In 2023-24, Alex Ovechkin is within reach of passing Gretzky and Bossy for the most 50-goal seasons in NHL history. Who else has what it takes to reach 50 this year?

It seems safe to assume Alex Ovechkin won't break Wayne Gretzky's goal-scoring record next season. 

After all, he's still 73 goals away from getting to 895. Nobody has scored 73 goals in a season since Teemu Selanne and Alexander Mogilny put up matching 76-goal campaigns more than 30 years ago, in the 1992-93 season.

But it's not really a reach to think that Ovechkin might get to 50. Last year, missing his reliable wingmen Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson and Tom Wilson for big chunks of the season while sidelined for nine games himself, he still got to 42. 

With new coach Spencer Carbery at the helm, this season's focus in Washington will be on getting back to the playoffs — and getting Ovechkin closer to Gretzky's record.

In 2023-24, he'll have a different opportunity to stake his claim in the history books. 

When Ovechkin scored twice in the Capitals' 4-3 overtime loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on April 20, 2022, he hit the 50-goal mark for the ninth time in 17 seasons. That tied him with Gretzky and Mike Bossy for the most 50-goal seasons ever in an NHL career. 

If the 'Great 8' gets to 50 this year, he'll be the first player ever to hit double digits, and he'll hold the record alone — another feather in his cap as the NHL's greatest goal-scorer of all time.

Ovechkin's scoring prowess was on display from the minute he touched down in North America. He scored two goals in his very first game with Washington, a 3-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Oct. 5, 2005. And the league's crackdown on interference coming out of the lockout gave skill players more room to operate and added more than one-and-a-half extra power plays per game.

Overall scoring went up by more than half a goal a game. And with 52 goals as a rookie, Ovechkin was one of five players to crack the 50-goal plateau, along with Jonathan Cheechoo (56), Jaromir Jagr (54), Ilya Kovalchuk (52) and Dany Heatley (50). That was a far cry from the last pre-lockout season in 2003-04, when Rick Nash, Kovalchuk and Jarome Iginla shared the Rocket Richard Trophy with 41 goals each.

The 2005-06 season was the first time the league had had at least five 50-goal scorers in a single year since 1995-96 (eight, led by 69 goals from Mario Lemieux). 

It also marked the last time the NHL had five 50-goal scorers in a season until the just-completed 2022-23 campaign. Connor McDavid (64) and David Pastrnak (61) became the first players to exceed 60 since Ovechkin put up 65 goals in 2007-08, and they were joined by Mikko Rantanen (55), Leon Draisaitl (52) and Brayden Point (51).

Through much of his career, Ovechkin has carried the goal-scoring torch virtually alone. He has won the scoring race nine times, as well as logging those nine 50-goal seasons. That 50-goal mark was only reached by a handful of other players in the 13 seasons following Ovi's rookie year: Heatley and Vincent Lecavalier in 2006-07, Kovalchuk and Iginla in 2007-08, Crosby and Steven Stamkos in 2009-10, Corey Perry in 2010-11 and Evgeni Malkin and Stamkos again in 2011-12. 

Then, there was a six-year span where nobody but Ovechkin reached 50 in a season before Draisaitl hit the mark in 2018-19. Four players hit 50 in the first season after the shortened COVID-19 season: Draisaitl again, Ovechkin, Auston Matthews and Chris Kreider.

In the NHL's 105 years of play, the 50-goal mark has been reached just 205 times by 96 different players. The highest number of 50-goal scorers in a season was 14 in 1992-93, led by Selanne and Mogilny and, remarkably, featuring three present-day NHL GMs: Luc Robitaille (63 goals), Steve Yzerman (58 goals) and Brendan Shanahan (51 goals).

That year, teams averaged 3.63 goals per game, according to hockey-reference.com. In the following 30 years, scoring tapered down to around three goals a game or even lower — until we got back in business after the shortened 2020-21 season.

Last year, total scoring increased only slightly, rising from 3.14 to 3.18 goals per team per game. But what's probably more important is that the spike from the 2021-22 season was sustained. 

Those numbers suggest that there could be another small jump next season — probably not enough to push the 50-goal club to double digits, but certainly enough to see five or more players hit that mark again.

Draisaitl is now Ovechkin's closest challenger, with 50-goal campaigns in each of the last three 82-game seasons and not far off a 50-goal pace in the two COVID-shortened years. Barring injury  — and, knock on wood, the German Machine Never Breaks in the regular season, either — he and McDavid should both take another run at 50 as the Oilers set their sights on bringing the Stanley Cup back to Canada.

Pastrnak's consistent reliability also makes him seem like a lock, even if it's unclear who's going to get him the puck this year. And Auston Matthews managed 40 goals last season with a bad hand. If he's healthy, he should also get back to the 50-goal mark.  

With the emphasis on youth in today's NHL, plenty of first-timers could also make a run at 50. After 42- and 40-goal seasons, are you going to bet against Matthew Tkachuk after what he showed last spring? What about towering Tage Thompson, coming off 38- and 47-goal campaigns as the anchor of the rapidly improving Buffalo Sabres? Or Kirill Kaprizov, who got to 47 goals in the 2021-22 season but was limited to 40 while playing just 67 games last year?

A little further under the radar: don't sleep on Carter Verhaeghe. A spare part early in his career who didn't get a shot as an NHL regular until the 2019-20 season, the 28-year-old improved his output by 50 percent last season, reaching 42 goals with the Florida Panthers. 

Locked up for two more years at a cap hit of just under $4.2 million, can Verhaeghe surprise us again and take a step into the 50-goal club?

And speaking of Stanley Cup finalists — with 26 goals in 40 games, Jack Eichel scored at a better-than-50-goal pace when he won the Hobey Baker Award as a freshman at Boston University in 2014-15, right before he was selected second overall in the draft. 

Eichel's career has been such an odyssey that his pure scoring prowess has become largely overlooked. But even with everything he went through in Buffalo, he had 36 goals in 68 games before the 2019-20 season was shut down — about a 43-goal pace. 

Now healthy and with all of his swagger back as a Stanley Cup champion, don't be surprised if Eichel explodes offensively with Vegas this season.