Ovechkin has a somewhat underwhelming post season career (minus 2009 and 2018).
Hes a huge, physical player. One of the best scorers of all time. But his numbers fell off pretty dramatically in the playoffs. His playoff totals sandwiched between his two great runs are 31-29-60 in 76 GP. This was in his aged 24-31 seasons.
Noted renowned playoff producer Maurice Richard age 24-32: 76 games, 39 goals, 18 assists, 57 points. The Habs scored 21 more goals in those 76 games than the Caps did, 200 to 179, while the Capitals gave up 176 goals compared to Montreal's 164. Though Montreal played 14 series compared to the Caps 12, the Capitals game record was 37-39, while the Habs was 42-35 (Richard was suspended for 1 game). Richard was much more feast or famine in those series too, as he had 3 points or less in 7 of the 14, including 2 goose eggs (the 0 point series were both 4 game sweeps with 1 Habs win and 1 loss, there were 2 5 game series, and 3 7 game series, all losses). By comparison, Ovechkin only had 3 points or less in 2 of 12.
[By the way, if you remove their age 24 seasons from the sample (Richard's 45-46, Ovechkin's 09-10) - Habs lose an 8-1 game record, 45 GF, 20 GA, Richard subtracts 9 games, 7 goals, 4 assists 11 points; new Habs numbers: 34-34, 155 GF, 144 GA, Richard 67 games, 32 goals, 14 assists, 46 points. Caps lose a 3-4 game record, 22 GF, 20 GA, Ovechkin subtracts 7 games, 5 goals, 5 assists, 10 points, new Caps numbers 34-35, 157 GF, 146 GA, Ovechkin 69 games, 26 goals, 24 assists, 50 points. Montreal was 6-6 in series, Washington was 5-7. Remarkably identical numbers for both players and teams.]
Cherrypicking is fun and all, but we're comparing apples to apples here, and Ovechkin comes out looking quite equal to the one of the best playoff performers of all time, over the same age period, and including 76 of Richard's 121 relevant playoff games (ignoring his final two seasons), all while not including Ovechkin's 2 best playoff runs. And now here's the best part:
Ovechkin outside your sample years through 19-20 (07-08, 08-09, 17-18, 18-19, 19-20) - 57 games, 175 GF, 38 goals, 33 assists, 71 points
Richard outside your sample years (43-44, 44-45, 55-56, 56-57, 57-58) - 45 games, 174 GF, 42 goals, 23 assists, 65 points
Montreal was 34-11 in those games, over 9 series, allowing 85 goals, as both the vagaries of WW2 plus the emergence of players that relegated Richard to 2nd line duties contributed to the blowout scores. In contrast, Washington allowed 160 goals, playing the same number of series but 12 more games within that set (their overall record was 30-27). Montreal was 8-1 in series, while Washington was 5-4.
Richard doesn't have any other substantial playoff performances, just the two injury-shortened last seasons of his career, where he missed most of the playoffs. I've shown that in both the original sample as well as the unused sample, on teams that scored just about the same number of goals in around the same number of games, with Montreal being higher-scoring, Ovechkin and Richard put up virtually identical numbers. The only difference really is that Maurice Richard had anywhere from 5-9 teammates every year who are in the Hall of Fame, whereas Ovechkin did not. Another difference is that Ovechkin led his team in scoring 5 of 7 times in that age 24-32 sample, whereas Maurice Richard only did it 2 times in 8, while also having less points, in different years, than non-Hall of Fame teammates such as Gerry Plamondon, Billy Reay, Norm Dussault, Floyd Curry, and Paul Masnick.
