Capitals: Alex Ovechkin Is On Pace For One Of His Best Goal Scoring Seasons

Alex Ovechkin may be the oldest player on the Washington Capitals but there’s no signs of him slowing down anytime soon.

The natural decline of skill usually starts in the early thirties. 32 or 33 would be a good guess as to when it starts. If that truly is the case no one has let Alex Ovechkin know that. The now 34 year old has started the season just like any other of his career if not a little better.

It’s been one heck of a career already for the “Great Eight”. If you’re reading this you probably don’t need me telling you how great his career has been. Ovechkin will go down as one of the greatest players to ever play the game and will likely be a top three goal scorer of all time.

As we speak Ovechkin currently has 671 career goals. To compare that to another great player, Sidney Crosby has 451 career goals. I’m not here to say one player is better than the other. They’re different players. Ovechkin more of the goal scorer, Crosby more of the complete player. This is just a comparison to how many goals Ovechkin has compared to another great player of his time.

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No one would have been shocked if Ovechkin’s goal totals started to drop starting two years ago. They haven’t yet. He is coming off two consecutive 50 goal seasons for the most part. He scored 51 goals last season and scored 49 goals the season before. The decline hasn’t started in recent seasons, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to start this season either.

Ovechkin has 13 goals in the Capitals first 19 games of this season. That’s a .68 goals per game. That’s above his career average of .60 goals per game. If Ovechkin were to play an 82 game season and keep up this pace he would score around 56 goals this season. Not only is that not regressing, it would be getting better.

Ovechkin hasn’t scored that many goals in a season since 2008-09, he was 23 years old that season. Here we are, eleven years later and he is on pace to have one of the best years of his career, at least in terms of goal scoring.

We’re starting to get into some historic territory here as well. If Ovechkin were to score fifty or more goals this season he would be one of the oldest players in NHL history to score that many goals. He’d be the oldest since Jaromir Jagr scored 54 goals in 2005-06, he was 34 that season. It should be noted that was the first season after the lockout and offense and goals were easier to score that season than they are now.

If you’re curious the oldest player to ever score fifty plus goals in a season was Johnny Bucyk in 1970-71. He was 35 years old. For Ovechkin to break that record he’ll have to score fifty or more goals in the 2021-22 season. I think that’s unlikely, but who would completely bet against him at this point.

More history should be made this season if Ovechkin can stay healthy. As we mentioned he currently has 671 career goals. That’s 12th all time on the NHL goals scored list. He needs 14 more goals to climb into 11th and pass Teemu Selanne. He needs 20 goals to pass one of the biggest names in the hockey world Mario Lemieux. That puts him in the top ten.

22 more goals would put him into 9th place all time, this time passing Red Wings great Steve Yzerman. 24 more goals gives him 8th place taking that spot from Mark Messier.

If Ovechkin were to score the 56 goals he is on pace for that would put him at 714 at seasons end and that would put him at 7th all time. He would pass Mike Gartner who finished his career with 708 goals.

That would also put him three goals behind Phil Esposito who had 717 which he would catch early next season. He’d be in position to not so quietly creep into fourth place next season as well by passing Marcel Dionne (731) and Brett Hull (741).

The top three goals scorers are Jagr at 766, Gordie Howe at  801 and then finally Gretzky at 894.

All of this relies on Ovechkin not hitting a big slump which has rarely happened in his career, but wouldn’t be the first time an athlete hit a slump.

It also depends on if he can stay healthy. Ovechkin has never played less than 72 games in a season. He played 72 games in the 2009-10 season. Taking that season out of it his career low for games played in a full season is 78, which he did in both 2013-14 and 2011-12.

He has a lot of miles on his body. Out of a possible 1,133 games Ovechkin has played 1,103. That doesn’t even count the playoffs. He’s played in 128 playoff games.

The decline will come at some point. Nearly a quarter of the way through this season it doesn’t look like the decline is starting this year. Right now, it looks like Ovechkin is only getting better with age.