Alexander Ovechkin is a statistical marvel unmatched in sports. My personal favorite stat of his is how he has more double digit shot games during his career than the next four players combined over that span. At his current pace he’d pass Gretzky for the all time lead in goals at the age of 36, one year after his current contract expires.
I’ve come up with a way to compare scoring over their careers to expand on how Mirtle looked at their career seasons. If you take the average number of goals scored by both teams in a game during a given year and multiply it by the number of games played by a particular player, you get the number of goals scored in games that player played if he played for an average team.
(Average NHL scoring) x (games played) = average number of goals scored in games played per season
If you do that for every season in that player’s career, you get the number of goals scored in games that player’s career if he played for an average team.
{∑ each season over players career [(Average NHL scoring) x (games played)]} = average number of goals scored in career games played
If you divide the number of career goals scored by that player by the average goals in the games in which he played, you get how likely it is that a goal in an average game was scored by that player.
Career goals / {∑ each season over players career [(Average NHL scoring) x (games played)]} = average goal percentage
By this measurement Ovechkin scored 11.8% of the goals in the games in which he participated, a staggering number. Even among the rarefied air of the 500 goal club, Ovechkin separates himself.
| Average goal % | |
| Alexander Ovechkin | 0.118359 |
| Mario Lemieux | 0.110424 |
| Mike Bossy | 0.101494 |
| Maurice Richard | 0.097283 |
| Bobby Hull | 0.096898 |
| Brett Hull | 0.094198 |
| Teemu Selanne | 0.08842 |
| Phil Esposito | 0.087697 |
| Wayne Gretzky | 0.085766 |
| Jaromir Jagr | 0.085652 |
| Gordie Howe | 0.079536 |
| Jean Beliveau | 0.079103 |
| Peter Bondra | 0.078602 |
| Keith Tkachuk | 0.077689 |
| Frank Mahovlich | 0.075636 |
| Marcel Dionne | 0.075591 |
| Luc Robitaille | 0.074397 |
| Joe Sakic | 0.07431 |
| Joe Nieuwendyk | 0.072018 |
| Mats Sundin | 0.070877 |
| Brendan Shanahan | 0.070475 |
| Guy Lafleur | 0.070535 |
| Steve Yzerman | 0.069848 |
| Dino Ciccarelli | 0.069475 |
| Mike Modano | 0.064105 |
| Mike Gartner | 0.069309 |
| Michel Goulet | 0.06763 |
| Jari Kurri | 0.067354 |
| Joe Mullen | 0.065366 |
| Pierre Turgeon | 0.063723 |
| Stan Mikita | 0.062764 |
| Jeremy Roenick | 0.062381 |
| Lanny McDonald | 0.061901 |
| Gilbert Perreault | 0.060824 |
| Dale Hawerchuk | 0.060113 |
| Mark Recchi | 0.059942 |
| Dave Andreychuk | 0.059915 |
| John Bucyk | 0.059664 |
| Mark Messier | 0.059073 |
| Bryan Trottier | 0.056055 |
| Pat Verbeek | 0.055063 |
| Ron Francis | 0.048337 |
You’d expect Mike Bossy to rank highly in this statistic, but Mario Lemieux is actually the only legend in Ovechkin’s stratosphere. Lemieux is also the only center in the top 6 of this statistic among the 500 goal club, making his dominance all the more impressive. As badly as he beat the Caps’ brains in, looking at Lemieux’s GP column I can’t help but wish he could have played 80 a few times.
I also used the average goal percentage to standardize the 500 goal club across eras. If you multiply a player’s average goal percentage by the number of games played, and multiply that by the average goals scored by both teams in a game during a given year, you get the goals that player would have scored had he played his career in an era with that level of scoring.
(Average goal percentage) x (career games played) x (average NHL scoring) = predicted career scoring for a given year
For these rankings I used 5.65 goals per game, the average for the current season.
