Having pointed out the problems with Hockey-Reference’s adjusted points formula and made the case for an improved version of adjusted scoring, it’s time to look at the question of where Alex Ovechkin should rank on the all-time list of goal scorers. As my title already gives away, when the era biases in the adjusted metrics are corrected, it turns out that Ovechkin’s numbers, while unquestionably outstanding, are no longer the best.
That on its own does not necessarily mean that Ovechkin isn’t #1. All scoring stats, adjusted or not, should be viewed in context, with understanding of a player’s usage, role and team situation. Ovechkin also has plenty of years ahead of him, and there is a reasonable case to be made that relative dominance is more difficult in the current era. I’ll show here why I think others are more deserving of the greatest of all-time mantle based on my adjusted goal calculations, but opinions can certainly differ. At the very least though, I hope that in the future any claims of Ovechkin being history’s greatest will be supported by more compelling evidence than links to Hockey-Reference adjusted goal totals.
Just to quickly review, the essential difference between the two adjustment methods is how they account for the offensive share of top players. Instead of using a questionable roster size adjustment, I chose instead to use the total points of the 3rd through 12th ranked scorers in each season divided by the total goals scored by all of their teams. Here’s the graphical comparison showing the periods where the adjustment factors converge or diverge:
A chart I wanted to revisit with updated numbers is one from Japers Rink last year comparing adjusted goals through players’ age 29 seasons, which seems to have been the origin of the claim that Ovechkin has a case for #1 all-time. I duplicated the original table and added an additional column for the percentage of team adjusted goals:
| Player | Goals | H-Ref Adjusted | TCG Adjusted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Ovechkin | 460 | 543 | 496 |
| Wayne Gretzky | 677 | 542 | 537 |
| Jaromir Jagr | 470 | 503 | 446 |
| Mike Bossy | 535 | 429 | 442 |
| Steve Yzerman | 481 | 416 | 387 |
| Mario Lemieux | 494 | 412 | 383 |
| Jari Kurri | 474 | 380 | 384 |
| Michel Goulet | 460 | 350 | 365 |
Based on my accounting, the Great One reclaims the lead over the Great Eight by 41 goals when 1980s offence is placed in its proper relative context, although Ovechkin’s numbers remain stellar relative to the rest of the group. Notice also how the gap between Jagr, a ’90s superstar, and Bossy, an ’80s superstar, disappears almost entirely.
The selection of players in that chart was based on the most total goals through age 29, a choice tilted towards eras with higher scoring and longer schedules. In search of a more complete historical comparison, I found eleven additional players that I calculate as having a higher number of adjusted goals through their age 29 seasons than Michel Goulet (using the percentage of team scoring method, and again this is since 1942-43, i.e. from the Original Six onwards).
For the rest of this post, all of the adjusted numbers presented are using the percentage of team scoring method. Here’s the revised ranking for all nineteen players:
Adjusted Goals (% of Scoring) Through Age 29 Season
| Rank | Player | Adjusted Goals |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gordie Howe | 591 |
| 2 | Wayne Gretzky | 537 |
| 3 | Bobby Hull | 522 |
| 4 | Alex Ovechkin | 496 |
| 5 | Maurice Richard | 450 |
| 6 | Jaromir Jagr | 446 |
| 7 | Mike Bossy | 442 |
| 8 | Bernie Geoffrion | 428 |
| 9 | Ted Lindsay | 423 |
| 10 | Ilya Kovalchuk | 420 |
| 11 | Phil Esposito | 414 |
| 12 | Guy Lafleur | 411 |
| 13 | Marcel Dionne | 410 |
| 14 | Stan Mikita | 400 |
| 15 | Steve Yzerman | 387 |
| 16 | Jari Kurri | 384 |
| 17 | Mario Lemieux | 383 |
| 18 | Jean Beliveau | 373 |
| 19 | Michel Gouulet | 365 |
Ovechkin still ranks very impressively in fourth place all-time, but is 95 goals out of first place when the legendary Gordie Howe gets proper credit for his dominant performances in the low-scoring 1950s. With that kind of gap, and with three players ranked ahead of him, there is no longer a clear cut case for Ovechkin holding a lead in cumulative career performance through age 29.
