1,000 points in 880 games.
You don’t need me to tell you Alex Ovechkin is amazing. His play says so much by itself. His shot, his terrifying presence on the power play, his ability to get shots off from all over the ice, his combination of size and speed, of skill and physicality. He stands out as much as a player can. He’s a monster.
But the differences in scoring rates across eras make it difficult to compare players or even understand how impressive a given milestone is. For example, Ovechkin is the 84th player in league history to reach 1,000 points. But that undersells his accomplishment in this era. The league’s scoring rate began a drastic drop after the 1995-96 season and aside from the brief post-lockout bounce-back (2005-2007 or so), it has stayed down for two decades.
The list of 1,000-point scorers is dominated by guys who started their career in the 20-year period before the scoring drop. In fact, guys who debuted in that time period make up exactly two-thirds of the list (56 of 84). Meanwhile, Ovechkin is just the seventh player who debuted in 1996-97 or later to score 1,000, joining Patrick Elias (played one game in 1995-96, but I’m not counting that), Patrick Marleau, Marian Hossa, Jarome Iginla, Joe Thornton and Martin St. Louis. Henrik Sedin and Sidney Crosby should join this list within a month while Daniel Sedin will likely do so during the first half of next season.
Pretty good company. It’s even more impressive when considering he reached it at a younger age than any of the previous seven and only Crosby seems likely to surpass that any time soon.
And Ovechkin didn’t get to 1,000 points in typical fashion. He scored more than 500 goals to get there, passing Maurice Richard on his way. To score 545 goals in this era is an enormous accomplishment. He was just the second of the Dead Puck Era guys to do it (Marian Hossa has reached the milestone too) and only Marleau appears likely to do so within the next few seasons.
He accomplished something almost no one in this era was able to do over a full career before his 31st birthday. He leads the league with such ease, it almost becomes automatic to assume he’ll win the Rocket Richard Trophy at year’s end. He scored 52 as a rookie, 65 in his third season and 56 and 50 over the next two seasons. Hell, he averaged more than 50 goals per season his first five years.
Then, a two-year downturn as Dale Hunter attempted to make him more of shot-blocking defensive specialist (he still scored 70 goals over those two seasons). He found his mojo again during the lockout-shortened season, scoring 32 goals in 48 games. He put away 51 and 53 the next two seasons, before finding himself in danger of falling short of the impressive half-century threshold last year. With one game remaining, he sat atop the leader board with 47 goals. Of course, he scored a hat trick and order was restored. It was the seventh time he reached the milestone and sixth time he led the league in goals.
A stat floated around the internet over the past few days that summed things up pretty clearly: Ovechkin has the most goals of anyone in the NHL since the start of the 2001-02 season. His career began in 2005. There’s no shortage of analytics pieces across the blogosphere making the case that, adjusting for era, he’s the best goal scorer of all time. He should undoubtedly be considered the second-best player of this era.
But you didn’t me to tell you he’s amazing.
Or maybe you did. Because despite everything listed above, the conversation around the Great Eight seems to be consistently dominated by lack of a Stanley Cup win. His teams have never even advanced past the second round, blowing a handful of two-game leads.
Never mind that hockey is less of an individual-driven sport than any other or that Ovechkin has 41 goals in 84 career playoff games. This is the narrative the hockey community at large has chosen for him. After a playoff miss in 2013-14 (a year in which he led the league in goals by a mile), one hockey writer suggest the Caps would be better off if he went back to Russia. Even with Washington playing as well as it ever has over the past two seasons, the criticism persists.
And that’s too bad because there might not be too much time left to enjoy him. We don’t tend to think of players in their early 30’s as old because so many stars end up playing years beyond that. But scoring primes tend to end in the late 20’s and many scorers fall off a cliff early in their 30’s. Guys might play years beyond their prime, but there are more Dany Heatleys than Joe Thortons and Jaromir Jagrs.
Ovechkin’s scoring prime occurred from 2007 to 2010 when he averaged more than 110 points per season. His resurgence didn’t feature nearly as many assists (like a bizarre level of drop off from his younger days) but he was always one of the league’s top scorers. Over the past three years he’s gone from 81 to 71 to on pace for 68 points. He’s led the league in shots all but one year since he entered the league, often by a wide margin. This year, he’s in danger of not doing so (he’s in second, with plenty of guys breathing down his neck). The decline has begun, even if it doesn’t totally feel like it yet.
Enjoy Ovechkin while you can. You might never see another player score like him again.
