P-values and critical values are so similar that they are often confused. They both do the same thing: enable you to support or reject the null hypothesis in a test. But they differ in how you get to make that decision. In other words, they are two different approaches to the same result. This picture sums up the p value vs critical value approaches.
References
James Jones. Probability Values.
Hartmann, K., Krois, J., Waske, B. (2018): E-Learning Project SOGA: Statistics and Geospatial Data Analysis. Department of Earth Sciences, Freie Universitaet Berlin.