Then again, there are many other ways to rate a player’s success. I’m personally more of a peak/prime guy, I find it more interesting and useful to know what a player was like at their best rather than crediting them for how long they decided to stick around and keep adding to their career totals (or how early they broke into the league, which is a factor that strongly influences something like a player’s career goal total through age 29). Hockey-Reference’s current list of single-season adjusted goals leaders rates Ovechkin’s 65 goals in 2007-08 at #2 all-time. Let’s see how that season fares from a different perspective:
Adjusted Goals, Best 25 Individual Seasons
| Rank | Player | Year | Adjusted Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Phil Esposito | 1970-71 | 98.3 |
| 2 | Gordie Howe | 1952-53 | 84.3 |
| 3 | Bobby Hull | 1966-67 | 75.0 |
| 4 | Maurice Richard | 1944-45 | 73.9 |
| 5 | Phil Esposito | 1971-72 | 72.5 |
| 6 | Brett Hull | 1990-91 | 72.3 |
| 7 | Jean Beliveau | 1955-56 | 72.1 |
| 8 | Wayne Gretzky | 1983-84 | 72.0 |
| 9 | Phil Esposito | 1973-74 | 70.7 |
| 10 | Gaye Stewart | 1945-46 | 69.7 |
| 11 | Mario Lemieux | 1988-89 | 67.9 |
| 12 | Gordie Howe | 1950-51 | 67.8 |
| 13 | Wayne Gretzky | 1981-82 | 67.3 |
| 14 | Gordie Howe | 1951-52 | 67.3 |
| 15 | Maurice Richard | 1946-47 | 66.9 |
| 16 | Maurice Richard | 1950-51 | 66.2 |
| 17 | Johnny Bucyk | 1970-71 | 65.9 |
| 18 | Maurice Richard | 1953-54 | 65.1 |
| 19 | Bobby Hull | 1965-66 | 64.8 |
| 20 | Maurice Richard | 1949-50 | 64.7 |
| 21 | Steven Stamkos | 2011-12 | 64.5 |
| 22 | Alex Ovechkin | 2007-08 | 62.2 |
| 23 | Steve Shutt | 1976-77 | 62.1 |
| 24 | Gordie Howe | 1956-57 | 61.1 |
| 25 | Mike Bossy | 1978-79 | 61.0 |
It turns out that I have Ovechkin falling all the way to 22nd, and he might not even have had the best goal scoring season in the last 10 years, although I wouldn’t make a big deal about a couple of adjusted goals either way. What we see near the top is what I predicted last time, all-time great players playing on strong teams, often in years where they were able to beat up some weaker opposition (like Maurice Richard in 1944-45).
The teammates factor is especially important to take into account. Phil Esposito ends up so far ahead of everyone else because the 1970s Boston Bruins have a known tendency to break statistical metrics through their ridiculous level of offensive dominance. In 1970-71, Boston scored 399 goals and had 7 of the top 11 scorers in the league. All those Bruins are responsible for lowering my calculated percentage of team offence to just 25.4%, even though it was around 30% in both the season before and after and the top 10 non-Boston scorers in 1970-71 combined for 29.4%. Using 30% for the adjustment factor in 1970-71 would drop Esposito’s total to 83.2, leaving him in second behind Gordie Howe’s 1952-53, probably a better pick as the actual best goal scoring season of all time considering that Howe scored 49 in a year where the best a player on any other team could manage was 28 (although Howe’s teammates were also very strong).
As we saw in my last post, singularly outstanding seasons tend to be less common as a sport matures, since it is more difficult to stand out now than it was before, but perhaps even more importantly factors like free agency, a 30 team league and the salary cap work to break up dominant teams and separate elite talent. It’s also statistically easier to maintain an abnormally high pace over a 50 game schedule than over 82. If I was subjectively rating these seasons I would likely move Ovechkin well up the list, at least to the mid-teens and maybe even around the edge of the top 10, since he should certainly be ranked ahead of Johnny Bucyk and probably some of the immediate post-war years of guys like Maurice Richard and Gaye Stewart where the top end talent was still fairly weak. I would however probably not rank Ovi’s peak year ahead of the likes of Gretzky’s 1981-82 or Lemieux’s 1988-89.
