Alex Ovechkin has the NHL goals record, but Mario Lemieux is the greatest scorer ever

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I’m not here to discredit Alex Ovechkin. Far from it. He’s a real, live rockstar. He broke an unbreakable record and did it in his entertaining, hyped-up way. It was marvelous. No player in NHL history has scored more goals, and it’s unlikely anyone will exceed his final total in our lifetime. He’s a living legend and one of the 10 greatest hockey players ever.

That doesn’t mean he’s the greatest goal scorer ever.

Oh, he’s among the greatest. But does having the most goals make him the greatest? If that’s your definition of “greatest,” then OK, but there’s a little more to the argument than that.

Mario Lemieux is hockey’s greatest goal scorer ever, and with all due respect to Ovechkin, Wayne Gretzky and Mike Bossy, it’s not even a fair fight. We can talk numbers. We can talk eye test. I’ll even leave out the reality that Lemieux played much of his career in scorching back pain and dealt with fatigue from cancer treatments for large portions of his late 20s and 30s.

We’ll get to the great Bossy later. For now, let’s keep this to Lemieux and Ovechkin.

Career goals per game

• Lemieux: 0.75
• Ovechkin: 0.60

That’s fairly substantial. Now, Ovechkin played hundreds more games in his 30s than Lemieux, which is significant because it’s generally more difficult to score goals in your 30s.

Yes, Lemieux’s career covered more than half of the 1980s, when goaltenders were tiny. “Ovi would have scored 100 goals per season against those guys,” you say. Uh-huh. Instead of wondering about that and what Lemieux and Gretzky would have done had they enjoyed three-on-three play and no red lines, let’s just keep it to the facts.

During the 2000-01 season, Lemieux came out of retirement in the heart of the dead-puck era. Teams scored only 2.76 goals per game that season, compared to 3.01 goals per game this season. The save percentage among goalies that season was .903, compared to .900 this season. In other words, it was more difficult to score goals during that time. It was essentially the polar opposite of the 1980s.

Lemieux, at 35 and having gone almost four years without playing hockey, worked out for a few weeks, then abruptly returned to the team he owned. He went on to score 35 goals (and 76 points) in 43 games. That’s not a typo. That’s 0.81 goals per game in the dead-puck era after drinking wine and playing golf for almost four years.

How many goals do you suppose Ovechkin or Gretzky would have scored in the same situation? I don’t know, either, but I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t have topped Lemieux’s mark.

Career postseason goals per game

• Lemieux: 0.71
• Ovechkin: 0.48

This one kind of speaks for itself.

It gets more difficult to score in the postseason. Teams familiarize themselves with tendencies. There’s nothing wrong with Ovechkin’s total, but it’s a fairly significant drop. All time, among those who have played in 35 or more postseason games, Lemieux ranks first at 0.71 goals per playoff game. Ovechkin ranks 26th at 0.48, checking in right behind Brayden Point. It should be noted that Lemieux participated in a 1980s postseason only one time, in 1989, so he didn’t play much in the freewheeling era of playoff hockey.

Lemieux’s hockey IQ was matched by only Gretzky, which went a long way toward his scoring prowess in the playoffs. He didn’t have an office. The whole rink was his office.

Making a goalie look like he was a prop in a billiards trick shot? Sure thing.

Pick a goalie’s pocket behind the net for your fourth goal in the first period of a playoff game? You got it.

Embarrass Ray Bourque just for fun? Might as well.

Those are three dramatically different styles of goals. Ovechkin often scores his goals the same way, and that is admirable. You know it’s coming and can’t stop it? That’s greatness.

Lemieux, however, never scored the same goal twice. He was a natural artist.

In the postseason, when the games matter most, he scored at pretty much the same rate as in the regular season. Most players don’t do this. Ovechkin certainly has not.

Career shooting percentage

• Lemieux: 19 percent
• Ovechkin: 13.1 percent

Lemieux enjoyed playing against inferior goaltending in the early stages of his career. Of course, he also had to deal with Patrick Roy, Dominik Hasek, Martin Brodeur, Eddie Belfour, Grant Fuhr, Curtis Joseph, Felix Potvin, Ron Hextall, Andy Moog, Mike Vernon, Mike Richter and John Vanbiesbrouck. That’s six Hall of Famers and six a tier below that. Goaltending was getting better around the league when Lemieux entered his prime in the late ’80s. It just didn’t matter.

