Gretzky, Howe or Ovechkin: Who's the greatest goal scorer of all time? The answer's not so simple (2024)

Human performance only gets better with time, right? Better training techniques, better nutrition, better equipment, better technology, better information, better development programs — it all leads to better results. Times in the 100-meter dash only go down. Fastball velocity only goes up. So it’s easy to say that the last guy off the bench in today’s NBA would have been a dominant megastar in the 1960s, that Babe Ruth wouldn’t know what to do with a Jacob deGrom 93-mph slider, that Alex Ovechkin — having passed Gordie Howe on Friday for the second-most goals in NHL history (802), and closing in on Wayne Gretzky’s once-unbreakable record of 894 — is the greatest goal scorer of all time.

But is he?

Comparing athletes across eras is always a fool’s errand, but it’s also a fun one. And whether you’re in a bar arguing with buddies or talking to actual players who lived and played in those eras, well, once you start trying to determine if the modern-day NHL is indeed the most difficult era in which to score, you start talking yourself in circles.

Look, obviously, it’s harder to score now. Look at the size and athleticism of these goalies!

Modern-day goalies are borderline freaks of nature. They’re 6-foot-5, hyper-athletic, as flexible as gymnasts and get across the crease in a split second. They have video and science and the reverse VH and all sorts of practical theory behind the so-called voodoo. When you look at someone like Andrei Vasilevskiy and compare him to the goalies of yesteryear, it’s a wonder every game doesn’t end in a shootout with the score tied 0-0.

For Gordie’s sake, those guys in the 1980s were skinny and tiny and playing that awkward, flailing, stand-up style. And those guys in the 1950s and 1960s didn’t even wear masks! Case closed.

“Look at the butterfly,” said Denis Savard, who potted 473 goals from 1980 to 1997, the highest-scoring era in NHL history. “We didn’t have that. For me, I’d come down the right side and I’d shoot it on the ice, stick side. And it worked! Today, forget about it. It’s a routine save for them. You’ve got to be able to elevate the puck at crazy speed. Obviously, Ovi can do that.”

And goalies aren’t just bigger and better. They also have equipment that helps, rather than hinders.

“If you go back to about 1979 through 1984, our lack of lateral mobility when I watch the goalies of today is evident,” said former Blackhawks goalie Darren Pang, who at 5-foot-5 is six inches shorter than the shortest of the 79 goalies who have played in the NHL this season. “But the other part of it is the equipment evolution. Our skate blades were lower, and our pads went over the top of our goalie skates. So any time you moved any which way, the inside of your pad got caught and you couldn’t move as fast at these guys. Now, their pads are higher on their skates, and their skate blades are higher. And their pads are lighter. They’re not as wide as ours, and our gloves were bigger than the gloves of today. But they’re able to do so much more. And part of that is because they’re more powerful.”

And don’t even start with those guys from Howe’s era.

“Christ, when I came in, we had no masks,” said Eddie Johnston, a longtime Bruins goalie who gave up 27 goals to Howe in his career, and who was the last goalie to play every minute of every game in a season, back in 1963-64. “We didn’t have those shoulder pads and all that stuff, either. We were black and blue from training camp on because we had those short pads — made of cloth, for chrissakes! Plus, our pads weighed 20 or 30 pounds. Now, you can pick them up with one finger. The protection is terrific now. God bless them, it’s great. We didn’t have anything. No masks. That’s why we all wore No. 1, because that was our IQ.”

Yeah, yeah. Not buying it. It was obviously harder to score in Howe’s era. There was no dead weight on the rosters!

There are 32 teams in the NHL these days. That’s more than 700 players, including at least 64 goalies, who can call themselves NHLers on any given day. In Howe’s time, during the Original Six era, there was a fraction of that.

“Every player I played against is in the Hall of Fame!” laughed Frank Mahovlich, a Howe contemporary who scored 533 NHL goals and 89 WHA goals from 1956 to 1978.

Indeed, just about every game, Howe was going up against Montreal’s Jacques Plante or Chicago’s Glenn Hall or New York’s Gump Worsley or Toronto’s Harry Lumley or Johnny Bower. And Howe had Terry Sawchuk at his back in Detroit.

