Quote:
Originally Posted by codynw
Why is 800 a stretch? The guy has never scored less than 30 goals, and he only needs 200 to get there. If he stays healthy and doesn't retire too early, I think 800 would be easy.
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While I don't think 800 is a stretch, I don't think 800 is easy either.
There's two people in the history of the league that scored more than 800 goals.
There's been several players that have had career goal numbers similar to Ovechkin at the same age.
You can remove the obvious like Lemieux and Bossy due to injuries and Bobby Hull due to the WHLA. But Dionne (731), Yzerman (692), Jagr (766) Gartner (708), Esposito (717), Kurri (601), Brett Hull (741) and Robitaille (668) all had reached 550 goals by the time they were 33.
Lucky Luc in particular I would say is a cautionary tale. He was 32, like Ovechkin, and scoring 40 goals, averaging over 0.5 goals a game throughout his career. 34 he scores 37 goals, at 35 he scores 30 goals. And then he falls off a cliff after finally getting his name on the Cup, scores 11 as a 36 year old and is all but done. If we had the same conversation about Robitaille when he was 32, we would be saying that 700, if not 750, would be easy for him to reach but he finished with 668.
When you start talking about Ovechkin needing to average nearly 30 goals a game until he is 40, that's not easy.