After starting the year on fire, the Leafs’ Auston Mathews has gone 10 games without a goal while the Oilers’ Connor McDavid has been goalless in nine straight. Panic has started to set in north of the border so TSN’s Travis Yost tried to illustrate just how normal these goal droughts are, especially among the NHL’s best snipers over the last five years.

When Yost tabulated his the numbers however, he learned that Alex Ovechkin is the one exception.

Graph by Travis Yost. Read his story here.

Over the last five years, Ovechkin has never had a goal scoring drought longer than six games. That is insane when you think about it. And he’s only had three of them total.

The next most prolific scorer, Steven Stamkos, has had 15 goal droughts between six and 10 games.

By almost any measure, Ovechkin is this generation’s most prolific shooter and goal scorer. For instance, let’s take a look at this graph from the now-defunct website, war-on-ice.com. During Ovechkin’s career (through 2015), here’s how the Russian machine measures up league wide in terms of goals scored vs. shot attempts taken.

https://twitter.com/jbillinson/status/583748395086450688

Ovechkin’s that dude on the top right, doing laps around the field.

Then there’s Ovechkin’s shot generation. He does so roughly at a clip roughly 30% higher than a league average player.

Photo: @IneffectiveMath

In short, what you’re seeing from Ovechkin is likely to never be repeated by another Caps player in our lifetime. Enjoy it while it lasts. He’s special.