This isn’t clickbait. Well, not really. With Auston Matthews on pace to score a salary-cap era record 74 goals this season, it’s really starting to look like he might become a greater goal scorer than the Great 8 himself.
This really is a more nuanced argument than it may appear on paper.
Auston Matthews has been on an utter tear this season and is well on his way to set goalscoring records for the salary cap era, but does his amazing start to his career already set him on pace to become a greater goal scorer than the current greatest goal scorer of the league: Alex Ovechkin? Well, the answer might surprise you.
Okay, I know I might seem like a raging hypocrite right now as I not only have been a very vocal critic of the hyper-obsessed Canadien sports media (which is essentially just hard-core fanatics for the Maple Leafs) and all the attention over the Maple Leafs team as a whole, but I’m now also comparing Auston Matthews to perhaps the greatest goal scorer the NHL has ever seen in Alex Ovechkin. Wait, scratch that, I’m actually saying that Auston Matthews might be on pace to be an even GREATER goal scorer than the Great 8.
How am I not being just as hyperbolic as the Toronto Maple Leafs-state media?
Two reasons: 74 goals vs. 65 goals, and 352 goals in 8 years vs. 324 goals in 8 years.
What does this mean? Well, starting with the first statistic, that is the number of projected goals Auston Matthews is set to score this season against the highest total Alex Ovechkin produced in his first eight season in the NHL. Clearly, Auston Matthews is about to blow that Ovechkin total out of the water and he may even surpass that and enter the 80’s stratosphere…which hasn’t been seen since Brett Hull scored 84 goals with the St. Louis Blues back in the 1990-91 season.
And, the second stat is the total number of goals Auston Matthews has scored in his eight-year career thus far against the tally Ovechkin was able to score during his first eight season in the NHL.
And, yet again, Auston Matthews has a clear advantage over the Great 8 in this tally as he’s scored just under 30 goals MORE than Ovechkin did during the same timeframe of their, respective, careers. Yet, that total is only going to grow even bigger for Matthews has another 25ish games to bring his total in the 370’s or even 380’s.
So, this is the argument: Auston Matthews is not only on pace to score more goals in a single season than Alex Ovechkin has (and probably will) ever be able to do, but he’s also on pace to score a good 50 or so MORE goals than Ovie did during the first eight years of their, respective, careers. Thus, Matthews is on pace to become an even greater goal scorer than Alex Ovechkin and the best of the salary cap era.
Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Well, I’m sorry to the Canadien sports media and all rabid Toronto fans who will agree with this argument, but I don’t actually believe this. No, what makes Alex Ovechkin the far better goal scorer than Auston Matthews is not his longevity, consistency, or even touching distance to greatness (he’s only 54 goals away from being the all-time leading goal scorer), but rather his adaptability to the changing eras.
You have to remember that the league Alex Ovechkin grew up in was NOT EVEN CLOSE to the league Auston Matthews started in back in the 2016-17 season. Not only did Ovechkin play in a league that averaged just 2.82 goals/game for each team during his first 13 season in the NHL, but he also saw a 12-year gap between seasons when every team in the league AT LEAST average 3.00 or more goals/game (2005-06 and then 2018-19).
Auston Matthews has been playing in a league that averages 3.02 goals/game for EVERY team, while he’s only seen three seasons (2016-17, 2017-18, and 2020-21) where the goals/game average for every team across the NHL was below 3.00. And in two of those seasons, 2017-18, 2020-21, the goal scoring average was at least 2.94/game or greater.
So, goal scoring has CLEARLY been on a rise ever since Matthews entered into the league, while Ovechkin had to deal with the fallout of the “Dead Puck Era” (aka: 1997-2004) when he stated in 2005-06. Oh, and did I mention that Ovechkin also missed his first season in the NHL (2004-05) due to a lockout and only played in 48 games in 2012-13 (his 8th season in the league) due to another lockout.
Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Matthews goalscoring stats as well for the 2020-21 season was cut in half and the 2019-20 season (the season COVID first spread) missed out on the final 12-15 games, but Ovechkin was just as impacted as Matthews. And perhaps more so as he’s now lost a good 3 seasons and a half of hockey and games to add to his goal tallies due to external league issues.
I don’t want to make this article sound like I hate Matthews or think he’s a bad player for that’s not the case. Matthews is clearly the undisputed king of scoring nowadays with Ovechkin’s stagnating play, but I also want to set the record straight that Ovie is perhaps the greatest goal scorer the league has ever seen (only Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe can rival him in my opinion) and easily the best of the salary cap era.
And I think it’s going to stay that way unless someone like Matthews or another can top 900 goals as that’s what Ovie would have if not for all of the external issues that plagued hockey during his heyday.
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