Where does Alex Ovechkin rank among NHL GOATs after claiming all-time goals record?

There are lots of hard-to-unpack things that go along with Alex Ovechkin setting the NHL’s all-time goals record.

It’s a ridiculous number of goals — 895 — and it feels highly likely he’ll be able to push well past 900 next season, perhaps as far as another 50 beyond Wayne Gretzky’s iconic 26-year-old mark. Ovechkin has mused in the past about retiring after 2025-26, at age 40, so maybe it stops there, around 940 or so?

What’s remarkable to contemplate is how much higher it could have been.

Ovechkin wasn’t even in the NHL until he turned 20, due to his birthdate (Sept. 17, 1985) making him ineligible for the 2003 draft and the lockout killing the 2004-05 season. His late start likely cost him at least another 40 goals as a teenager. The combined effect of the 2012-13 half-season lockout and the 2020 pandemic eliminated another 74 games from his career, which could have added 45 more.

All told, that would take him well past the 1,000 mark, to where it would probably be untouchable.

Some of the commentary as Ovechkin approached and then set the record has focused on him being a one-dimensional talent, but that doesn’t sit quite right when you break down his body of work. Since he entered the league, he’s never just been a lethal shot — although his office at the left circle certainly played a pivotal role in him passing Gretzky.

He skates like Pavel Bure and hits like a power forward, a ridiculous 6-foot-3, 240-pound blend of grace and power that has never existed in a single player in the sport before.

Could a one-dimensional player score 900 goals and rank third all-time in league history in hits? Win three Hart trophies? Claim the Conn Smythe while captaining a team to a Stanley Cup championship? Average a mind-boggling 20:37 time on ice per game for two decades, making him the top minute leader among forwards — ever?

Ovechkin’s longevity alone acts as another dimension, as even with the lockouts and pandemic he’ll soon become one of just 24 players in league history to play 1,500 games. Another healthy season next year and he’ll climb into the top 15 in GP, passing Nicklas Lidstrom, Steve Yzerman and other Hall of Famers along the way.

That he’s been able to play like this, for this long, and be this dangerous as a goal scorer simply defies belief. And that’s before we even get into any discussion about adjusting his statistics for era: Ovechkin has played his career in a 5.7 goals-per-game environment compared to Gretzky’s 7.0 goals-per-game average that included the 1980s scorefest.

Hockey-Reference’s calculations on that front put Ovechkin nearly 250 era-adjusted goals clear of Gretzky and on the verge of hitting the 1,000 mark.

*- Hall of Famer

What remains challenging with Ovechkin’s accomplishment is trying to put it — and him — in the context of the game’s other greats.

For more than three decades now, going back to the early 1990s, hockey’s Mount Rushmore has always been clearly defined, without anyone being able to break in.

Gretzky obviously leads the way there, after a career where he rewrote the NHL record book. Gordie Howe was the historical star who deserved to be there, too, with his nickname — Mr. Hockey — proof of his place in the game.

Bobby Orr’s feats as a defenseman, meanwhile, always seemed downright impossible, with 915 points in just 657 games, three Harts and eight Norris trophies. Even with his career being injury abbreviated, there are those to this day who would place him No. 1, ahead of Gretzky and Howe.

And Mario Lemieux rounded out the fantastic four, with a career points-per-game average that only narrowly trails The Great One.

There was something fitting about those four, from three different regions of Canada, serving as the faces of the game and its eras. You had skill and finesse, scoring and playmaking, but also brawn and intelligence.

For a variety of reasons, Ovechkin can’t break through against that level of talent, even though he now holds hockey’s most heralded record. The fact he plays on the wing, the fact the power play was where he did so much of his damage, the single Stanley Cup, and his lack of a true all-around game are holding him back from the very top of the sport’s pantheon.

How close he gets, however, is a worthwhile debate.

Two years ago, when The Athletic ranked the 99 best players in modern NHL history (a Howe-less exercise), Ovechkin ultimately ended up in sixth place. Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, Sidney Crosby and Jaromir Jagr were voted ahead of him, even as Ovechkin was approaching the goals record.

Maybe there’s a case to now bump him ahead of Jagr, anointing Ovechkin as the best winger and best non-Canadian of all time, even though the big Czech sits some 300 points ahead of him? Even then, Jagr’s own longevity and dominant peak make it a difficult question.

As for Crosby, with him being two years younger than Ovechkin, it feels plausible that he could play long enough to crack the 2,000-point barrier, joining Gretzky as the only players to get there, and challenge the top four for one of their seats.

But it does feel strange that Ovechkin has accomplished something so unthinkable and extraordinary and yet he’s still that far deep in the field of the game’s best players. And we haven’t even debated the possibility of a goaltender, or even someone like Lidstrom, being higher.

What’s indisputable is that in the NHL’s latest era, since the advent of the salary cap, Crosby and Ovechkin stand as the two faces of the league, just as they were when they entered it. Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and others are coming, too, which will make putting together a list of the sport’s top four next to impossible.

Perhaps these days we need a new, second hockey Mount Rushmore: one with Gretzky, Howe and their superstar peers of the 1900s, and one with the game’s next generation, who have found a way to challenge some their old marks despite the odds being stacked against them.

Regardless of where you put Ovechkin among the all-time greats, that’s a credit to his one-of-a-kind career and legacy.

And, quite possibly, a record we never see broken.

(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photos: Denis Brodeur, Steve Babineau, John McCreary / Getty Images)