Not to mention the fact that the best players were on the ice a lot more. A slower, more methodical game allowed for much longer shifts, meaning far more ice time for the best players in the world. Just about every shift, you were going up against truly great players.

Oh, please. The three greatest goalies of all time played in Gretzky’s era. Obviously, it was harder to score then.

Pang started calling games for ESPN in 1993. From then until the 2004 lockout, he crisscrossed the continent to broadcast the NHL.

“And every night, it seemed like there was a world-class No. 1 goaltender in net,” he said. “That era of the mid-80s to whenever Patrick (Roy), Marty (Brodeur) and (Dominik) Hasek retired was the elite era of goaltending. Do we have guys like that right now, with 64 goalies? It wasn’t just those three guys, either. You had your (Mike) Vernons, your (Tom) Barrassos, your (Grant) Fuhrs, your (Ron) Hextalls. (Evgeni) Nabokov. (Felix) Potvin. Go on down the list. The guys today are pretty amazing, and they regularly make saves off one-timers that are 100 mph. But I’m not sure if they have the same hockey sense as we had to have.”

And that’s not even getting into the hilariously oversized equipment goalies wore in the 1990s. Arturs Irbe looked like he strapped two twin-sized air mattresses to his legs every night.

“All I know is, I see some saves today and I go, ‘Oh my God, these guys are absolutely incredible,'” Pang said. “Then I see some goals go in short-side, high above the shoulder, and I go, ‘Oh, boy, these goalies, what are they doing?’ Then I see a goalie that lets a player skate right through the crease and go post to post and tuck it in, and I go, ‘Where’s their stick?’ The hockey sense just isn’t there.”

Whatever. Gordie Howe never had to try to score on a Barry Trotz defense. Obviously, it’s harder to score now than it’s ever been.

Savard laughed when asked if he could have pulled off his patented spin-o-ramas and toe-drags in the modern era. Maybe every once in a while. But certainly not as often.

“The structures are way better than when we played,” Savard said. “We had structure, but not as much today. We didn’t have as much film, either. There were way more great scoring chances when we played because of that.”

The further back in time you go, the looser the play gets.

“Coaches make way more adjustments now,” said Johnston, who coached the Penguins in the 1990s before moving into the front office. “They changed the way of setting up, checking in their own end. They know how to take away the center and keep the puck to the outside. We didn’t have nearly as much of that.”

Oh, but come on. The game was so much rougher in Howe’s time. Obviously, it was harder to score back then, when you could get your head taken off by a cross-check on every shift.

Ovechkin is built like — and plays like —a freight train, but so many of his goals come from one-timers in open ice, particularly in his “office” in the left circle.

Howe had plenty of skill, of course, but his goals tended to come with a little more elbow grease. Famously strong, with tree trunks for thighs and bodybuilder arms, Howe had to literally fight for some of his goals. The NHL was like the lawless wild west, with opponents taking all sorts of liberties as you battled for the puck.

“I don’t think there’s been a bench-clearing in years,” Johnston said, almost wistfully. “Back then, if you went into Boston or certain rinks, you’d better bring toughness. You’d never be surprised if the benches cleared.”

“Gosh, some of the checks we used to see,” Mahovlich said. “(Bill Gadsby) hit Tim Horton once (in 1955) and broke his jaw and gave him a spiral break in his thigh. One check. You heard the crack all over the rink. We had some great body checks. Ovechkin’s a big strong guy, though. He could probably get through it. He could get by.”

Are you kidding? Have you ever watched a game from the ’80s or ’90s? You had defenders waterskiing behind the puck-carrier, hooking a stick around his hip and going for a ride. Obviously, it was harder to score in Gretzky’s clutch-and-grab era, before the crackdowns on hooking, slashing, cross-checking and other types of obstruction.

Count Savard as someone who thinks it’s tougher to put the puck in the net now than it’s ever been. That said, he salivates at the idea of having the modern rule book during the 1980s. Would 1981-82 Gretzky still lead the league in scoring if he were magically dropped into the 2022-23 NHL? Savard’s not sure. But if he could play 2022-23 NHL hockey against 1980s players, goalies and coaches?

