Alex Ovechkin

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

77 games, 50 goals and 40 assists at 20:34 a night, plus-8, eighteen penalty minutes, 334 shots, sixteen power-play goals, one short-handed and five game-winners. First overall in 2004 by Washington, seventeen seasons, 1,274 games, 1,410 points.

He has 780 career goals.

The Finesse Game

His median shot came from 36.8 feet, the longest of all 393 forwards who played forty games, and twenty-four per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet, the 2nd-lowest slot share of the same 393.

Only Patrik Laine took a smaller share of his shots from the dangerous ice, and nobody in the league shot from further out.

12.65 shots per 60 is the 7th-most of the 393 at 15.0 per cent, and his shot is 101.5 mph, the 3rd-hardest of the 365 forwards the tracking measures.

Read those four together and the player is completely described: the hardest shot in hockey, taken more often than almost anybody takes one, from further away than anybody else shoots, and it goes in fifteen times in a hundred.

2.96 even-strength points per 60 is the 29th-highest of the 393, and thirty-two per cent of his points came on the power play.

49.2 per cent of the expected goals is the 46th percentile and 49.6 per cent of the attempts the 46th, out of 75.1 per cent offensive-zone starts — the 2nd-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. Four hundred and ninety-one attacking-zone shifts against 163 in his own end.

His ice went 67-54 against an expectation of 50.19-51.91. Seventeen goals better than the model in front, which is the largest surplus on this roster and the reason the shares below the chair do not matter as much as they look.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 238 pounds, and eighteen penalty minutes in seventy-seven games — 749 across 1,274.

5.87 hits per 60 is the 69th percentile and 0.95 blocks the 14th, against 0.42 penalties drawn per 60 at the 12th.

The Intangibles

He captained the club through 20:34 a night at 36, with 4:45 on the power play — the most of all 393 forwards who played forty games.

8.90 miles per 60 is the 19th-lowest of the 365 tracked forwards and 1.44 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 the 22nd-fewest. He covers less ground and sprints less often than almost anybody in the league, and he is 36.

He is 37 now, first overall in 2004, with 780 goals and 285 power-play goals in 1,274 games. Fifty goals at 36 came out of the softest chair in hockey, the largest power-play share in hockey and the hardest shot in hockey, and every one of those three is a club decision as much as a player’s. The skating says the chair is not optional any more. The shot chart says it does not have to be.