Recently, several national polls by Pew and Gallop, have noted that up to half of Americans see themselves as politically independent. This is part of an ongoing trend of voters self-identifying as Independent over recent years. Half of potential voters is a substantial number that outstrips those that self-identify as either conservative or liberal, and furthermore, although potential voter is different than registered affiliation, it is also greater than registered voters for either Republicans and Democrats. This, of course, has all the headlines predicting the rise of Third Party alternatives, like No Labels, the demise of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and any other doomsaying in American politics.
However, it’s also misleading in multiple ways.
First off, self-identifying as “Independent” on a national research poll is much different than registering one’s self as Independent in their local jurisdiction, where “unaffiliated” registered voters actually work out to about 28% of the total for the states that report such data. Registered independents have hovered around 30% of the available voter registrations analyzed since around the turn of the millennium (and close to a quarter of available voter registrations dating back to the late 1970s), so despite this trend in self-identification for pollsters, when it’s time to register, the majority of Independents still toe a party line.
This is likely, because second, being “Independent” is an ambiguous term devoid of a consistent meaning in how it is applied by-and-to voters. To some, being Independent is a way distance themselves from the perceived attributions of political spectrum labels, meaning they may hold conservative or liberal values but don’t want to be associated to the perception of conservative or liberal labels in society. To others, being Independent is a way to voice discontent with the formal political parties, but despite this discontent with the party affiliated with conservative or liberal values, they themselves are still conservative or liberal. And, to a few, being Independent is actually believing themselves to be both middle of the political spectrum and therefore also party agnostic.
This tracks with research from Gallop, Pew, American National Election Studies, and other polling groups as well as through investigative journalism by the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Generally, all these studies have pointed out that less than 10% of voters are truly Independents, where their values and beliefs lack a political skew and hold a clearly agnostic self-attested voting record. It’s suggested more than half of self-identified Independents consistently register to vote with a political party, despite the option to do otherwise, and over 75% of self-identified Independents responses on beliefs and values consistently skew to either conservative or liberal, while up to 90% of self-identified Independents self-attested voting record demonstrates a consistent skew to this on the American political spectrum.
Third, self-identified Independents, according to some research, both register to vote, and participate in voting at a much lower rate than self-identified affiliated voters. However, this trend is most pronounced among the self-identified Independents where their values and beliefs lack a political skew, but is least likely to exist among those whos values and beliefs tend to track with being either conservative or liberal in some way. Meaning, true independents are not only politically agnostic, but seem to be politically unmotivated, where as Independents that chose to self-identify as Independent but have a clear belief or self-attested voting record that skews either conservative or liberal are still motivated to vote and their votes predictably fall within the existing conservative and liberal political divides.
Likely, this may be because true Independents, those without a determinable skew, don’t find enough overlap between their values and beliefs with that of the American political landscape to be motivated enough to participate in registering and voting, whereas among the majority of self-identified Independents that have a conservative or liberal skew, there’s just enough overlap in their values and beliefs and that of the existing American political landscape to participate, with a clear skew, despite their self-perceived independence.
Interestingly, and finally, the research more than suggests changes in the size of the self-identified Independent population isn’t driven by a lack of either conservative or liberal values and beliefs, but rather by discontent with the representation of those values or beliefs within the media and political parties. Meaning the number of agnostic Independents hasn’t changed all that much, but the number of self-identified but skewing to either conservative or liberal values has driven these increases in the self-identified Independent population, and the distribution of that self-identified but skewing population changes by how the national party is performing and the media coverage of values and issues within being either conservative leaning or liberal leaning. Therefore, self-identified Independents are generally driven not a desire to divorce one’s self from being either conservative or liberal, but rather might be seeking an alternative representation of what it means to be either conservative or liberal socially or politically.
All of the data seems to say, true independents, those whose values and beliefs are not aligned to the traditions of conservatives or liberals, make up a very small part of the American political experience. So, what we are looking based on this data probably isn’t the creation of a Third Party that’s a universal alternative to both conservative and liberal ideologies, probably because there’s not a large enough population of them with similar enough values and beliefs to truly build a party around.
