[Ark2]

With his goal last night in OT, his career regular season goals is now at 690, which puts him into a tie at 9th place with Mario Lemieux. Just looking at his career makes you really wonder what could have been had there not been any lockout stoppages and had he not left to play in Russia for 3 seasons.

I decided to crunch the numbers and project how many he could have scored. In 94/95, he scored 32 goals in 48 games, which projects to 54 goals over a full season, giving him an additional 22 goals. During the 04/05 lockout, I looked at his goal totals the season before and the season after, which gave him an average of 42 goals. He also missed seasons 08/09, 09/10, and 10/11, playing in the KHL. During those seasons the number of goals he scored were 25, 22, and 19, respectively. It's difficult to gauge what he would have scored playing in the NHL as the KHL has a shorter season and is less skilled, however, since those numbers are roughly equivalent to what he scored when he returned to North America, I figure it's fair to assume he would have scored at approximately the same pace, so that would give him an additional 66 goals. Lastly, without the lockout shortened season last year, he was pro-rated to score an additional 13 goals. The above results in a extra 143 goals, which hypothetically would have brought his current total to 833, which would have easily put him in 2nd place all time, behind Gretzky with 894. At the rate he is currently going, you have to think that over the next season or two, he has at least another 30 goals in him. I just find it amazing to think that had things gone differently, he could have seriously challenged Gretzky's record.