Goal scoring in the NHL is way, way, way down and the league is staring down a reality in which its Art Ross winner will have played better than 75 games and still not come close to topping 90 points for the year.

That would be Sidney Crosby, in a relatively healthy season, on pace to lead the league in points (duh) while topping out at around 85 points in roughly 75 games (huh?).

That, without a doubt, is some pre-lockout jargon.


The other anointed savior of the NHL following the lost 2005 season is still doing his thing, though. That would be Alex Ovechkin, who did not get the memo about league-wide scoring deficiencies, presumably because he was working on 50 for the season in a Tuesday meeting with the Carolina Hurricanes. 

That's the sixth time in his career Ovechkin has hit 50 goals in a season. It has almost become routine at this point, and that's wrong and bad.

Ovechkin is not routine. Ovechkin is a monster, and we're all taking him for granted.

With that goal, Ovechkin hit 50 for the year and 472 for his career on the same marker -- tying Peter Bondra's franchise record for career goals. Nearly as astonishing is the fact that he turned the trick before he turned 30 years old, with who knows how many years of good hockey left in him.  

That half-century goal was big for as many reasons as you can list, not the least of which is that Ovechkin now breathes some rarefied goal-scoring air.

Only five other players in NHL history have had six or more 50-goal seasons in their careers -- Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky, Mike Bossy, Marcel Dionne and Guy Lafleur.

Gretzky and Bossy lead the pack at nine apiece. No one else has more than Ovechkin's six. 

Those players hit those 50-goal seasons in an era that was friendlier to the offensive side of the game. The other five players on the list collected the lion's share of their 50-goal seasons during the late-1970's and 1980's, hockey's golden era of goal scoring. 

Of them, only Lemieux recorded any 50-goal seasons after the 1990 season, though that's as much due to age as to era.

For a time, Ovechkin, too, thrived in a renewed offensive era following the 2005 NHL lockout. That era has since given way to a time in which the league is steaming right towards one of its coldest offensive seasons in history.

Crosby, still leading the league in points as is his wont, has been capped by the defensive climate. Ovechkin, still leading the league in goals, is cruising right along at his regular 50-goal pace. Adjusting for the context of the league, Ovechkin's continued scoring dominance is truly unprecedented. 

From CBS Sports,

According to Hockey-Reference's adjusted goals statistic, which takes into account schedule changes (82-game season vs. shorter or longer seasons in previous years), roster sizes and league-wide goal scoring, Ovechkin's current season is the 26th-best goal-scoring season in league history (tied with Brett Hull's 1991-92 season). He currently has five of the top 50, including his past three seasons, all of which came after that two-year run at the end of the Bruce Boudreau era and the brief Dale Hunter experience when his days as a top goal scorer were thought to be finished.

And, among active players, no one else is even close.

Steven Stamkos and Rick Nash, the two players closest to Ovechkin in this year's all-but-over Rocket Richard race, aren't on pace to score more than 40 or 45 goals.

Only ten other active players have even one 50-goal campaign to their credit, and just three of them -- Jaromir Jagr, Jarome Iginla and a buried-in-the-AHL Dany Heatley -- have more than one. 

For reference, Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, the two players most closely associated with Ovechkin as The Post-Lockout Superstars, have combined for two career 50-goal seasons and 567 career goals -- just 95 more than Ovechkin has on his own. 

The story here? Ovechkin is, no doubt about it, one of the game's all-time goal-scoring greats (and probably has been for some time now).

That a few seasons of so-so defense and unsavory plus-minus numbers could steal that spotlight is a shame.

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