Here’s another number: Ovechkin has taken 6,860 shots and counting. Lemieux took 3,633.

I don’t blame Ovechkin. As Sidney Crosby once told me, “I wouldn’t pass the puck very often if I could shoot like that, either.”

Ovechkin is paid to score goals. He’s paid to be Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson. Shoot, shoot, shoot. In hockey, we celebrate this, as opposed to basketball, where all-time greats like Kobe and “The Answer” were often called selfish.

Coming back to Gretzky, the Great One was very much a pass-first player. Lemieux was a hybrid. He ranks second all-time in assists per game behind only Gretzky. In Lemieux’s younger years, coaches had to urge him to be “more selfish” because he took more delight in setting up teammates than he did scoring goals. How many goals would he have scored if that’s all he focused on? I’d ask the same of Gretzky, for that matter.

In a game in Pittsburgh earlier this season, Ovechkin took nine shot attempts on one five-minute power play. Nine.

It was great theater, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a feat in and of itself. The game was long over, and Ovechkin was looking to break a record. No harm, no foul.

But Mario wouldn’t have needed nine shot attempts.

Career shootout percentage

• Ovechkin: 29.6 percent
• Lemieux: 0 percent

Numbers can be misleading. Lemieux’s final season was the first time the NHL showcased shootouts. At age 40, he was denied in his only two attempts.

Don’t be fooled. He was, without question, the greatest breakaway artist of all time. You won’t find a debate from any hockey historian. He went 6-for-8 all-time on penalty shots. One time, I asked the late, great Mike Lange what Lemieux’s breakaway conversion was, to the best of his recollection. Lange was in the building for every game Lemieux played.

“About 75 percent,” Lange said. “In his prime, much higher. It was kind of jarring to see him miss the net or get stopped. Didn’t really happen.”

If you dispute that figure, you probably didn’t see Lemieux play.

Ovechkin, for being such a great goal scorer, has never been much of a breakaway artist.

Lemieux was so great on breakaways that he even invented the Peter Forsberg move two years before Forsberg used it.

Ovechkin is the most durable goal scorer in NHL history. If that’s the difference to you, so be it. Durability is quite a trait, and Lemieux’s inability to stay healthy is a significant part of his history. The “what-if” quality to his career is almost as legendary as the career itself.

But is Emmitt Smith the greatest running back of all time because he has the most rushing yards in NHL history? Most certainly not. I understand basic math, but most of the math tells us that Lemieux was the better goal scorer. Goals per game? Lemieux. Goals per game in the playoffs? Overwhelmingly Lemieux. Most goals in a season? Lemieux, 85 to 65.

The eye test and talent evaluation make the argument much more one-sided. Ovechkin shoots the puck harder than Lemieux did because he shoots it harder than pretty much anyone ever.

What else does he do better than Lemieux? Shot accuracy? No.

Breakaways? No.

Reach? Forget about it.

Backhand? No.

Hockey IQ? No way.

Better hands? Come on.

Ovechkin was healthier and shot the puck a lot more.

Of course, Bossy needs to be mentioned in this conversation.

When you exceed 50 goals nine times in your first nine seasons, well, you’re in the conversation. Because of his terrible luck with health, Bossy had to retire at 30. His 0.76 goals per game barely exceed Lemieux’s 0.75. You’ll get no lengthy column from me if you proclaim Bossy the best, but those numbers surely would have dropped in his 30s, and he played during the highest scoring era in NHL history, from 1977-87. We can’t ignore that. Lemieux’s numbers in the dead era were pretty comparable with what he did in the ’80s, which is frightening. Some icing on the cake: He once scored five goals five different ways — even strength, power play, shorthanded, penalty shot and empty net — in one game.

If we’re evaluating the numbers and pure talent and trusting our eyes, there’s never been a better goal scorer than Lemieux. Recency bias is real. So, too, is Ovechkin’s greatness. Here’s hoping the Pittsburgh crowd gives him a thunderous ovation on Thursday when the Capitals visit PPG Paints Arena. He deserves it.

That’s a tough crowd to impress, though, because the older fans witnessed the very best up close.

(Photos: Glenn Cratty, Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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