The Chase for Gretzky’s crown and the NHL 900 Club

On November 23 1988, Wayne Gretzky netted the 600 goal of his record setting career. On the 35th anniversary of this landmark, we look at the other members of the 600 club, the relentless march of Alex Ovechkin and whether any of the current stars of the NHL can make it to this milestone and beyond. 

There are 20 players in the history of the NHL who have scored 600 or more goals, with a pair of current players who are part of the 500 club who will be looking to add their names to history over the next couple of years.

While it is hard to find betting sites who are willing to take futures bets that involve things like a certain player to get X number of goals in their career, sometimes there are specials to be had. Most people now expect Ovechkin to make it past Gretzky and perhaps be the first to top 900 but could someone else then go past him? Let’s take a look at the goalscoring history in the NHL.

There is only one place to start and that is with the four-time Stanley Cup winner, Wayne Gretzky. It’s 35 years since he marked his place in the 600 club with a tally for the Los Angeles Kings in an 8-3 victory over the Detroit Red Wings. 

Gretzky retired on what he called a gut feeling at the age of 38 when mentally and physically tired. So many fans will have struggled to come to terms with him not playing one more year to top 1,500 games, 900 goals and 2,000 assists but where does that end? Another two seasons after that for 3,000 points?

With better diets and workout regimes, playing at 38 in the NHL these days is more common but even then, bodies have been battered enough by the time 35 comes around that players are looking to hang up the skates. Of course, 900 from Gretzky would have been perfect but there was more dignity calling it when he did rather than ploughing on, given that he was visually not the player he once was.

Relentless is the best way to describe Alex Ovechkin. His attitude has always been to be the best and his march to chase down Gretzky has seemed more and more inevitable as the seasons have gone on. His mindset that it doesn’t matter how long he has to play to become number one all time will get him there barring a major injury.

In contrast to Gretzky, Ovechkin gives the impression that he would take the ice with a zimmer frame to stand at the top of the left circle on a powerplay one more time to get a goal if he needs one to top Gretzky. It’s a single minded stubbornness that has made him one of the greatest players to ever lace skates and will make him number one in the future.

The founding member of the 600 club, Mr Hockey closed out his remarkable career with 801 goals, one of just three players in the history of the sport to go past the 800 mark. Playing in an era with protection that modern health and safety would be having heart palpitations about, he was so much more than just a goalscorer or a player who could drop the gloves, Howe was an icon.

Longevity was very much the calling card of Howe’s career, netting 15 times in his age 51 season for the Hartford Whalers. His is another tale of what could have been, retiring from the NHL at the age of 42 but then playing for both the Houston Aeros and New England Whalers, tallying 174 goals in the WHL. In a different timeline, he would already be the first man past 900 NHL goals which perhaps would have persuaded Gretzky to play on a little longer.

There are five players who managed to get to 700 goals but could not quite make it to the next level up. They are led by Jaromir Jagr who tallied his final NHL goal at the age of 45 for the Calgary Flames. It was the only goal that he would manage to score in his final season in the NHL, not making it to Christmas and only playing in 22 games that season. Even at the age of 50 Jagr was still scoring, managing to get five goals on the board in the Czech SuperLiga for HC Kladno last season.  

Brett Hull is the leading scorer born in the USA with 744 goals, playing just five games in his final season for the Phoenix Coyotes before he hung up his skates. 86 goals in the 1990-91 season for the St Louis Blues was the highest tally of his career, twice more heading past 70 goals. He did not manage to lift a cup until much later in his career but twice hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup, once with the Dallas Stars and once with the Detroit Red Wings. 

The #2 overall pick by the Red Wings in the 1971 draft, Marcel Dionne has the unfortunate honour of scoring the most goals in the NHL without lifting the Stanley Cup. Dionne only played four seasons in Detroit, making his name as a member of the Los Angeles Kings. Six times he would score 50 goals in a season with a further four of 40+ helping him to 731 in total.

Four seasons of 60+ goals when a Boston Bruin has Phil Esposito well in the top 10 of all-time goal scorers in the league. While Esposito was a star in New York after Boston and a solid player in Chicago prior, it was in Boston where he lifted both of his cups and it will always be as a Bruin that he will be remembered.  

