The Great 8 finally has 800 goals. Alex Ovechkin continues to make history as with his hattrick against the Chicago Blackhawks, he broke into extremely exclusive the 800-goal club and now sits only one goal shy of tying the great Gordie Howe.
Alex Ovechkin will go down as the greatest modern day goal scorer for as long as the 2000’s, 2010’s, and 2020’s counts as the modern era of the NHL. He has continually proven to be the greatest and most consistent volume scorer who has ever lived, and that’s including the two players still above him in the scoring list: Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky.
There has never been a player who has been able to put up 45-50 goals year after year across an 18-year stretch, which is exactly what Ovechkin has done since he came into the league in the 2005/06 season.
Yes, Gordie Howe currently has more goals than Ovechkin due to the fact that he played for 30+ NHL seasons (not including the WHA), and Gretzky was a better scorer in a much shorter period of time (10 years), but those two were never able to score as much as Ovechkin has for as long as the Great 8 has been able to.
Now, I will say that Howe is kind of getting screwed over as he actually has 975 career goals if you add the 174 goals he scored in the WHA during the mid and late 1970’s, but since the NHL doesn’t count those goals, I can’t either.
Thus, it is factually proven that Alex Ovechkin has been a better volume goal scorer (he has a better goal/season than Howe if comparing the two’s first 18 seasons) than Mr. Hockey and is only one goal away from now surpassing the icon as the 2nd best goal scorer in NHL history.
As for Gretzky, it is going to be difficult to surpass The Great One in the next two years. Gretzky still sits at 894 goals, a massive 94 goals more than Ovechkin.
Obviously, scoring 94 more goals wouldn’t normally be a problem for Ovie, but seeing as he’s now 37 years old and his style-of-play is far more aggressive than Gretzky’s ever was, it’s going to be really tough to average 47ish goals over these next two years. Plus, his Capitals team is declining and will instantly fall off the moment Ovechkin either retires or moves on to another team.
But, if anyone alive has the chance to do it, I’d pip Ovie to break the record 100% of the time.
We’ll see if the Great 8 can finally become the Greatest Goal Scorer in NHL history in the next year or two.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Wikimedia Creative Commons License/Author: Michael Miller) (Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