So, if it isn’t about creating a true Third Party alternative to both Conservative and Liberal values, than it’s probably a reckoning around the way the two existing parties function as big tents of right or left leaning ideologies. Independents of this stripe don’t necessarily want an independent party, they want a party that better matches their existing conservative or liberal ideology in a way that the existing party does not for whatever reason.
And, this tracks with most multi-party political systems in that there are usually multiple right leaning conservative parties, and left leaning liberal parties in which to initially align one’s self with, and not necessarily a single conservative party, a single liberal party, and a single “other” party. Each of the right leaning political parties tend to emphasize different aspects of conservative ideology and right wing values, while each of the left leaning political parties would tend to emphasize their own interpretations of liberal ideology and left wing preferences.
Inevitably, however, most of these multi-party political systems no single party is dominant enough to manage the government on its own. The conservative leaning voters are distributed among multiple right wing parties that support different interpretations of conservative ideas and values, and likewise the liberal leaning voters are distributed among multiple left wing parties that support different interpretations of liberal ideas and values, and on occasions there may rise a party that doesn’t fit the traditional conservative or liberal ideology and attract the voters than don’t skew toward the usual representing parties. The so-called winning party of any given election usually lacks a true majority in which to govern with. This creates a need for power sharing governance, usually by forming coalitions with within similar value and belief systems, meaning if the highest vote getting party leans to the conservative right than they will usually form a governing coalition to create a conservative skewed majority in which to govern with. However, not every power sharing scenario will result a unity government, as coalitions routinely fall apart due to ideological differences, and out-of-power minorities still wield some power within coalition rule.
While voters in multiparty systems may feel they are being given a broad range of social, fiscal and governance from which to chose from, the reality is the parties generally only fall within either conservative or liberal ideologies and there’s a lot of compromise that has to occur for their party to influence governance overall, which may result in actual rule that’s substantially different from that which they initially voted for.
The process of having to form coalition governments that are heavily influenced by political compromise isn’t that much different from the current big tent American parties intra party struggles themselves prior to taking power..
The primary difference is that in the American system the typical conservative coalition and the typical liberal coalitions are supposed to pre-exist in the national party, where Republicans represent a pre-determined conservative coalition, and Democrats represent a pre-determined liberal coalition. Having a pre-designated big tent to hold all of the conservative ideas, or all of the liberal ideas, can allow for easier transitions in governance because the compromises necessary in the coalition process would supposedly have happened pre-election, and insinuating that conservatives, or liberals, are all already in lockstep.
However, as we’ve seen in the recent past, the Republican big tent combines a lot of single-issue voters, and diverse conservative ideas into one amalgamation. Generally, we might think of the Republican Party as blocks of representatives or voters who have common priorities, such as the social conservatives, who might be sub-categorized by those who are ethnically or culturally conservative and those who are influenced by conservative religious beliefs, then there’s the conservative small government champions that fall into sub categories like anti-taxation, anti-regulation, and a group that more broadly wants to reduce the physical size of government sprawl (fewer people IN government), dovetailing off that there’s a neoliberal or American branded “pro-business” wing that’s as much anti-labor as it is anti-regulation and anti-taxation believing that unbridled business freedom both drives the economy and trickles down to the masses, then here are the conservative hawks, be they pro-Pentagon on the military-industrial complex side or pro-LEO on the law-and-order prison-industrial complex, they believe in projecting strength and might, then there are the American Librarians who’s version of governance is there is none and everyone magically leaves everyone else alone, and now we feature the facist-inspired MAGA wing of self-proclaimed victims who’s xenophobic rage is only matched by it’s devout hatred of anything even remotely perceived as liberal. Sometimes there’s overlap in expectations across these groups, but many times there is not, which creates in-fighting among the different groups as to what conservative policies are the best. Further to that, there’s a myriad of single-issue voters who’s primary expectation is to protect their single-issue, such as anti-abortion/pro-forced birth, or pro-unbridled second amendment, or extreme anti-taxation, anti-LGBTQ equality, anti-Feds/State’s rights/pro-10th, etc. drive their reason to support a particular party solely to accomplish that value or goal, however, the party may not necessarily reflect the broader spectrum of their beliefs which sets up potential divisions on issues that are conflicting.
