In fairness to those nine people, last season in his first 43 games (not a small sample size), Ovechkin had 8 goals. That's 0.18 goals per game.
Keep in mind, he's a year older. It's not out of the realm of possibility for someone to think hey, maybe at 39 he'll be more of that player we saw in the first half of last season (0.18 goals per game) versus the last half of last season (0.63 goals per game).
At the start of this season, he had 853 goals so he was 41 goals away from tying it. If he went back to playing like he did at the start of last season or worse (he's 39, remember) it would have taken him 227 games to tie the record.
Instead, he is doing BETTER than he did in the back half of last season at 0.67 goals per game. It's incredible, really.
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