While that’s factually true it’s not as clear cut as that because players like Bossy, Bure, Lemieux retired early.
Is he one of the best goal scorers ever? Absolutely. The best? No. If it’s a matter of raw numbers and context be damned, then that claim can be made only when he’s passed Gretzky. But with all things considered there isn’t much he can do to topple someone like Mario Lemieux, who in spite of have over 2100 less shots than Ovechkin, only has 40 less goals in more than 200 less games. He also did goat like things in three different decades and through the DPE (while guys like Roy, Hasek and Brodeur were active). He retired with 0.754 g/pg average, which is just ridiculous.
Before Lemieux retired the first time, his totals were 745 games with 613 goals. And before he would play again (3 years later) he had missed a total of 514 games in his career, 514 games at Mario’s rate of scoring is, conservatively, 300 goals (but likely closer to 400). Then he comes out of retirement, a shell of his former self, and pots 35 goals in 43 games at a time with the goals per game average for the league was lower than at any point in Ovechkin’s career.
If you do the math, Lemieux would of ended up with over 950 goals in 1387 games (had he played them all). And this is by only conservatively estimating his rate of scoring over his missed games until 00-01’, at that date I didn’t bother anymore because there was no point, he would have already been at or over 1000 goals.
If we look at actual dominance over peers, Lemieux has no case for being a better goal-scorer than Ovechkin.
Here are their % leads over #10 in goals:
Ovechkin: 63-61-52-52-50-44-43-41-30-26-24-15-6
Lemieux: 85-47-46-29-28-19-5-4
The only thing Lemieux has on Ovechkin is one-year peak. After that, it is Ovechkin by a landslide.
If we want to be generous to Lemieux, who missed a lot of time even in the seasons he did not entirely miss, or if we want to compare players by ability, we can look at Lemieux' margins in gpg. #10 in goals and #10 in gpg are not necessarily the same player, so we are comparing fully healthy Lemieux to other fully healthy players in an ideal, injury-free world. For Ovechkin though, I will take his actual leads, since going with gpg in his case implies letting injured players with high gpg eat into his margins, effectively punishing Ovechkin for his ability to stay healthy.
Ovechkin: 63-61-52-52-50-44-43-41-30-26-24-15-6
Lemieux: 84-69-60-59*-46-44-27-25-14-0-0
(the star is for 2000/01, when Lemieux potted 35 in 43, but then his goal-scoring went off the cliff, which raises doubt if this pace was at all sustainable).
So, in the injury-free world, Lemieux still has one-year peak on Ovechkin, then the next 2-3 seasons Lemieux has a narrow lead (an 8 percentage points difference in the margin over #10 is a 3 goals per season difference, if #10 scores 40 goals, as in 18/19, for example). Seasons #5 and 6 are a wash, and then we have five more Rocket-worthy campaigns from Ovechkin (43-43-30-26-24) vs. two more from Lemieux (27-25) plus some extra top10 finishes in goals, which are, again, a wash.
Effectively, choosing between always healthy Lemieux vs. actual Ovechkin is choosing between somewhat higher peak (8-goal difference in the best year, 3-goal difference in the next three years) vs. two smaller years of better margins (think Ovechkin 08/09 vs. Ovechkin 18/19) plus three more, totally extra legit shots at the Rocket. As much as I like peak, the second option (Ovechkin) seems better.
