His assist finishes are 6, 6, 10. That's not particularly good for a top-10 of all time candidate. Shoot, Jason Spezza has finishes of 2, 7, 9. Are we ready to crown him as a great set up guy (on a historically great level, since I have to say this now)?
If I gave you these 2 separate lists of assist finishes:
| Player A | Player B | | Player A | Player B |
| Assist Rank | Assist Rank | | Assist Rank | Assist Rank |
| 2 | 5 | | 6 | 9 |
| 2 | 5 | | 6 | 11 |
| 3 | 6 | | 10 | 15 |
| 4 | 6 | | 20 | 26 |
| 5 | 6 | | 29 | 32 |
| 6 | 11 | | 35 | 42 |
| 9 | 12 | | 39 | 52 |
| 22 | 15 | | 51 | 58 |
| 23 | 16 | | 67 | 67 |
| 24 | 17 | | 68 | 67 |
| 26 | 18 | | 71 | 75 |
| 28 | 20 | | 113 | 77 |
| 28 | 30 | | 115 | 99 |
| 31 | 30 | | 120 | 106 |
| 55 | 42 | | 121 | 129 |
You've got 5 options - Player A clearly better playmaker than Player B, Player A marginally better playmaker than Player B, Player A and Player B about the same as playmakers, Player B marginally better than Player A, Player B clearly better than Player A.
The first set of Assist Ranks is Bobby Hull's actual assist ranks during his NHL career, along with Alex Ovechkin's transposed assist ranks into those same seasons. The second set of assist ranks is Alex Ovechkin's actual assist ranks during his NHL career, along with Bobby Hull's transposed assist ranks in those same seasons. Player A is Ovechkin, Player B is Hull.
Looking at those finishes, my conclusion is about the same, leaning towards Ovechkin marginally better. That's the fairest description of Ovechkin as a playmaker. Nobody thinks of Ovechkin as a playmaker first, but his primary assist production is above average for a winger. His secondary assists per game is basically in line with every other goalscoring winger as well (Ovechkin's at 0.19 per game) - Howe at 0.17, Brett Hull at 0.21, Teemu Selanne at 0.19, Bobby Hull at 0.18, Mike Bossy at 0.24, Maurice Richard at 0.16, Ilya Kovalchuk at 0.17, Pavel Bure at 0.23, Bossy's actually a fun one, because his assists per game were affected by how high scoring his era was. If you transpose Bossy's seasons into the post-lockout years of 05-06 through 14-15, he has 397 assists in that timeframe, compared to Ovechkin's 420 assists. Nobody gives Mike Bossy demerits for his playmaking, and yet over his career Ovechkin would have put up more assists, if they played at the same time.
There's another point about Ovechkin's assists I want to make. Nobody who watches the Washington power play comes away thinking that Ovechkin is unimportant to it working. He plays 95% of every power play, and his gravity creates space for every other player out there. Despite that, over his career, Ovechkin's IPP% on the power play is just under 60%, which is way lower than almost every star forward. I averaged the top 50ish forwards in power play points since the lockout, and their combined IPP% was just over 65%, and superstar forwards are around 70%. Part of that is by the design of the power play, as the other two one-time options are not drawn up to come from Ovechkin, but the PK's concentration on denying Ovechkin shots creates those lanes for the other options. If you were to increase Ovechkin's IPP% to 65 or 70%, to more fully represent his power play contributions, that's an extra 3-5 assists per year.
In conclusion, I think Ovechkin as a playmaker suffers from two issues. First, he is a winger generally being compared to centers, and thus he starts at a disadvantage positionally. When you compare him to his winger peers, he has put up broadly the same assist numbers as them, both primary and secondary. Second, he generally played in a lower-scoring era, and had three shortened seasons, and thus his raw number is on the lower bound of his career expectation.