Another typical measure of peak play is to look at a player’s best five seasons. Here are the top 15 players in terms of adjusted goals scored over their best 5 seasons (not required to be consecutive), along with the percentage of games they played during those years:
Adjusted Goals in 5 Best Seasons
| Rank | Player | Adjusted Goals | % of GP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Phil Esposito | 353.9 | 99% |
| 2 | Gordie Howe | 338.8 | 100% |
| 3 | Maurice Richard | 336.7 | 98% |
| 4 | Bobby Hull | 317.5 | 97% |
| 5 | Wayne Gretzky | 307.2 | 98% |
| 6 | Alex Ovechkin | 286.5 | 98% |
| 7 | Brett Hull | 274.2 | 97% |
| 8 | Mario Lemieux | 273.8 | 88% |
| 9 | Jean Beliveau | 266.6 | 95% |
| 10 | Mike Bossy | 266.0 | 98% |
| 11 | Guy Lafleur | 265.7 | 97% |
| 12 | Steven Stamkos | 257.5 | 100% |
| 13 | Pavel Bure | 255.6 | 96% |
| 14 | Bernie Geoffrion | 254.0 | 90% |
| 15 | Jaromir Jagr | 245.4 | 95% |
Again, Esposito doesn’t really deserve to lead here, since if we apply the same correction as above for 1970-71 he would again drop into second place just behind Howe (and if we were able to properly account for the impact of Bobby Orr, Espo would likely fall even further than that). Ovechkin ranks a solid 6th in total goals, as always right in the mix with some of the greatest scorers to ever play, although on a per-game basis Mario would bump him down to 7th.
It’s interesting that Steven Stamkos also shows up in this rarefied air. Like his Washington rival, Stamkos is off to an all-time great start to his career. Through their age 24 seasons, Stamkos is actually ahead of Ovechkin 307 adjusted goals to 253, good enough for 3rd all-time behind only Gretzky and Howe, although Stamkos was able to take advantage of an earlier start as a teenage NHLer. The difference between Ovechkin and Stamkos in terms of goal scoring is not nearly as great as is often portrayed. It was significantly easier to rack up points for top forwards in the first five seasons after the 2005 lockout than it has been since 2010.
Stamkos’ positioning is also relevant because if you’re willing to give Ovechkin extra credit for dominating in the today’s NHL then you need to do the same for the rest of the current crop. Maybe it sounds intuitively correct that Ovechkin was a better prime goal scorer than, say, Bobby Hull, so you decide to boost Ovi’s stats by 11% or so to close the gap. But that would then also imply that Stamkos has had a better goal scoring peak than Brett Hull, Mike Bossy and Jean Beliveau, which I’m not sure is defensible.
Based on peak and career, there’s no question that Ovechkin is a very strong candidate to be ranked among the top handful of snipers in history. But I don’t think the evidence supports him being the GOAT unless you are prepared to make a large adjustment for today’s competitive environment.
Regular season production, while very important, does not represent the entire sum total of a player’s career success. Playoffs also matter. It’s trickier to compare postseason performances because they happen over much smaller sample sizes and can be more strongly influenced by factors like matchups and strength of opposition. Yet they should not be ignored, as long as the focus is on a player’s individual performance rather than praising or criticizing them purely based on team success.
Once again, I’ll compare players through their age 29 seasons, taking the top 10 from the peak performance list above. Since playoff numbers absolutely necessitate a per-game ranking because of varying opportunity, I’ll also put an age 20 cutoff on the lower end so that players who broke into the league in their teens aren’t negatively impacted in terms of their per-game rates.
Adjusted Playoff Goals, Age 20 to 29
| Player | Games Played | Adjusted Goals | Adjusted Goals per 82 Games |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maurice Richard | 57 | 45.0 | 64.7 |
| Mario Lemieux | 66 | 44.2 | 54.9 |
| Jean Beliveau | 69 | 43.8 | 52.1 |
| Gordie Howe | 74 | 46.0 | 51.0 |
| Bobby Hull | 82 | 47.8 | 47.8 |
| Brett Hull | 72 | 39.8 | 45.3 |
| Mike Bossy | 123 | 65.6 | 43.7 |
| Alex Ovechkin | 72 | 36.5 | 41.6 |
| Phil Esposito | 79 | 39.6 | 41.1 |
| Wayne Gretzky | 135 | 67.5 | 41.0 |
Ovechkin doesn’t come in last (surprisingly, that dubious honour falls on Wayne Gretzky, arguably the greatest playoff performer of all-time, although Gretzky played in far more Stanley Cup games than most of the others), but there is quite a gap between the players at the bottom of the range and Maurice Richard at the top, whose ridiculous playoff scoring record is a key part of his all-time resume.
Many knock Ovechkin for his team’s playoff failings, but on the whole his playoff career is probably underrated. Not only is he ahead of a few all-time greats on a per-game basis, but he also has a four year peak stretch of 54.5 adjusted goals per 82 games, a strong number even at this level of competition and comparable to the peak postseason scoring rates of the likes of Bossy and Brett Hull. It’s still far from the best, however, with Beliveau, Richard and Bobby Hull all posting six consecutive years at 60+ adjusted goals/82 (and Howe just narrowly missing at 59). It also will be very difficult for Ovi to make up ground against those four since they all scored at high rates in both the playoffs and regular season well into the latter half of their thirties.
