This past year was the first year Ovechkin has finished outside the top 7 in league scoring in his career. He's been outside the top 5 in goal scoring once in his career.
Kovalchuk put up 60 points in 2010-11. I wonder how many people were suggesting that he was never going to be an elite scorer again. He came back with 83 points in 77 games.
Something went bad with Ovechkin last year. Whether that be a lack of conditioning, coming to terms with a new system, coaching issues, whatever. That can't be denied.
But to suggest that a 27 year old who has more goals, and more points then any player in the league since the previous lockout is never going to bounce back seems a little premature to me. This is arguably one of the most exceptional goal scorers in NHL history. Sure, maybe Ovechkin can't repeat his previous success, but I sure as hell would not rule it out at this point. Not even close.
We will see, if I was a betting man I wouldn't bet on it.
NHLE is at best a VERY rough estimate of what a player might do at the NHL level. There's simply too many variables (team strength, pp time, quality of linemates etc) to come up with an accurate estimate for how well an individual player may do at the NHL level.
Probably giving a range of possibilities would be more useful.. say for example... a player like Yakupov may score anywhere from 40-60 pts in a full 82 game rookie season. Even then you'd still have to say he might do slightly worse/better in the worst/best case scenarios.
Boris Mironov saying on twitter that Yakupov should get of twitter and work on his training.
Yakupov simply retweets a fan that says that Mironov is wrong. According to Yakupov, he is nominated for Russian athlete of November. You have to vote for his somewhere online.
I watched this kid every game he played in Calgary last Christmas and wow, he has more drive in his game than any other player I have ever watched. Just watch him on the bench, he is really intense. Ready to get out there every shift, etc
I think there's a crapload of jealousy all over the place over Yak's talent and demeanor on and off the ice.
He does and will rub a lot of people the wrong way. You can count on every opposing fanbase + players and coaches all having their say on Yak and his "ego" and his unique personality on and off the ice.
I think it'll be Omark x3... that will likely be how it is going forward. He has a very strong "out there" personality and he is also very talented both as a playmaker and goal scorer so you just know some people are going to view that all as arrogance and conceitedness through their filter of jealousy as they see him perform and excel wherever he plays (hopefully with the Oilers very soon.)
Thanks s7ark!
Yak just loves to score or have his team score - is one of the first to go over to celebrate with the guys. Hopefully we can see this a few times in the upcoming Oilers season (whenever that might be).
