The Inevitable Finish Line

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Any regular golfer has probably heard the phrase regarding "shooting one's age." It means if you're 75 years old, you would shoot your age by shooting a 75 in a round of golf. I hope you guys understood that well enough. Well, the point I'm trying to make is that if you think Alex Ovechkin cannot shoot his age for the next six years of his professional hockey career, then you're simply wrong.

Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer of this generation. There's no arguing that. And as of today, he is two goals shy of 700, and he is 196 goals behind the greatest player of all time, Wayne Gretzky. Alex Ovechkin is 34 years old, and he still looks like a freight train that just won't stop.

In the past six seasons, with the exception of the '16-'17 season in which he scored 33 goals in 82 games played, he has scored 51, 53, 50, (33), 49, and 51 goals. All in which he has played in no fewer than 78 games. This year, he has 40 goals in 54 games and is tied with Auston Matthews for the league lead. You can't tell me that he's slowing down.

I've always thought that it's a pretty cool thing that the National Hockey League is one of the few sports who has a definitive GOAT. In basketball, there's Michael versus LeBron. In football, there are too many positions/candidates to name one conclusive Greatest Of All Time. Baseball, the same. But in hockey, Wayne Gretzky cannot be touched. However, with Ovi on track to break his goal record, Gretzky might become conquerable in a very small way. I don't think there's any way that Ovechkin can become the greatest of all time, but I'm saying in a number of years, he'll have a reasonable seat somewhere at the top.

If the Great 8 shoots his age for the next six seasons, he will be dubbed, undeniably, as the greatest goal scorer of all time. AND that's assuming that he has five consecutive sickly 30-goal seasons (he's only had four in his 15-year career, a small portion due to the fact that he was playing right wing for Adam Oates).

He's only had one season where he played fewer than 72 games (still scored 50 that year), so his health doesn't concern me. I know that there's always a chance of a freak injury to occur especially as you get older, but I have no reason to believe such an event will take place due to his past.

So, there. Those are the stats. I have presented them to you, and I have made my case. He's a Russian Machine and he's still state-of-the-art.

Pause.

Now, I've been saying that I have no reason to believe that he's going to slow down. It's the same reason I thought the Clemson Tigers would win the National Championship this year. They had won 29 games in a row. Why should I pick against them? But as I was wrong then, there might be a slight possibility for my being incorrect in this instance, as well (rare, and doubtful).

Resume.

But still, he's going to do it. Let's just get to 700 first.