Oh, baby.

“I can tell you, with the rules that they have now, in our era, there’d be way more goals,” Savard said. “Gretzky might have scored 1,200 goals against the players in our era with the rules they have now. I would have had 100 more goals. No question. The rules now are designed for the guys who play with skill. It’s still a hard game, but guys used to hook us all the way to the neutral zone. You couldn’t go anywhere. Happened to me every time against St. Louis or Minnesota. One time, this guy had his stick on my hip and I’m dragging him up the ice. I ask him, ‘You’re really happy about this? This is fun for you, isn’t it?’ What am I gonna do? There’s nothing I can do.”

The removal of the center red line following the 2004-05 lockout further empowered goal scorers. Just like the NFL has opened up the passing game by making it infinitely harder to be a defensive back or a pass-rusher than it used to be, the NHL has started gearing the rule book toward goal scorers. In the NFL, it’s turned the record book on its ear. That hasn’t happened in the NHL — yet.

When Mahovlich sees a game these days, he barely recognizes the sport.

“It’s just not the same,” he said. “The game has changed. The rules have changed. The game is a lot faster. It looks like everybody’s fast. And it seems like everyone is scoring.”

So statistically speaking, what is the hardest era in which to be a prolific goal scorer?

One way to look at it is how many individual players average 0.5 goals per game or more over the course of a single season. In the 1950s, there were 23 such seasons, but with only six teams playing — so each team had an average of 3.83 of those seasons, or 0.383 per year. In the 2020s, there have already been 55 of those seasons (including the 22 we’re on pace for in 2022-23), which — with the league expanding from 31 to 32 teams in 2021-22 — averages out to 0.579 per team per year.

By this math, the answer is that Ovechkin’s era has been the hardest for goal scorers, but Howe’s is close.

Prolific goal scorers all but disappeared in the mid-1990s, but they’re making quite a comeback in recent seasons. Since comparing across generations is impossible, we can best compare Gretzky, Ovechkin and Howe to their contemporaries. Pick one of them, and you can make the numbers support him as the greatest goal scorer ever.

In 1952-53, Howe scored 49 goals. Nobody else had more than 32, and only two had more than 30 (there were only six teams, of course). In 1982-83, Gretzky scored 71 goals. There were two others with at least 60, four more with at least 50, 16 more with at least 40, and 28 more with at least 30. Last season, Auston Matthews had 60 goals, three others had at least 50, 13 more had at least 40, and 34 had at least 30.

Ovechkin has led the league in goals nine times, but only three of those times by 10 goals or more. Howe led the league in goals five times, also three times by 10 goals or more. Gretzky led the league in goals five times in a six-season span in the 1980s, but only twice by at least 10 goals. Of course, one of those times was by 31 goals, and the other was by 28.

It’s just not that simple, is it?

You say athletes are simply better now. Someone else points out that the talent pool has been dramatically watered down by expansion. Another person notes that the game is global now, with talent pouring out of countries around the world.

You say equipment is simply better now, with whippy, composite sticks firing the puck at speeds never seen before. Someone else points out that the goalies’ equipment is better, too. Another person notes that Bobby Hull might have had the hardest shot ever, using that old wooden twig.

When Howe and Mahovlich played, they flew commercial to every game. And there was no food or drinks at the rink before, during or after a game. When Gretzky and Savard played, they had to fight through an endless barrage of hooks and hugs and wrestling maneuvers. Now that Ovechkin plays, he has to find the tiniest openings in these massive, learned and ridiculously athletic goaltenders.

The rules have changed, the systems have changed, the goaltending has changed, the equipment has changed, the world has changed. All told, the game has changed too much over time to say anything with certainty.

Well, almost anything.

“Here’s you and I talking in circles,” Savard said. “It’s very hard to define. But I’ll tell ya —if you score 800 goals or 900 goals, I don’t care what year it is or what time of life it is, it’s pretty amazing.”

(Top photo: Geoff Burke / USA Today)