Player previews are done. It’s time for our Washington Capitals player predictions as we look at each player one by one. We are kicking this off with a BOLD prediction about Alex Ovechkin. He’s 38 years old as of Sunday which was his birthday and we believe he’s got one more 50 goal season in him.
And when he does reach that 50 goal plateau he will make NHL history. He will hold the NHL record for the most 50 goal seasons. That’s absolute bananas if you think about it.
Not just because of the age of 38 but also because even though Wayne Gretzky has the record for most NHL goals right now, there were seasons where he did not reach 50. That’s crazy. You would think the dude with the NHL goals record had at the very least 15 50 goal seasons. But that isn’t the case.
The great eight has nine 50 goal seasons in his career. He may have gotten that elusive 10 if COVID didn’t happen in 2020. Maybe he would have more than that if there weren’t two lockouts either. One delayed his entire rookie season by a year. The second lockout, while there was a resolution, the season was much shorter. Ovi led the league in goals that 2013 season.
It’s a three way tie between Ovechkin, Gretzky and Mike Bossy. Each one has nine. Bossy and Gretzky are both retired. Ovi has a chance to be all alone. This upcoming season may be his best shot to do it given that one year from now he’ll turn 39.
Gretzky has 894 career goals. Ovechkin currently sits in second at 822. That’s 72 goals away from catching the great one. He probably won’t score 73 goals this season. Heck, Ovi’s best statistical season came in 2007 08 and even then he reached 65 goals.
Would he have reached 73 that year? Well he did play in all 82 games that year so I doubt it. He would’ve needed just a couple more hat trick games.
People are going to be watching Ovechkin like a hawk the next two seasons. There’s three left on his deal. Who knows what happens after that?
But if Ovechkin can reach that 50 goal mark this season, it’s going to put him in the driver’s seat for next season. He would need just 22 to tie and 23 to pass Gretzky. Ovechkin has never finished a season with less than 24 goals and even that 24 goal season was (you guessed it!) shortened by COVID.
So for the first player prediction in our series leading up to opening night has the great eight finishing with 50 goals and 30 assists for 80 points.