Similarly, there are en blanc voting blocks within the Democratic Party’s big tent as well, which causes a diverse amalgamation of beliefs and ideas from which the party must draw inspiration from. Generally, we might think of the Democratic Party in groupings of common themes, such as ethnically or culturally liberal who are influenced by the experiences of marginalized people and the desire to have equitable social outcomes, then there’s a group that is pro-labor, and another that is pro-consumer, both of which are looking for protections for groups that are traditional targets of oppression by neoliberal, pro-business systems, there’s a reformist wing that identify systemic sources of oppression, corruption, and abuse of power (be them abolitionists back in the day, or police reformists now, as two quick examples), there’s a pro-environmental wing of the party, and a socialism inspired wing that looks to leverage government to provide foundational support to the people (think social security, unemployment insurance, public education, housing access issues, universal healthcare, etc). Further to that, there are also a myriad of single issue voters, such as pro-choice specifically around women’s healthcare, focus on specific marginalized groups (Queers, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics, etc), focus on specific reforms or select green initiatives, etc. that often raise internal conflicts when the intersectional needs don’t actual align clearly with one another.
This process of pre-existing coalitions represented by two monolithic parties would seem to eliminate some of the perceived voter choice from election since what voters value as key attributes around specific social, fiscal or governance ideas might not be surfaced by the big tent party in the same way that voters might voice them by distributing their votes among different interpretations of either conservative or liberal ideologies if there were multiple parties of each to chose from.
However, one of the primary reasons that this big tent approach to pre-existing coalitions happens is almost by design with the way the check and balances of the US system of government function. The powers of the executive branch are offset by the powers of the legislative, and vice versa, as well as the powers of the States being balanced by the Feds and vice versa. This power structure balancing isn’t trivial, either. It ensures that there be widespread agreement across all the governmental stakeholders in order to enact large scale, national policy. It requires that any political party have some level of control of multiple aspects of government in order to truly govern within their ideology at scale.
Therefore, it takes more than winning the Presidency for a political party to be successful, despite the focus on it by voters, the media, and even some of the national parties vying for political power.
It takes more than winning a simple majority of the seats in either of the Federal Legislative Houses. It takes more than winning a simple majority of the state Governorships, or winning the majority of the State Legislative Houses, or even winning the Mayoral positions and the local legislative houses. It takes more than gaining administrative positions, and judicial positions, and any other elected positions throughout government.
It takes winning the right combination of all of those, and more, to truly impact governance because of all the checks and balances built into the US Governmental system of representation.
This is why the focus on so-called Independent voters need for third party representation for the Presidential Election seems like an ill-fated endeavor.
Presidents representing either of the two major political parties are routinely hamstrung in being able to enact broad policy change by the checks and balances inherent to the system, by either of the houses of the Federal Legislature or by coalitions of the individual states and their executive and/or legislative branches or the effects of the Judicial branch at any level. This is by design in how it’s built into the constitutional framework for governance both by how the different parts of representative government are structured and in how their duties and responsibilities compliment and counteract one another. It forces compromise even within the party itself in order to effectively govern from the President down to the lowest elected local officials, AND from the lowest elected local officials back on up to the President.
Thus, even if a third party candidate could find enough Electoral College votes to capture the Presidency, the checks and balances inherent in the system would inevitably limit the third party candidates ability to affect policy broadly without having adequate representation across all supporting levels of government.
It would take an absolute machine of a political third party, roughly equivalent to the size and scope of the current Conservative Right Republican or Liberal Left Democratic to effectively govern nationally and there in lies the problem. Such a machine doesn’t exist, and probably won’t unless it comes from the divestiture of one of the existing political parties.
This has happened before in US Politics. The most prominent example occurred in during the mid-1800s. It is important when reviewing this to recall that the naming conventions that refer to Republicans and Democrats are NOT synonymous with the current incarnations of parties taking on those names. The modern Republican Party is a conservative, right leaning party, while the modern Democratic Party is a liberal, left leaning party on the US political spectrum, although it can be argued that the Democratic Party’s interpretation of liberal ideas is typically center-right on the international political spectrum and the Republican Party would fall to the far-right, much further to the right internationally than they are self-perceived domestically.
