Bruce Boudreau hesitates a moment before weighing in on the Hart Trophy race, comparing the situation to a proud parent boasting about his children. As far as he is concerned, his team will sweep the NHL's year-end awards.
But when it comes to talking about the significance of Alex Ovechkin's league-leading 65 goals this season, the Washington Capitals rookie head coach has no such qualms. In an era of low-scoring hockey, Boudreau said, it ranks up there with the career greats — and it just might be enough to lift his team into the postseason for the first time in five years.
"If you look back in the '80s and late '70s, if you were a goaltender and you had a 3.20 or 3.30 goals-against average, you were usually tops in the league," Boudreau said. "And you look at Grant Fuhr's numbers; if you post them up today against the best goalies in the NHL, they pale in comparison. There were so many more goals scored.
"There are so many 1-0, 2-0 games nowadays. For a guy to have that many goals, it's hard to compare, but I've got to believe, when all's said and done, it's probably not as good as [Wayne Gretzky's record 92 goals], but if you take Phil Esposito's 76 and what Alex has done, I would think it's comparable."
And the numbers help back that up.
With 20 regular-season games left to play, NHL games this season have averaged 5.45 goals scored a game, which means 2007-08 is set to become the sixth-lowest-scoring season in the past 50 years.
Washington only needs a point against Florida at home in Saturday's regular-season finale to reach the postseason for the first time since 2003 — and for the first time in Ovechkin's young career.
When Ovechkin hit the magic 60-goal mark on March 21, he became only the 38th player to do so in league history. Until this season, however, every 60-goal campaign had come in a season that averaged at least 6.13 goals a game.
Gretzky's 92-goal campaign in 1981-82, for instance, came in a year when goal scoring reached an all-time high, 8.03 goals a game. Comparing the two vastly different eras is difficult, but Gretzky's season, percentage-wise, converts to 64 goals in 82 games by today's standards.
Even without making allowances for radical shifts in scoring, Ovechkin has had a campaign for the ages. He eclipsed Luc Robitaille's 15-year-old record for goals by a left winger and now sits tied for 23rd with Steve Yzerman's 1988-89 season among the top single-season performance.
Only 10 players have ever scored more than 65 goals in a season.
"Sometimes when you're right on top of the situation, you don't realize how many goals Alex really has," Boudreau said. "You know what I mean? You see it every day so it's not a big surprise. But when you sit back and think, in today's era, where every game he plays, every shift he takes, the other team's top defensive pairing and top defensive line is against him, and in every game, the other teams are talking about focusing on checking Alex Ovechkin. And then he'll go out and look what he's done — quite amazing."
"I didn't think we'd see anything like that again," Hockey Night in Canada analyst Kelly Hrudey said of Ovechkin breaking the 65-goal barrier. "And that's not in any sense slamming the talent, because the talent's better than it's ever been. It's just that the talent in the net is better as well."
Ovechkin's star turn has also become a big draw at the box office for a market that hasn't seen a playoff series win in a decade.
