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Around The League - 2024-25 Regular Season

"How many cups did the others have at 26?"

Well, let's see...

— Ray Ferraro - never won a Cup.
— Brad Marchand - 1 Cup
— Tony Amonte - never won a Cup
— Brad Park - never won a Cup
— Corey Perry - 1 Cup
— Jonathan Toews - 2 Cups by 26, 1 Cup after
— Peter Forsberg - 1 Cup by 26, 1 Cup after
— Ilya Kovalchuk - never won a Cup
— Zach Parise - never won a Cup
— Eric Lindros - never won a Cup
 
The "Winning a Cup" argument will become less & less relevant to determine a player's greatness as the sport expands to more teams.

It used to be a real method to determine a player's greatness, to an extent, when there were 6 to 12 teams. But in modern day sports, where the leagues have made it harder for players to get paid what they're actually worth for teams to build sustainable teams with depth that can last for a long time, winning is incredibly hard.

Better metric should be, has McDavid performed up to his talent at the key times? And the answer to that, in my opinion, has unequivocally been yes.
 
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The "Winning a Cup" argument will become less & less relevant to determine a player's greatness as the sport expands to more teams.

It used to be a real method to determine a player's greatness, to an extent, when there were 6 to 12 teams. But in modern day sports, where the leagues have made it harder for players to get paid what they're actually worth for teams to build sustainable teams with depth that can last for a long time, winning is incredibly hard.

Better metric should be, has McDavid performed up to his talent at the key times? And the answer to that, in my opinion, has unequivocally been yes.
The day winning championships is no longer relevant in determining greatness is the day we may as well stop watching sports altogether. You measure greatness only one way: banners in the rafters. Anything short of that is failure. No fan cares about how many goals a player scores. That's an individual achievement. Fans care about teams, not players. They care about team championships because that's the kind of thing that a fan can feel like they're a part of. It's the reasons fans are fans. So to be a great player you need to help deliver to the fans the championships to which they feel entitled. If you don't deliver, you have not achieved true greatness. You're merely an accumulator of points.

Marcel Dionne scored more goals than Guy Lafleur but Lafleur is the only one of them who achieved greatness because he won Cups. Dionne barely played in the post-season. He was a great goal scorer but he isn't "great" in any sense that matters to fans. Same goes for McJebus. He may do commercials with Wayne Gretzky and he may have his number retired by the Oilers and it will hang next to Gretzky's, but if he doesn't win a Cup he's going to be just another Ryan Smyth in Edmonton, not another Wayne Gretzky.

Winning isn't optional. Not when you're judging greatness. It's essential. And the minute it isn't, your sport is bullshit because there are no more standards. We have to stop calling mediocrity great and start demanding that standards be met before we hand out greatness like we're sharing a bag of wine gums.

You do not achieve true greatness without championships. That's the standard. I don't give a shit how many teams are in the league. No fan does. Just fucking win.
 
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