The question was asked and then not really answered: What does Connor McDavid have to do to win Canada’s athlete of the year?
He leads the NHL in scoring right now at 1.84 points per game – the highest-scoring quarter season in 27 years. A number comparable to the 1996 version of Mario Lemieux.
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McDavid led the Stanley Cup playoffs in scoring last May and June even though he didn’t make it to the Final with the Edmonton Oilers – the first time that had happened for a scoring leader in 20 years. In the 92 games McDavid has played in the calendar year – most from last season, some from this season – he has garnered 152 points.
No one else is even close to that number. No one can challenge him for best hockey player on the planet. But best Canadian athlete?
That’s where this gets complicated.
McDavid was almost an afterthought to the conversation Wednesday as the old Lou Marsh Trophy was officially put to rest in what is now called the Northern Star Award, which sounds a whole lot better in French as Le Prix etoile du Nord – as Canada’s athlete of the year was selected by an esteemed panel of sports journalists from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives.
But the fact McDavid was not really a point of conversation in all the panel debate indicates three varying things. One, how much we take the brilliance of McDavid for granted. Two, how challenging it is to name an athlete of the year from leagues like the NHL and NBA, who finish their season in the same year they begin the next season. And three, the depth and quality of Canadian athletes are at a place it’s never been before, with more challenges from more sports and more athletes of a world-class variety.
The irony in this, if there is such a thing, is that a hockey player did win the Northern Star Award. But it wasn’t McDavid and it wasn’t Colorado defenceman Cale Makar – who were both terrific candidates in this field. The elegant and remarkable Marie-Philip Poulin of Team Canada was voted the winner of the new award.
You can’t really argue against Poulin – unless you want to argue circumstance. An NHL player plays an 82-game season. In this calendar year, Makar played 99 games, 20 of them in the Stanley Cup playoffs where he was unanimously voted Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP, after he was voted Norris Trophy winner after he was compared to Bobby Orr and scored the most points a defenceman has managed in the post-season in 32 years. His year was long and historical.
Poulin’s career, with so much winning and so many big goals scored, has been long and historical. But quantitively, when you play women’s hockey for Team Canada you may play six or seven games of high competition or meaning in a year – all of them against Team USA. Makar played 20 games in the intensity of the Stanley Cup playoffs and McDavid led those playoffs in scoring with 2.06 points per game, the highest per-game playoff scoring in 30 years.
Poulin is a nice, convenient sentimental selection. But her accomplishments – she would probably admit – can’t really compare on a scale of balance against McDavid or Makar, all of them being hockey players.
The challenge in picking an athlete of the year isn’t just comparing accomplishments as it is in separating the athletes, and comparing sports that have no real basic of comparison.
The kid, Summer McIntosh, may already be the greatest Canadian swimmer in history. Some years, she would have won this award. That’s how special a year she had. She didn’t win on Wednesday. And that’s how tough the field is.
The great golfer Brooke Henderson is in the same rhetorical conversation as McDavid: What does she have to do to win this prestigious trophy?
She’s the greatest Canadian golfer in history. She won a Major this year. When Mike Weir won a Major he was a slam-dunk winner of athlete of the year. But that was almost 20 years ago. The depth of Canadian athletes has grown significantly in that time. Being best in the world, as McDavid can claim, or being best Canadian as Henderson or tennis player Felix Auger-Aliassime can claim, or being the dominant Paralympian, Brian McKeever, gets you some talk. And the arguments for each are all so convincing.
And still, that doesn’t win you the award.
The first quarter of this NBA season has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander doing things that have never been done before by a Canadian. He is just behind two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo in NBA scoring, just ahead of likely MVP for this season, Jayson Tatum. If he can do anything like this in a full calendar year, this award could be his next year. And right now, he’s two spots ahead of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. That’s heady company.
I don’t think Gilgeous-Alexander got a vote yesterday to win the Northern Star. You can only pick one winner. That’s all. That way there’s no ballot manipulation. Gilgeous-Alexander is scoring 31.3 points a game for Oklahoma City. He’s already my favourite to win next year if McIntosh doesn’t win, or McDavid, Henderson, or Auger-Aliassime.
The challenge to pick an athlete of the year isn’t changing as much as it’s getting more difficult and more complicated. And maybe one of these years we’ll get around to Connor McDavid. The legendary Orr only won the Lou Marsh once. Looking back, that still seems wrong today.
ssimmons@postmedia.com
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