I do put Ovechkin in my personal top 5 and I give him full credit for scoring 686 goals and counting, as well as leading a very weak era of goal scorers because you can only go with the hand you are dealt but come on...
I would hope he’d have at least the 8 Rockets when his completion for goal scorers since he entered the league are Stamkos, Crosby, Malkin, Carter, Parise, Perry, Vanek and Kessel.
Stamkos is the only true goal scorer on that list. Crosby is obviously tasked with more than just firing 5000 shots on net. Malkin is of the same vein. The rest are kind of a joke. That’s your Rocket competition.
In terms of high-end competition, it is in fact pretty rare that two all-time great goal-scorers are duking it out versus each other - all-time greats are rare by definition and thus do not overlap all that much.
Ovechkin stole two goal-scoring titles from Stamkos and lost one to him - is Stamkos good enough competition? Would Bure or Bossy be a stronger competition?
Let's look at their % leads over #10 in goals
Stamkos 67-46-38-32-30-10-9
Bossy 73-42-33-33-30-28-26-25-9-9
Bure 61-55-48-30-11
Bossy seems to be a bit weaker than Stamkos down the middle, but stronger on the tail end, Bure is stronger in the best three years, but not durable. Stamkos seems to be an average between the two.
Now, if you take Lemieux' goal-scoring titles - he had to beat Jagr, Nicholls, and Craig Simpson (Who is this third guy? I can't remember). The other three years Lemieux finished top3 were the years he lost to Mogilny, Kerr, and Tkachuk. It was not like he had to beat peak Gretzky or peak Brett Hull to get his goal-scoring titles or lost some to them.
And that's not a jab at Lemieux, this is basically how it goes - for example, Bobby Hull's main competition for goal-scoring titles were Mahovlich and Mikita, and in terms of goal-scoring they are similar to prime Kovalchuk.
So I would say Ovechkin faced a fair share of adversity in terms of high-end competition, probably even more than an average all-time great goal-scorer did.