He's not generational in the same way Lidstrom wasn't generational. To me, it's Orr, Gretzky, Lemieux, Crosby, McDavid as generational skaters and that's it. If you want to include Ovy, that's fine. Ovy to me was the Mariano Rivera of the sport - everyone knew what was coming, but no one could really do anything about it, his shot and ability to create his own ice was that good. But basically the league had no answer in terms of stopping all these guys from putting up comical numbers far above peers for a certain stretch of time. And they all basically added to the vocabulary of the game - you could not learn the game without incorporating their innovations after they were done.
Career-wise, I like him better than Ovechkin though his peak isn't the same as those early Ovy years, which is really what established Ovy's generational tag.