[Signing] Capitals re-sign Ovechkin to a 5 year/47.5 M contract extension (9.5 M AAV)

[Jay Random]

Your calculations are still flawed. The Oilers were by far the highest-scoring team in the league for most of the 1980s. The Capitals haven't been the highest-scoring team during Ovechkin's time there.

If you look at league-wide scoring, the average from 1979 to 1988 (Gretzky's years as an Oiler) was 3.82 goals per game per team. Over the last nine seasons, 2012–21, the average was 2.85. That's only a 25-percent decrease.

Incidentally, defencemen in the 1980s most certainly did know how to skate backwards. So did defencemen in the 1920s. It was the goalies and the defensive systems that sucked.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by MegaErtz

for a total of 3859. 3859 goals divided by 1239 games works out to 3.11 goals scored per game. 4.83-3.11 works out to 1.72, so I think it is fair to say that goals were much easier to come by when one team was scoring 1.72 more goals per game than the other. The Capitals only averaged 64.4% of the goals the Oilers did, and yet somehow Ovechkin is within striking range of taking over Gretzky's record from an era when most defencemen didn't know how to skate backwards.

this just makes you sound 12

[greentree]

Originally Posted by getbak

He has the most-Russian-looking family I've ever seen...

Back in my magazine writing days I had dinner in a Moscow restaurant (excellent Japanese) with Ovi, his mom and dad, and his agent Don Meehan...this was way back in 2002, before Ovi began his NHL career. Just a pup then, he'd played that evening with his local club Dynamo, vs another Russian kid named Nikolai Zherdev...
Ovi's parents smoked incessantly through the meal, it was really something to see.
The vodka flowed pretty freely as well