With 7 games remaining in the season, Ovi might reach the 40 goal plateau, if he continues to heat up, but it is exceeeeeeeedingly unlikely he will hit 50. How unlikely? 2.428 goals per game through the end of the season unlikely. He'll need one goal per game to hit 40. As an exercise in driving myself nuts with charts, here's Ovi's goal production lined up with Jägr's and Richard's. Don't ask me to interpret it; I haven't had that class yet.
With two more goals, our hero will tie Guy Lafleur. Lafleur was born September 20, 1951 in Thurso, Quebec, Canada. He began playing hockey when he was five years old, and played for the Quebec Remparts as a teenager. He was drafted first overall in the 1971 NHL draft by the Montréal Canadiens, and first won the Stanley Cup with them in the 1972-73 season; he would go on to win four more Cups with the Habs, including all four of their streak that went from 1975-76 through 1978-79. He retired during the 1984-85 season after being refused a trade, but returned after his induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame and would play in three additional seasons beginning with the 1988-89 season.
In the 1988-89 season, Lafleur played for the New York Rangers; he ended his career two seasons later with the then-Québec Nordiques, for whom he would play in 1989-90 and 1990-91 before finally retiring for good after being selected 20th by the then-Minnesota North Stars in the 1991 expansion draft. Lafleur now runs a helicopter rental company based in Montreal. Although he has more goals overall than Maurice Richard, Richard scored all of his goals for the Montréal Canadiens, and holds the top team honors there.
If Ovi scores 7 more goals this season, it will put him right at 40 goals for the year, which is enough to put him at #22 overall, ahead of Mike Modano (24th with 561 goals); Joe Nieuwendyk, and Mats Sundin (tied for 22 with 564 goals). 565 goals career is still a respectable total, and I will continue to discuss the possibility of him surpassing Gretzky's 894 until he retires.
894-565=329. If Ovi plays as long as Jägr (who is still playing after 24 seasons in the NHL, and has not made noises about retiring yet), and scores the same number of goals per season Jägr did, he would have 817 goals. Jägr did not play in the NHL in 2004-05 (lockout), nor did he play from 2008-09 through 2010-11 when he was playing internationally. If Ovi scores 20 goals in each of the four missing Jägr-age-equivalent seasons, his total rises to 897, which beats Gretzky. But he'd have to play until he's 45 years old to do it.
Do I realistically believe that Ovi will play as long as Jägr? No. Ovi himself has said he doesn't intend to play that long. There are a couple of anomalous seasons in Jägr's career - who expected him to score 54 goals at age 37? But he still has not shown the "drop off the cliff" steady decline that writers seem to expect - just last season, he scored 27 goals at age 44!
But don't despair - if anyone in the NHL can beat the Gretzky record, it's our hero. Alex Ovechkin remains the best goal-scorer of his generation. This season has been disappointing. given he's going to miss my predictions by a fairly wide margin, but I'm not giving up hope. I'm a Cubs fan; we know all about patience!
Enough about Ovi.
Let's talk about Barry Trotz!
With 708 career wins, Trotz is sitting in 6th place all-time, behind:
1. Scotty Bowman.........1244 wins in 2141 games
2. Joel Quenneville.......849 wins in 1519 games
3. Al Arbour..............782 wins in 1607 games
4. Ken Hitchcock..........781 wins in 1454 games
5. Lindy Ruff.............733 wins in 1474 games
6. Barry Trotz............708 wins in 1435 games
Only Lindy Ruff (733 wins) and Joel Quenneville (849 wins) are still active of the top five coaches of all time. And that's pretty damned amazing.
Nicklas Bäckström has 724 career points (82 this season!). That's with seven games remaining in the season! He is currently tied with Patrick Kane and Sidney Crosby for second in the league behind league leader Connor McDavid (89 points in 76 games). That puts Nicky at 209th overall in points. If he gets 7 more points, he will have 731 career points, which will put him ahead of Anze Kopitar and just behind Andrew Cassels (202nd and 201st all time respectively). To make it onto page 4 (151-200), he needs a total of 734 points, just 10 points in 7 games, to surpass Andrew Burmette (and my expectations for the year). Up next: Bob Nevin and Kevin Stevens.
#205....Bob Nevin..............726 P.....1128 GP.....1957-1976
#206....Kevin Stevens..........726 P......874 GP.....1987-2002
Our HoltBEAST is still #1 in shutouts (8), #2 in GAA (2.04), #2 in wins (40 to Bobrovsky's 41), and #3 in Save percentage (.926). Sergei Bobrovsky leads in the other three categories, and is second to Holtby in shutouts, tied with Cam Talbot and Peter Budaj at 7.
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