In the 1830s the Whigs, founded on traditional conservatism, gained national prominence forming out of what was the National Republican Party’s classical conservative roots, along with picking up membership from the conservative Anti-Masonic national party, as well as prominent regional conservative parties, like L&O party. Meanwhile, the the Democratic Party came into power as the successors of Jeffersonian democracy from ideological split within the Democratic-Republican Party.
By the early 1840s, those two parties were joined by The Liberty Party as a political outgrowth of the growing anti-slavery movement. The Free Soil Party was born from the Liberty Party and factions of the remaining moderate Whigs as well as unrepresented Democratic Party members, both of who aligned with abolitionism.
To counter this trend, The “Know-Nothings” movement and the “Order of the Star Spangled Banner” rose to prominence in the 1850s and politicized themselves in 1856 as the highly nativist, extremely conservative American Party. By the end of that decade, the remaining divisions within the Whigs, Liberty Party, and the moderate leaning Democratic Party abolitionists helped form the foundations to the new, moderate-left leaning Republican Party to counteract the Know Nothing American Party. Further, the Unionist Party, which became the National Union Party later in the decade, sought to counter the idea of secession with finding a compromise to the divergent ideas of the other national parties.
By 1960 the Democratic Party split along ideological lines at the Democratic National Convention. A portion of the conservative Democrats, mostly of the Southern Opposition Party, along with the remaining conservative Whigs formed the Constitutional Union Party in direct opposition to the perceived “radical” ideas of the 1860 Republican platform. By mid-decade, the Democrats were split along ideological lines, this time “war” and “peace” factions, while the Unionist Party included variations of Unconditional Union Party, the Constitutional Union Party, and other tangential unionism ideologies.
During the 1870s over interpretations of what the post-war nation should look like greatly influenced the political landscape. However, unlike the perceived political chaos that rose from the pre-war power struggles, Reconstruction both helped create increased political schisms, such as the Democratic Party splitting as much along geographical lines as much as ideological ones, and the creation of secondary parties dedicated to specific ideologies like classical liberalism inspired Liberal Republican Party, the progressive Anti-Monopoly party, the Greenback party, and others, as well as simultaneously helping to consolidate political power under the conservative leaning Democratic Party and liberal leaning Republican Parties, effectively pushing the nation toward the two-party framework we are more familiar with today.
Through the end of the 1800s and into the early 1900s, a number of secondary parties gained short lived national attention, but the prominent parties of the time remained the conservative leaning Democratic Party, which absorbed populist People’s Party and conservative Silver Party, and liberal leaning Republican Party, which absorbed the progressive Bull Moose Party and some iterations of the Labor Parties of the time.
A combination of the effects of recovering from both the Great Depression and the Second World War led to internal struggles within both the Republican and Democratic Parties, where the parties began an ideological shift in that post-war Republicans began leaning more moderate-right through the leadership of war hero Ike and industrialist Rockefeller, pushing out the remaining of the progressives in the party, while Democrats once again split along geographical lines as much as ideological ones, creating moderate-left Northern Democratic politicians that generally supported social reform and the conservative Southern Democratic politicians that supported Jim Crow traditions. Unlike in the past, these internal divisions didn’t create “new” parties, per se. Instead, the existing power structures simply flipped the political affiliations of the party, where conservative Southern Democrats joined the Republican party pushing it further right on the political spectrum, and the remaining progressive Republicans joined the Northern Democrats to help establish the Democratic Party as moderate-liberals.
Two important things helped drive the establishment of the modern two party system beyond the social issues that the initial party flip-flop was heavy influenced by. First, the geographic size and increased diversity of the population (in terms of ethnicity and religion, as well as economically with the rise of the middle class) and, second, the rise of the United States influence on the international stage both changed how parties interacted with voters, messaged themselves around ideologies and policies, and were generally able to function. So, while third party candidates still existed at all levels of government throughout this time, the two national parties dominated the conversation because it became increasingly difficult to spin up party machinery across the country to broadly compete because the two prominent parties were set up to theoretically represent a wide range of domestic and international, social and economic, interests on opposing sides of the political spectrum.
