his Hart Trophy voting has looked like this:
2, 2, 5, 17.
17th was just last year, and this year he is on pace again to be right in the mix. Since 2014 this has been Ovechkin's:
2, 6, 9, 12
The edge is slightly to Crosby here, and throw in the playoff record since 2014 and how is it anyone but Crosby who has been better?