| All time rank | Adjusted total | |
| Gordie Howe | 2 | 794.1 |
| Wayne Gretzky | 1 | 720.6 |
| Brett Hull | 3 | 675.4 |
| Phil Esposito | 5 | 635.2 |
| Jaromir Jagr | 12 | 616 |
| Brendan Shanahan | 11 | 606.8 |
| Luc Robitaille | 10 | 601.5 |
| Steve Yzerman | 8 | 597.5 |
| Mark Messier | 7 | 586.1 |
| Teemu Selanne | 18 | 584 |
| Bobby Hull | 15 | 582 |
| Joe Sakic | 14 | 578.6 |
| Marcel Dionne | 4 | 575.7 |
| Mario Lemieux | 9 | 570.9 |
| Mike Gartner | 6 | 560.8 |
| Dave Andreychuk | 13 | 554.8 |
| Mats Sundin | 20 | 539 |
| Maurice Richard | 28 | 537.6 |
| Mark Recchi | 23 | 524.9 |
| Mike Modano | 24 | 524.1 |
| Keith Tkachuk | 30 | 521.9 |
| John Bucyk | 24 | 519.1 |
| Joe Nieuwendyk | 20 | 511.5 |
| Frank Mahovlich | 31 | 504.7 |
| Jean Beliveau | 38 | 502.8 |
| Stan Mikita | 29 | 494.3 |
| Dino Ciccarelli | 16 | 483.6 |
| Jeremy Roenick | 36 | 480.4 |
| Peter Bondra | 39 | 480.1 |
| Jari Kurri | 17 | 476.1 |
| Ron Francis | 26 | 472.7 |
| Pierre Turgeon | 35 | 465.9 |
| Guy Lafleur | 22 | 448.7 |
| Pat Verbeek | 33 | 443 |
| Mike Bossy | 19 | 431.2 |
| Michel Goulet | 27 | 416.1 |
| Gilbert Perreault | 37 | 409.3 |
| Bryan Trottier | 32 | 405.1 |
| Dale Hawerchuk | 34 | 403.5 |
| Joe Mullen | 40 | 392.2 |
| Lanny McDonald | 41 | 388.6 |
The guys who make the biggest leaps are snipers who played the bulk of their careers in the 50s or mid 90s to present – Jean Beliveau moves up 13 spots, Richard and Bondra ten, Selanne, Roenick, and Tkachuk eight. The biggest drops belong to the guys who played the bulk of their careers in the 80s – Bossy moves down 16 spots, Kurri and Dionne 13, Ciccarelli and Lafleur 11.
Here’s the spreadsheet I used for crunching the numbers, and here’s the source of the average goals per game for the last 75 seasons. For each player the left column is games played and the right column goals scored; below that the left column is the average number of goals scored in games played per season, the right predicted career scoring for a given year. These statistics were compiled during the Olympic break.
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Written by Ryan Cleaver
Ryan Cleaver was born in Björk’s house in Iceland and grew up on Easter Island, where his parents were giant stone heads. He has the ability to fire beams of tacos out of his hands and he can turn his legs into tigers.
On Sundays, Ryan enjoys reading Family Circus and traveling through time. His favorite color is greenish-transparent and his favorite movie is the one you just watched.
Mark Mar 4 20109:56 pm
Interesting analysis. Ovechkin hasn’t had his decline phase yet, so we’ll see where he ends up.
I think you should include playoff goals in the career totals!
Michael Mar 5 201012:42 am
Great analysis. I, too, always enjoy a stat when one player does something better than multiple players combined. Pretty crazy.
I must say, I was impressed that Ovie’s numbers didn’t drop when they named him captain. I wondered if the pressure of captaincy would take any sort of toll on his production as happens with a lot of players. But, to your entire point – Ovechkin isn’t just any player.
Great blog.
Rob Mar 5 20101:28 pm
If you can show us the mean and standard deviation of goals scored every year per player, we could definatively rank goal scorers. Give me those stats, and I’ll tell you who the best goal scorers are/were, correcting for the era in which they played. If you have anything, email it to me.
Zak Mar 5 20102:44 pm
I think it might be more accurate to take the first four and a half seasons of stats from all these players, rather than their entire careers. We all know Ovechkin will belong on a list with 500 goal scorers one day, but he doesn’t yet.
Would Ovechkin’s current % of goals scored be so staggering compared to Gretzky’s % when only considering his first few seasons? I don’t know the answer, but I am curious.
Ryan Mar 5 20107:12 pm
Mark – at some point I’ll do a playoff scoring column, but that’s a whole different set of variables.
Michael – thanks, and what blows me away is how Ovechkin turned into an all timer immediately after he signed his extension in January 08.
Rob – you can check the spreadsheet but I didn’t put a row in for that. I thought the career totals would the best way to normalize for guys who missed parts of seasons.
Zak – good idea, I’ll do that in a follow up column, probably at the end of the season. Gretzky shoots up to 11.8067% over his first five seasons, just a scootch behind Ovie.
RCheli Mar 5 20105:41 pm
Also, do age as opposed to first four seasons. Ovechkin’s rookie season was at age 20, Lemieux was 19, Gretzky was 17 his first year in the WHA, and Bossy was almost 21. You have to normalize that before coming to any conclusions.