The final member of the 700 club is Mike Gartner. While he only got to the 50 goal plateau once, he was a model of consistency all through his career. Even in his final season in Phoenix, there were still goals coming at the age of 38, just enough to see him sneak into this level with 708 to his credit.

12 men managed to score 600 or more goals in the NHL without making it to the next hundred. The closest of them was Mark Messier who retired with 694 tallies on the board, just two in front of Steve Yzerman who played in more than 200 fewer games than Messier.

When it comes to the tale of what might have been in hockey, there is Mario Lemieux. The scorer of 690 goals in just 915 career games, Mike Bossy with 573 and Maurice Richard with 544 are the only two other players to notch 500+ goals in less than 1000 games. That rate would have put Lemieux over 1,100 goals if he had played the same volume of games as Gretzky but sadly it was never to be.

Teemu Selanne is the highest scoring European ever to play in the NHL with 684 goals, pushing himself past his fellow Finnish scorer Jan Kuri who retired with 601. 

The seven remaining members of the 600 club are all Canadian players. Luc Robitaille and Brendan Shanahan lead them with 668 and 656 respectively as the pair who managed to make it past 650.

Dave Andreychuk (640), Joe Sakic (625), Jarome Iginla (625), Bobby Hull (610) and Dino Ciccarelli (608) are the remaining five with Hull playing by far the fewest games of the group.

Next to 600 will be Sidney Crosby who has already gone past 560 goals. He only has a single 50 goal season in his career but that has not stopped him from knocking on the door of the top 25 goalscorers the league has ever seen. Too generous with the assists will stop him getting to 700 but he will be a top 10 all-time point scorer when he retires.

The closest current player to Crosby is the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Steven Stamkos who is past the 520 mark. With 45+ in three of his first four seasons in the league, injuries have held him back since which is remarkable given he’s heading towards 600 within the next couple of years.

There are four young players who have all topped the 300-goal mark already in their career who fans will believe have strong chances of at least doubling that, perhaps more. 

Connor McDavid is chief amongst them although perhaps he will have too many assists to challenge the likes of Ovechkin and Gretzky at the very top of the goalscoring tree. It would not be a shock to anyone if when all is said and done, he becomes only the second player in the history of the NHL to make it past 2000 points given he is nudging 900 already at the age of 26.

A more natural goalscorer and the head of these at time of writing is the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews. He has never had a season with less than 34 goals, topping out with 60 in the 2022/23 season. Consistency is key for him but fragility is a concern as he gets older having missed a fair number of games already with hand and wrist problems.

David Pasternak is just a year older than Matthews and is right up there with the Leaf heading into the top 200 all-time scorers already. The Bruins talisman is part of a powerful franchise who are perennial contenders in the east. Six seasons of 34+ goals, he had a career-high 61 last season. A few more of those will see him fly up the charts.

If McDavid doesn’t get there, it is going to be that he has provided Leon Draisaitl with a huge volume of opportunities. The German is the oldest of the four players mentioned but he has really turned things on in the last couple of seasons. He has three 50 goal seasons already under his belt but has made a slow start to the 2023/24 season.

Gretzky fell just six short in his career so Ovechkin will have his eyes firmly set not only on becoming the highest scorer the league has ever seen but also on being the first player to ever top the 900 goal barrier. 

In September, Ovechkin celebrated his 38th birthday, hitting the same age that Gretzky was when he decided that enough was enough. There is little to no chance that Ovechkin decides that this is the right age to retire as he marches onwards but it will be interesting to watch closely to see how his body reacts to the ageing process. 

Currently Ovechkin is just over 70 goals shy of the 900 barrier which would see him hit it at the age of 40 in two seasons if he can maintain a similar pace that he has throughout his career. That could be a problem as he is on course for only 25 goals this season as things stand. 

Any further slowing down and it will be his age 41 season where he catches Gretzky and tries for 900 but the smart money is still on Ovi getting there at some point, he is just too single minded to consider anything other than becoming the number one goal scorer in NHL history for him to fail.

The big question from there is whether any of the young guns can go long enough to be able to top that amount in the future. Matthews is the most likely when it comes to being a natural sniper but his injury history would temper confidence. Perhaps then it will be the metronomic David Pasternak who could be the man to just keep lighting the lamp. Whether they do or don’t, hockey fans should enjoy what is currently an incredible crop of players in the NHL.