How many years it would take Oilers' Draisaitl to break Ovechkin's record
The NHL has a new all-time leading goalscorer in Alexander Ovechkin, but could that record be broken by a current Edmonton Oilers player?
It may seem almost impossible that an active NHL player could best Ovechkin’s 895 career goals, which surpassed a mark initially set by Wayne Gretzky. However, there are a select few current players who could potentially get close to the record and even pass it if they can keep up their career pace into their later years.
One of those players is Leon Draisaitl, who just recently secured his fourth-career 50-goal season and sits at 399 NHL goals through 790 games. That ranks second in the league since the 2014-15 season, behind only Ovechkin, who has had 473 goals since then.
The NHL crunched the numbers and projected that Draisaitl, if he can keep a consistent pace, will score his 895th career goal sometime during the 2036-37 season. Connor McDavid was also on the list, with a projection for his record-breaking goal coming a season later in 2037-38.
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Since entering the NHL in 2014-15, Draisaitl has averaged about 36.3 goals per season. When you only include the last seven seasons, that jumps way up to an impressive 46.5 goals per season.
If Draisaitl can keep scoring at that rate, he would have to play for 11 more seasons to crack the 900-goal mark. That means he would have to continue scoring at a league-best level until he turns 40, which will be very difficult to do as age curves in the NHL tend to see most elite scorers hit a snag around age 35 and beyond. However, if Ovechkin could defy regression as he aged, who’s to say that Draisaitl can’t either?
This seems like the only plausible path for Draisaitl to get the record, as even if he reverted to his career pace of 36.3 goals per season, it would still take him about 14 more seasons (or until he’s 43) to catch the record. Most players don’t even stay in the league until 43 so it feels unlikely that Draisaitl would not only play that long but also continue to score at an elite level.
Draisaitl is already well on his way to capturing his second Hart Trophy and has cemented himself as the greatest German-born player in NHL history. Nobody is saying he has to surpass Ovechkin’s record, but the very fact that it’s an outside possibility is a testament to how great of a goalscorer he is.
Edmonton Oilers fans are truly spoiled to be able to watch both Draisaitl and McDavid on a nightly basis.
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