Bob Stauffer grew up in Edmonton watching Wayne Gretzky take the Edmonton Oilers apart from the inside, and has spent the last decade as the club’s radio analyst watching Connor McDavid do something different. Asked on Spittin’ Chiclets where the two sit relative to each other, he didn’t hedge.
“He’s the most advanced player that’s ever lived,” Stauffer said of McDavid.
Then he put a number on it. Stauffer says he has raised the hypothetical with Gretzky directly: take McDavid’s speed, talent and skill, drop him into the 1982-83 season, and what happens?
“Three-hundred-point season, would that be eligible?” Stauffer said. “He could have done that. Absolutely.”
Is Connor McDavid better than Wayne Gretzky?
Gretzky’s best season brought him 215 points, in 1985-86. He managed 212 the year he scored 92 goals. In 1982-83 itself, the season Stauffer picked out, he finished with 196. Nobody in the history of the sport has come within 50 points of the figure Stauffer threw out, including the man who holds every record worth holding.
Stauffer has been building toward this argument for a while. He described McDavid as a “cheat code” on an earlier Chiclets appearance, saying that for all Gretzky’s greatness in Edmonton and Los Angeles, and for all that he remains the greatest player of all time, McDavid “has a more advanced game.”
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The counterargument writes itself. Gretzky finished with 2,857 points and 1,963 assists, which is more assists than any other player has managed points of any kind, won 10 scoring titles and four Stanley Cups in Edmonton. McDavid sits second to him in points before the age of 30 and has yet to win a Cup, something he has acknowledged himself as part of the conversation.
What isn’t in dispute is the production. McDavid has six Art Ross Trophies and three Harts, put up 138 points last season, and has twice taken Edmonton to the Stanley Cup Final. He remains, by some distance, the most difficult player in the league to defend.
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