Ten seasons of power-play goals: what a career list hides
The power-play leaderboard that travels is a career total, and a career total is a sum over seasons played. Hold every skater to the same ten seasons — 2016-17 through 2025-26, the deepest window the league's committed reports cover here — and the order is not the same one.
Over these ten seasons Leon Draisaitl scored 172 power-play goals and Alex Ovechkin scored 136, a gap of 36. He needed 256 fewer shots on goal to do it — 720 against 976, or 23.9% against 13.9%. Neither figure is a career total and this page prints none: the history here is ten seasons deep, so ten seasons is what it measures.
The ten-season leaderboard
Regular season, power-play goals, 2016-17 through 2025-26. A career list answers who has scored the most power-play goals in total, which is a question about how long somebody played as much as how well; this one answers who scored the most inside a fixed decade, and the two questions have different answers.
| # | player | PP G | shots | sh% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leon Draisaitl | 172 | 720 | 23.9% |
| 2 | Alex Ovechkin | 136 | 976 | 13.9% |
| 3 | Steven Stamkos | 134 | 733 | 18.3% |
| 4 | David Pastrnak | 130 | 794 | 16.4% |
| 5 | Mika Zibanejad | 124 | 661 | 18.8% |
| 6 | Sam Reinhart | 121 | 485 | 24.9% |
| 7 | Brayden Point | 111 | 469 | 23.7% |
| 8 | Auston Matthews | 109 | 595 | 18.3% |
| 9 | Mikko Rantanen | 109 | 566 | 19.3% |
| 10 | Chris Kreider | 106 | 470 | 22.6% |
| 11 | John Tavares | 103 | 659 | 15.6% |
| 12 | Alex DeBrincat | 102 | 492 | 20.7% |
| 13 | Connor McDavid | 97 | 621 | 15.6% |
| 14 | Nathan MacKinnon | 95 | 817 | 11.6% |
| 15 | Sidney Crosby | 93 | 517 | 18.0% |
The same decade, at different prices
Goals and shots are both in the league's record, so the cost of each goal is available without any modelling. Sorting the same fifteen skaters by it separates the volume shooters from the finishers — a distinction the goal column alone hides:
| player | sh% | per goal |
|---|---|---|
| Sam Reinhart | 24.9% | 4.0 |
| Leon Draisaitl | 23.9% | 4.2 |
| Brayden Point | 23.7% | 4.2 |
| Chris Kreider | 22.6% | 4.4 |
| Alex DeBrincat | 20.7% | 4.8 |
| Mikko Rantanen | 19.3% | 5.2 |
| Mika Zibanejad | 18.8% | 5.3 |
| Auston Matthews | 18.3% | 5.5 |
| Steven Stamkos | 18.3% | 5.5 |
| Sidney Crosby | 18.0% | 5.6 |
| David Pastrnak | 16.4% | 6.1 |
| John Tavares | 15.6% | 6.4 |
| Connor McDavid | 15.6% | 6.4 |
| Alex Ovechkin | 13.9% | 7.2 |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 11.6% | 8.6 |
Two halves of one window
A ten-season total can be front-loaded or back-loaded, and splitting the window says which. Leon Draisaitl scored 63 power-play goals in the first five seasons and 109 in the second; Alex Ovechkin went 74 and then 62. The career list cannot show this, because it has already added the two halves together.
| player | first 5 | second 5 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leon Draisaitl | 63 | 109 | +46 up |
| Alex Ovechkin | 74 | 62 | −12 down |
| Steven Stamkos | 57 | 77 | +20 up |
| David Pastrnak | 66 | 64 | −2 down |
| Mika Zibanejad | 54 | 70 | +16 up |
| Sam Reinhart | 38 | 83 | +45 up |
| Brayden Point | 44 | 67 | +23 up |
| Auston Matthews | 47 | 62 | +15 up |
Window: the ten seasons 2016-17 through 2025-26, regular season, from the league's own published power-play totals committed to this site's history. Two limits, stated rather than left to inference. No career totals appear on this page — the files here are ten seasons deep, and a number that mixes measured seasons with remembered ones is not a measurement. No scoring-by-age curve appears either: grouping this window's goals by age produces a line that climbs into a player's late thirties, which is survivorship — only the players who are still good are still playing — so the page compares each skater with himself instead. Player names are carried by five of the ten committed seasons, so a skater who retired before 2021-22 cannot be named here; the largest power-play total among the unnamed is 26, against 93 in the last published row, and the build fails rather than printing a table that gap could reach into. See how this site measures.
All research · This season’s power-play leaders · The anatomy of a riser
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