As mentioned before, the two parties are thus an amalgamation of either right-leaning, conservative ideologies (the current Republican Party), or left-leaning, liberal ideologies (the current Democratic Party), thus eliminating the perceived “need” for parties that showcased only specific conservative, or liberal, interests, and creating big tents that make it easy for voters to sort themselves in a very simple, binary way. This contributes, in part, to why it makes it difficult for third parties to message themselves to voters, especially when those third party platforms are not unique enough to draw attention away from the existing big tent messages of the dominant parties. Even for the few times when third party’s platforms have veered far enough away from the big tent concepts to distinguish themselves from the binary sorting of being broadly conservatives, or broadly liberal, its ended up not being mass appeal enough to peel off enough voters from either party to establish itself.
While third parties have had varying success at uplifting local candidates for local offices, and occasionally having a local office candidate gain some level of national prominence, their influence has mostly been limited to that success. Not because there’s a problem with the candidates themselves, or the local platforms they run on, but because the third parties lack the machinery to scale their operations beyond the local level effectively.
The limitations of that success however, hasn’t stopped the belief among the politically disillusioned to believe somehow a third party candidate could win the Presidency. And, the belief that winning the Presidency would have a trickle down effect in politics. And, that the perceived importance of the Presidency would inspire voters to support other candidates down ticket in order to cascade the party’s impact on the Federal Legislature and further to the State, and then local level elected representatives.
Thus, third parties, like the seemingly ill-fated No Labels party keep popping up in runs for national office, specifically the Presidency. Their leadership appears to simultaneously overestimate the size of independent voters that their platform actually speaks to and the ability to leverage that to win the Presidency in order to establish the party nationally.
What’s more likely to happen on, as has been shown in recent third party runs for national office, is that the party’s platform will not appeal to agnostic independent voters in a meaningful way, and will not unite protest votes of both parties equally. Rather, it’ll siphon votes off of one of the parties, weakening them in that particular election cycle, potentially causing that party to lose the targeted office, but not resulting in a strong enough showing for the third party to win that office.
The lack of broad(er) appeal, and inability to sustain momentum from election to election, isn’t just limited to the third party’s platform itself. It’s heavily impacted by the lack of down-ticket representation that would help justify the third party’s appeal, and influence, across the expanse of government. Voters are going to be more reluctant to split the ticket if the third party’s only impact is going to be a long-shot Presidential bid while they’re still stuck with a binary choice for all the other offices. And, this is especially pronounced among the ideologically leaning self-identified independent voters who say they are not Democratic or Republican but still inherently vote along the party line anyhow.
And that’s the catch 22. Local third parties haven’t figured out how to scale at the national level, and national third parties haven’t figured out a scalable way of generating widespread down ticket success, meaning there’s no effective or efficient way for third parties to compete in a meaningfully broad way.
All of this isn’t to say that third parties don’t have a place in modern politics. They do. They provide a potential reason for the national parties to have to change the parameters of their big tents.
That’s also not to say that a third party cannot rise to prominence the way many had 100 years ago. They might, especially if they are born from a massive shift in how one of the national parties functions, such as the ongoing power struggle between MAGA and establishment GOP that splinters the two factions into competing parties, one of populist right wing extremism and another of more moderate traditional conservatism.
Ultimately though, the fairy tale utopia most modern, upstart, third party representatives and disillusioned voters is doomed to fail because the Constitutional Republic in its current form isn’t designed to support third parties in the same way that other democracies operating in Parliamentary systems appear to support them.
doormouse's declarations & personal musings 
Ovi Watch: 30×18
The Capitals Captain, Alexander Ovechkin, scored his 30th goal of the 23-24 season as the game winner against the Detroit Red Wings. It was his 21st goal in the last 31 games, which works out to a remarkable .677 pace for the back-half of the season.
