Look at that trophy case.
Six Art Ross Trophies. Three Hart Trophies. One Conn Smythe. One Rocket Richard. Five Ted Lindsay Awards. The only player in NHL history who has won the Ted Lindsay five times is Wayne Gretzky.
Connor McDavid is 29 years old.
I have been watching hockey my entire life and I am telling you the hockey Mount Rushmore conversation around McDavid is not a stretch anymore. So let’s actually have it.
Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby. Those Are My Three Locks.
Before we get to McDavid, I want to be clear about my starting point.
Wayne Gretzky is not a debate. His career assists total of 1,963 is more than any other player in NHL history has in total points. Read that sentence again. His assists alone would be the all-time points record. He scored 894 goals on top of that. The NHL retired his jersey number league-wide when he retired, not one team deciding to honor one of their own, the entire NHL, which has happened exactly one time in this sport’s history. Nine Hart Trophies, eight of them in a row. Ten Art Ross Trophies. Four Stanley Cups. There is no conversation without Gretzky at the top.
Mario Lemieux is the reason I sometimes genuinely wonder whether Gretzky was actually the best player who ever lived or just the healthiest. When Lemieux was fully right, he was a different species. He had 199 points in the 1988-89 season, the second-highest single-season total in NHL history behind Gretzky’s records. He played through Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Missed 23 games for radiation treatment in the middle of a season. Came back and won the scoring title that same year. That is not a thing that should be possible and he did it anyway. He played just 1,022 total games between regular season and playoffs his entire career because his body kept breaking down, and in those 1,022 games he still put up one of the greatest resumes the sport has ever seen. Six Art Ross Trophies. Three Hart Trophies. Two Conn Smythes. Two Stanley Cups. He is on this mountain.
Sidney Crosby is my third lock. Wayne Gretzky once said Crosby was the best player he had seen since Lemieux, and Gretzky does not say that casually. Three Stanley Cups. Two Conn Smythe Trophies. He is 38 years old and still playing elite hockey. What he built in Pittsburgh, what he has meant to this league for two decades, puts him on this mountain with no argument from me.
Those are my three. They do not move.
The Hockey Mount Rushmore Problem: Howe and Orr Are Right There Too
Here is where the conversation gets genuinely complicated, because before you even get to McDavid you have to figure out what to do with two other guys who both have real claims.
Gordie Howe won four Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings in the 1950s, earned six Hart Trophies, six Art Ross Trophies, and played 1,767 regular season NHL games over 32 seasons. He competed alongside his own sons in the WHA at age 52. He held the NHL records for career goals and career points until Gretzky eventually came along and broke them. They named the Gordie Howe Hat Trick after him, a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game, which tells you everything about what kind of player he was. Nobody calls themselves Mr. Hockey unless they earned it completely.
Bobby Orr played 657 NHL regular season games. That is all he got before his knees were destroyed. In those 657 games he changed the position of defenseman permanently, won eight consecutive Norris Trophies as the best defenseman in the league, three consecutive Hart Trophies as league MVP, two Art Ross Trophies as the scoring champion, which makes him the only defenseman in NHL history to ever win the scoring title. He did it twice. Two Conn Smythes. Two Stanley Cups. In 1969-70 he won the Stanley Cup, the Conn Smythe, the Hart, the Art Ross, and the Norris all in the same season. Nobody has ever done that before or since. A panel of hockey historians voted that season the most significant individual season in the entire history of the NHL. Not one of Gretzky’s seasons. Orr’s.
Both of these guys are real Mount Rushmore candidates. Which means if McDavid goes up, someone comes off. That is not a small decision.
Is Connor McDavid on Hockey’s Mount Rushmore?
So now look at the trophy case again.
Six Art Ross Trophies at 29 years old. He has led the NHL in scoring six times. Gordie Howe won six scoring titles across his entire career. Phil Esposito won five. Jaromir Jagr won five. The only player in front of McDavid on that list right now is Gretzky with ten, and Gretzky played in a league where 200-point seasons were possible. McDavid is putting up 138 in a completely different era of hockey and still separating himself from everyone.
Five Ted Lindsay Awards, voted on by the players. Not the media, not the general managers. The men who suit up against McDavid every single night. Five times those guys have looked at their ballots and written his name down as the most outstanding player in the league. The only other player they have done that for five times is Wayne Gretzky. I think the people who skate against him every night probably know something.
And then there is the 2024 Conn Smythe.
The Edmonton Oilers lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers in 2024. McDavid was so dominant throughout those playoffs that the voters gave him the playoff MVP anyway. It is one of the rarest outcomes in the history of professional hockey. A player so good that even in a losing run, on a team that did not win the championship, he was still the best player anyone saw from either bench the whole way through.
That is the argument. That is genuinely the argument.
The Cup Is Missing and It Matters
Twelve seasons. No Stanley Cup. Two Final losses. A round one exit in 2026 where he played hurt, the Oilers got bounced by the Anaheim Ducks in six games, and McDavid walked out afterward and called his own team average. Not as an excuse. As an honest read on what he had around him.
I want to say something about that support cast, though, because the conversation usually glosses over it and it should not.
Leon Draisaitl is a legitimate star. Hart Trophy winner. Over 1,000 career points. He is a real elite player and McDavid is fortunate to have him as a linemate. That part of the roster has been real. The goaltending is a different story. In the 2026 playoffs, Tristan Jarry and Connor Ingram combined for an .880 save percentage. Stuart Skinner got traded mid-season trying to fix a situation that never got fixed. Year after year, the net has been the thing that has fallen apart on Edmonton when it matters most.
Gretzky won four Cups on a team with Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, and Grant Fuhr. Lemieux had Jaromir Jagr in his prime and two championship-caliber rosters built around him. Crosby had Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury in his best years and a front office that built real teams. McDavid took a below-market deal to help the Oilers create cap space and build around him. He has done his part.
The Cup is not on the trophy case. That is a real hole in the resume. But it is worth knowing exactly why it is not there before you decide how much it counts against him.
He Is 29 Years Old
Sidney Crosby is on my locked Mount Rushmore list and he is still playing at 38. If McDavid plays at that level for another decade, the resume sitting in front of us right now is just the beginning. Another ten years of leading the league in scoring. Another ten years of chances to win a Cup with whatever Edmonton can build around him.
I am not going to tell you whether he is on it or not. That is the whole point of this piece. My three locks are Gretzky, Lemieux, and Crosby, and nothing moves those. After that you have Gordie Howe, you have Bobby Orr, and now you have Connor McDavid at 29 years old with a trophy case that is already one of the most decorated in the history of this sport.
