Never forget people were writing his obituary in 2016/2017.
It was a reasonable and sensible take at the time. Well, maybe not the obituary for his career, but it seemed to mark the beginning of the expected decline.
Luckily, he proved to alter what we thought we knew about traditional goal scorers. It also helps that league wide scoring began its ascent to help dull some of the decline of aging, as well as to help offset some of the leaner scoring years while he was younger.
All we can do is enjoy it now. Until I see another player score pretty much the same number of goals each season regardless of age, a long career, different scoring levels, and so on, it would be foolish to expect this again within at least the next 20-30 years.