Washington Capitals: Alex Ovechkin will become greatest goal scorer

Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer of the 21st century. He has what it takes to beat Wayne Gretzky’s career goal record.

With the start of the 2019-20 NHL season just a couple weeks away, Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin is entering the season just 236 goals behind the all-time leader in goals scored for a career, Wayne Gretzky. Ovechkin will match or break this record before he hangs up the skates.

A lot of things can happen in the unpredictable world of sports. Especially in sports as physical as hockey. Injuries happen sadly and some of them derail entire careers. I have never been one to make a prediction of this magnitude as there are too many variables that go into something like this actually happening, but I feel safe and comfortable making this prediction.

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Ovechkin is entering his 15th season in the NHL and no one has been the standard of consistency like The Great Eight. He has failed to reach the 40 goal plateau in a season just four times in 14 seasons. In fact, Ovechkin has scored 50 goals in a season more times (eight) than he hasn’t (six).

One of those seasons (2012-13) he didn’t get at least 40 goals was a lockout-shortened season. He still had 32 goals and only played in 48 games. That is the only season he has failed to play in less than 70 games in a season. Ovechkin would be a monster in any era. Health-wise he seems impervious to the wear and tear that normal humans feel throughout a season.

No player has demonstrated more sheer determination to be the best than Ovechkin has in his career. You could see him at times during their Stanley Cup-winning season, hoisting the entire Capitals team and fan-base onto his shoulders and carry them to the next game or round.

14 seasons in any professional sport is a solid career. To perform at the rate of Ovechkin season in and season out is extraordinary. He just turned 34 on Sept. 17. So seeing that most players start to slow when the age meter turns to 30, you would expect to see Ovechkin’s numbers declining.

Instead, his numbers have yet to decline. Ovechkin finished the 2018-19 season with 51 goals. Through fourteen seasons, Ovechkin is averaging 47 goals a season. He has scored over 50 goals in over half of his seasons. That is remarkable and suggests that even with a natural decline in production Ovechkin is poised to make a chase for Wayne Gretzky’s career goals record a reality.

Let’s do the math here – say that he continues to average 47 goals a season. That puts Ovechkin at breaking the record at age 39 in just over five seasons. Now I don’t see him scoring 47 every season from now until the record is broken, but I believe he is going to have north of 50 goals the next two or three seasons.

That would put him at over 150 of the 236 needed to surpass the Great One and leave around 80 or so goals to score over the next two to three seasons. This is doable for no other human being other than the Great Eight.

It’s going to be fun to track as the time ticks by. He will definitely land in the top five of all-time, but I honestly feel that if someone is to ever touch a record of the Great One, it is The Great Eight’s for the taking.

Ovechkin is showing no signs of slowing down. He is that generational talent that has the genetic make-up and mental fortitude to do something others have deemed impossible. I never thought I’d see someone even sniff a record of Wayne Gretzky’s, but here we are today, potentially five years away from seeing the Great 8 supplant the Great 1 as the all-time leader in goals scored!