Connor McDavid has been lighting up the NHL since his first-ever season in the league, and today, there’s no doubt about who is the best player in the world.
McDavid can do things that nobody else can, and for the first time in his career, he’s now reached the Stanley Cup Finals.
It’s been a struggle for McDavid to get the Oilers far into the playoffs, but after taking down the Dallas Stars — much thanks to some incredible hockey from McDavid — the Oilers are now only four wins away from the most prestigious trophy in all of sports.
McDavid has 31 points in 18 games this playoffs, coming off a regular season where he became the first player since Wayne Gretzky, and the fourth in history, to tally 100 assists in a season.
When his team has needed him the most, he’s stepped up, and in the Conference Finals against the Dallas Stars, McDavid had ten points in six games.
But not everyone is impressed with what McDavid is doing.
In a piece for the Miami Herald, columnist Greg Cote has drawn the ire of Edmonton Oilers fans because of a take on McDavid.
Cote, who typically writes about the NFL, MLB, and NBA, has made an argument that McDavid doesn’t deserve to be called the best player in hockey and that he, in fact, is overrated.
“Connor McDavid is overrated. Boom. He puts up big, impressive stats, yes. Fine. But should he really be called ‘generational,’ called the best player in the sport, when in nine seasons he has yet to lead his team to a Stanley Cup?” Cote wrote.
Cote also compared McDavid’s first nine years in the league with Wayne Gretzky’s first nine years, stating that Gretzky, at the same time, had led the Oilers to five Stanley Cups.
But Cote was actually wrong. Gretzky was traded to the LA Kings ahead of the Oilers’ fifth Stanley Cup win in 1990, so Gretzky actually ”only” contributed to 4 Stanley Cups.
Greg Cote’s bold take about McDavid, only days before puck drop in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals, has caused hockey fans all over to slam back at him, and almost everyone is saying the same thing: Greg Cote can’t watch a whole lot of hockey.