Even if Ovechkin may not have the best goal scoring career so far, or the best peak, or even the best playoff performances, is it at least possible that he could eventually wind up with the best overall career? To answer that question, I borrowed Stephen Burtch’s projections from his Ovechkin post for Sportsnet and adjusted them assuming the league would continue to operate in the current scoring environment. Comparing against the other top scorers is then fairly straightforward, except for Bobby Hull who is a unique case given that he left the NHL for the WHA while still in the prime of his career (the years with an asterisk are Hull’s Winnipeg years). Hull’s estimated adjusted goals were calculated using the league equivalencies calculated at Hockey Analytics, but those numbers should be taken under advisement as it is difficult to translate his performance to the NHL from lesser leagues (although in later years the WHA did become much more competitive relative to the NHL). Gordie Howe also spent some of his over-40 seasons in the WHA, which were adjusted similarly.
Career Progressions
| Age | Gordie | Bobby | Wayne | Mario | Rocket | Ovi |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18-29 | 591 | 522 | 537 | 383 | 450 | 496 |
| 30 | 38 | 60 | 35 | 56 | 39 | 55 |
| 31 | 35 | 45 | 25 | 47 | 48 | 56 |
| 32 | 28 | 57 | 11 | 65 | 45 | |
| 33 | 40 | 55 | 30 | 55 | 45 | |
| 34 | 45 | 22* | 17 | 58 | 41 | |
| 35 | 32 | 40* | 19 | 35 | 46 | 38 |
| 36 | 39 | 50* | 23 | 7 | 19 | 40 |
| 37 | 35 | 42* | 22 | 27 | 20 | 32 |
| 38 | 36 | 12* | 9 | 1 | 24 | 31 |
| 39 | 49 | 30* | 28 | |||
| 40 | 46 | 1* | 6 | 17 | ||
| 41+ | 199* | 5 | ||||
| Total | 1213 | 940 | 728 | 562 | 823 | 924 |
Based on those projections and assuming he stays healthy, Ovechkin can be expected to have a much more productive late career than Gretzky and Lemieux as a goal scorer, but may not make up much career value at all against Howe or Hull. That’s a problem considering that they also have arguments to be ranked ahead in both adjusted career peak and playoff performance.
A lot of the conversation around the greatest ever has focused on Gretzky vs. Ovechkin, likely because of the allure of the all-time goals record. I think it is true that Ovechkin has a very real shot at surpassing Gretzky in terms of era-adjusted career goal scoring. The peak edge is debatable, I might still slightly prefer Wayne but Ovechkin is certainly at least close by by any measure. Either way, the case for Ovechkin over Gretzky is only getting stronger with every 50 goal season still under Ovi’s belt.
That said, it would be a mistake to conclude that surpassing Gretzky automatically makes Ovechkin the all-time #1. The two players with the best cases to be considered history’s greatest goal scorer are actually Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull. Both were able to combine a dominant peak with a long and successful goal scoring career including consistently strong playoff performances.
The rest of the top six would likely unfold in some order of Ovechkin, Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Rocket Richard, depending on how you rate career vs. peak, how much you emphasize durability vs. per-game performance, how strongly you rate playoff performance, and how you adjust for the depth of the talent pool over the past seven decades. Some might prefer instead to dedicate one or two of those spots to the likes of Phil Esposito, Brett Hull or Mike Bossy. There is plenty of room for nuance when analyzing any given player, taking into account things like teammates, roles, strength of competition and other factors that would be impossible to fully address in a post of this length.
Whether you agree with my opinion on Ovechkin or not, I would consider this whole exercise successful if I can just help some people realize that the most frequently cited adjusted stats do not treat all eras equally, and therefore should not be viewed as gospel when comparing players from different time periods. There may yet be some good alternative arguments to be made for Ovi as the best ever, but I’d like to see a better case made than one reliant on numbers that are biased by the flawed roster size component (or even those based entirely on the overly simplistic league average goals per game). And of course we won’t know the final verdict on Ovechkin’s career until he finally hangs them up many years down the road. Until then, whether you think he’s the greatest or one of the top half-dozen, one thing everyone can agree on is that we are fortunate to be watching one of the best ever at putting the puck in net.