Until 8 proves the one time he's been past the 2nd round, in 14 friggin years, wasn't an aberration, he'll never outpace Richard for example, IMHO. Ovechkin is arguably the greatest goal scorer ever, but while somebody like MJ wants to bemoan secondary assists, he always disappears when people, like myself bring up the fact that 8 has always needed vastly more shot attempts (both on net and missed) to win the goal scoring races. He's a volume goal scorer and that matters. Last year being a perfect example. 1 goal more than 2nd place in the Rocket race and he needed 100+ more shots on net to achieve it. It's called context.
Can you stop harping on about that ridiculous once in fourteen years, it's an absolutely nonsensical argument that doesn't prove anything about Ovechkin. Here's a direct comparison to Maurice Richard over the same time period as Ovechkin:
Maurice Richard, age-25 to 33 seasons, 46-47 through 54-55:
Playoffs: 67 Games, 32 Goals, 14 Assists, 46 Points
Missed playoffs 1 year, suspended for playoffs 1 year, lost 1st round twice, lost 2nd round 4 times, 1 Stanley Cup
Alex Ovechkin, age-25 to 33 seasons, 10-11 through 18-19:
Playoffs: 100 Games, 45 Goals, 41 Assists, 86 Points
Missed playoffs 1 year, lost 1st round twice, lost 2nd round 5 times, 1 Stanley Cup
This is me cherry-picking, but this is a nine season sample of both Richard and Ovechkin's results. The year Maurice Richard was suspended, Montreal lost in the 2nd round, so you're basically looking at the exact same playoff results for both players. Another fun fact is that during this time period, Montreal played 3 teams with a positive goal differential and 5 teams with a negative goal differential in the first round, compared to Washington's 8 teams with a positive goal differential. In the second round, Montreal played 5 teams with a positive goal differential, and 1 team with a negative goal differential, and beat only the team with the negative goal differential (their 52-53 Cup was achieved as a +7 team by beating a -6 Chicago team and a -20 Boston team, compared to Washington's 17-18 Cup as a +18 team beating +10 Columbus, +22 Pittsburgh, +46 Tampa, and +43 Vegas). So not only did Ovechkin have to play better teams, he also performed better - 0.86 PPG versus 0.68. [Also, if you remove the games played by Ovechkin after the 2nd round, and add the games Richard missed while suspended, you get 88 to 79, which means that Ovechkin played roughly 1 game more each playoff year, and not the 33 game gap raw numbers would indicate.]
Here's another cherry-picked age sample:
Sidney Crosby age-22 through 27 seasons, 09-10 through 14-15:
Playoffs: 51 Games, 19 Goals, 36 Assists, 55 Points, -3
Missed 1 playoffs due to injury, lost in 1st round twice, lost in 2nd round twice, lost in 3rd round once.
To compensate for the playoffs missed due to injury, I'll cut off Ovechkin's age-27 season to compare 5 playoff runs to 5 playoff runs.
Alex Ovechkin age-22 through 26 seasons, 07-08 through 11-12:
Playoffs: 51 Games, 30 Goals, 29 Assists, 59 Points, +11
Lost in 1st round twice, lost in 2nd round three times
The point I'm trying to make is that you can cherry-pick player results to show that both Crosby and Richard have nearly the exact same team results as Ovechkin over a significant time period, and there's an easy argument that Ovechkin had the better individual results compared to both players. How much does your Ovechkin narrative change if the 15-16 and 16-17 Pens/Caps series were in the Conference Final or the Stanley Cup Final, instead of the 2nd round? They only met then due to the NHL playoff bracketing, not due to team quality. The 08-09 and 17-18 series were a bit different, because they weren't #1 vs #2, but those two series could easily have been later in the playoffs as well given different seedings/results.
If you want to engage in dumb hypotheticals, why not switch the results of all 4 Pittsburgh-Washington series, so that the Capitals win 3 and Penguins win 1 (with further results remaining the same), and figure out what the narrative would be in that case, with Washington having 3 Cups, and Pittsburgh just 1 Cup and another Finals loss. I mean, it isn't like there's much difference between the teams when you sum up all the series as a whole - Pittsburgh won 14 games, Washington won 12, Pittsburgh scored 77 goals, Washington scored 74. Crosby was 13+17=30 in 25 games, +5, compared to Ovechkin's 15+18=33 in 26 games, +6. That's why I hate trying to construct any sort of narrative about playoff performance, because the sample sizes are so small. The 18-19 Lightning, the 09-10 Capitals, and the 05-06 Red Wings are the three teams with the highest point totals since the lockout, and all three teams had a bad week, and lost in the 1st round.
Simplistic response from a simple mindset.
The Caps have really dominated the league haven't they with the greatest volume shooter of all time?
I suppose it depends on what you mean by dominance - the Caps have 3 President's Trophies and 1 Cup, the Penguins have 3 Cups and 0 President's Trophies. In an EPL-esque NHL, where the winner of the regular season is the league champion (or even if the two Conference winners play for a championship akin to pre-Expansion MLB), the Capitals would have 3 to the Penguins 0, despite the Penguins having 2 of the top 5 post-lockout players for 13 of the 14 years. What sort of narrative and pressure would be on Crosby and Malkin, 13/14 years into their career and they've only managed to finish 1st in their conference once, finishing 2nd 6 times, let alone the entire league where they've only finished 2nd twice, compared to the dominant Capitals team that has finished 1st in the conference 4 times, and won the league 3 times and finished 2nd once.
But look, I'm not really disagreeing with your points, or saying that your arguments aren't valid. I'm just asking you to consider different narratives, some more plausible than others, that don't involve much change in results, and how those would affect your opinions about a player.
I did have a thought while typing this, though it doesn't really apply to any of your points, but it would be interesting to get a poll series going on the main forum listing all of the teammates of Crosby and Ovechkin, and getting them ranked by just their performance as teammates, and see how that vote would end up - how many Pens/Caps would end up in the top 5/10/25/50. Malkin, Backstrom, Letang, Holtby would probably be the top 4, but further results could finally put to bed the better teammates line that gets thrown around a bunch by partisans.
