Stat shows that Auston Matthews may be a better goal scorer than Alex Ovechkin
How good has Auston Matthews been since entering the league in his rookie season in 2016-17? Ever since the Toronto Maple Leafs were rewarded with the first overall selection ahead of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, selecting Matthews, their fortunes have changed. Now, he's one of the most dominant players in the game and an absolutely prolific goal scorer.
Matthews made an immediate impact with a 4-goal-game in his NHL debut against the Ottawa Senators and capped off his rookie-of-the-year season with a team-leading 40 goals and 69 points. In total, he has scored 299 goals and 542 points in just 481 games across 7 seasons with an additional 22 goals and 44 points in 50 playoff games.
Since 2016-17, Matthews is 11th in points, 1st in goals, and 2nd in game-winning goals. If you dive even deeper into his statistics, Matthews joins an exclusive club of current and future Hall-of-Famers. He owns the 7th highest goals per game average for a player in their first 7 seasons, behind only Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy, Brett Hull, Jari Kurri, and Teemu Selanne.
His 0.62 goals per game is also tied with Luc Robitaille and is slightly higher than Alexander Ovechkin (0.61). Ovechkin is largely viewed as the best goal-scorer of our generation and perhaps NHL history. Matthews has 299 goals in 481 games compared to Ovechkin's 297 in 508 games.
His efficiency and consistency has been through the roof, never having scored less than 34 goals in a season and that was in just 62 games. In the last 4 seasons alone, he scored 47 in 70 games in 2019-20, 41 in 52 games in 2020-21, 60 in 73 games in 2021-22, and 40 in 74 games last season - nursing a wrist injury, which impacted his ability to shoot the puck. In that span, he owns 2 Rocket Richard Trophies, 1 Hart Trophy and a Ted Lindsay Award.
Just 1 goal away from 300, Matthews should become the 8th quickest to achieve the milestone in NHL history, behind Ovechkin by a just a handful of games.
| POLL | ||
AOUT 10 | 110 ANSWERS Stat shows that Auston Matthews may be a better goal scorer than Alex Ovechkin Who, in your opinion, is the better pure goal scorer? | ||
| Alex Ovechkin | 66 | 60 % |
| Auston Matthews | 44 | 40 % |
| List of polls | ||
