At the ripe old age of 34, Alex Ovechkin has posted his 11th 40-goal season. The guy just doesn’t slow down. Ovi has now amassed 698 career goals and has recently passed Mark Messier (9th place - 694 goals) and Steve Yzerman (10th place - 692 goals). Next up, Mike Gartner is sitting in 7th place and has 708, and Phil Esposito is in 6th place with 717 goals. Ovechkin will likely pass both Gartner and Esposito by the end of this season, especially considering he has 14 goals in his last 11 games, including three hat-tricks. His road to 700 and beyond is approaching much quicker than we all realized.

Wayne Gretzky sits atop the all-time NHL scorers list with 894 goals. Ovechkin still has a long road ahead if he wants to catch that number, but I think he can do it. In fact, his career numbers say he will do it. Gretzky played 1,487 games in his NHL career. As of 2/6/2020, Ovechkin currently has 1,137 GP. That’s a 350 game difference. So, Ovi has 350 games to score 196 more goals to tie his record, and 197 to break it. He has posted 0.61 goals per game throughout his career. At that pace, Ovi will likely score another 200+ goals in that amount of time. (0.61 x 350 games = 213.5). He also has showed 0 signs of slowing down in his latter years.

If Ovechkin retires after his 20th year in the NHL (which is when Gretzky retired), he still has 5 more years ahead of him. That comes out to 410 games too, if he plays all 82. He probably won’t considering he gets his annual one-game suspension for skipping the all-star game. But who needs extra games when you can get hat-tricks as often as he does? Ovi has 3 in his last 6 games. He also has 27 hat-tricks in his career, which puts him in 8th place all-time.

Like I said earlier, the guy just doesn’t slow down. He is on pace to catch Gretzky’s goal record. As far as his points record though…. Not a chance (Gretzky has 2,857 points, Ovi has 1,137). No one is catching the Great One in points. Ever.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiGzuPhyYRk&w=854&h=480]

Written By Andrew Silvers

Check out the What the Puck Podcast on Instagram @wtp_podcast and on Twitter @whatthepuckpc