from Neil Greenberg of The Washington Post,

Alex Ovechkin is at it again. He scored his 52nd and 53rd goal of the season Thursday night, passing Peter Bondra to become the franchise’s all-time leader with 474 goals. He joins the Sharks’ Patrick Marleau and the Devils’ Patrik Elias as the only active career goal-scoring leaders for their current team.

It has been a record-setting season for the Russian superstar. Ovechkin became the sixth player in NHL history to reach the 50-goal plateau six times or more, joining Wayne Gretzky, Mike Bossy, Mario Lemieux, Guy Lafleur and Marcel Dionne. He is the fifth player to score at least 30 goals in each of his first 10 seasons. The others: Gretzky, Bossy, Mike Gartner and Jari Kurri. However, his goal-scoring peers played in a time when goal scoring was plentiful.

Teams are scoring 2.74 goals per game this season. When Gretzky scored 87 goals during the 1983-84 campaign, teams averaged 3.94 goals per game.

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