Dr Jan Itor
Registered User
Kovalchuk (19yo) scored 38g and Heatley (21yo) scored 41g in that same season (2002-2003) on a dramatically worse Thrashers team who went through 3 coaches that season.
They were very, very good players as well. I'm sure they benefited a bit from playing with each other though, more than Gaborik benefited from playing with Dupuis, Ronning, etc...
I just think you're underrating Gaborik a bit, and scoring 30+ goals 5 times on those Wild teams (especially the early ones) was a bigger accomplishment than you're giving it credit for.
That said, if Kaprizov comes close to that, we'll all be freaking ecstatic.