The Capitals posted a video by former Capitals sniper Mike Gartner congratulating Ovechkin on breaking the tie for the record: “I just wanted to congratulate you on 18 30-plus goal seasons,” Gartner said. “I know we shared the record for a very brief time, and I’m pretty appreciative of that, but now you have it all by yourself. There are many records that you have in the National Hockey League and there’s one big one that you’re still going to get. Good luck. All the best.”
I grew up rooting for Gartner, and his incarnation of the Caps, so to witness Ovi breaking another of Gartner’s records was pretty exciting, especially when it seemed that the task might be out of reach not that long ago.
Gartner accomplished his 17 30-goal seasons over a 19-season career spanning 1432 games. The first missed 30-goal season of his career didn’t occur until his 16th season, aged 35, coinciding with the lockout-shortened fiasco of a 1994-95 where he managed 12 in 38 for a .316 pace which would have worked out to (just) shy of a 30 goal season under a normal 82 games. Gartner’s second came to close out his career with 60 games in Phoenix at age 38. In the end, Gartner tallied 708 goals making him one of only five players at the time to eclipse the 700 goal plateau.
Ovi’s only miss, so far, came, like Gartner’s, in a shortened season where his 24 in 45 during the pandemic shortened 20-21 season worked out to a .533 pace which would be 43.7 on an 82 goal season and not far off his career pace at that point.
Similar to Ovi’s recent 20×19 milestone, 30×18 feat is something to step back and appreciate the true grandeur of, not only because it breaks the tie with Gartner for sole possession of the most NHL regular seasons scoring 30 or more goals, but because of how rare multiple 30 goal seasons really are.
While 30-goal scoring would seem like a given for what goal scoring players might be expected to score in any given season, consider the following:
3 Players have 15 or more 30 goal seasons all time: Ovechkin, Gartner and Jagr. Of those 3 players, only Ovi reached double digits for 40 goal seasons as well.
30 x 15 would be a 450 goal career, only 67 players have reached 450 career goals
28 players all time have 10 or more 30 goal NHL regular seasons.
Of those 28 players:
8 played for 20 or more seasons
20 played for 18 or more seasons
27 played for 15 or more seasons, with only Bossy having played fewer than 15 to reach 30 x 10
26 have 50% of their career as 30 goal seasons
19 have 60% of their career as 30 goal seasons
8 have 70% of their career as 30 goal seasons including Gretzky, Sundin, Espi and Dionne
4 have 80% of their career as 30 goal seasons and those players are:
Bobby Hull 13 of 16 for 81.25% of seasons were 30 goals or more
Gartner 17 of 19 for 89.47%
Ovi 18 of 19 for 94.73%
Bossy 10 of 10 for 100%
2 Current Players have reached this milestone, with Crosby’s 12 being the only other to join Ovi with at least 10
30 x 10 would be a 300 goal career, only 226 players have reached 300 career goals
159 players have 5 or more 30 goal NHL regular seasons
24 are currently considered active, so 75.5% of the population’s feats are static
12 of the 24 current players have already played 15 or more seasons
4 of those 12 players with15 or more seasons have done it at least 50% of the time, so far: Ovechkin, Crosby, Stamkos, and Pacoriety
14 of the 24 current players have done so for at least 50% of their career so far
9 of those 15 players with at least 50% of their careers are 30 goal seasons have played for at least 10 seasons: Oveckin, Pastrnak, Kutcherov, Crosby, Aho, Draisaitl, Stamkos, Rantanem, McKinnon, Pacoriety and Tarasenko
4 of the 24 players have reached the 75% mark: Kyle Conner, McDavid, Ovechkin and Matthews.
So far, only Matthews 8 of 8 is 100%, while only Ovechkin has maintained that level for greater than a decade
30 x 5 would be 150 career goals, 816 players so far have reached 150 career goals of the close to 1,500 to have broken triple digits.
411 Players all time have at least 2 seasons of 30 goal NHL regular seasons
161 Players all time have a .365 or greater average for their careers (so far for the close to 50 players who are considered active) when considering .36585 goals per game average over an 82 game regular season is a 30 goal season
There are only 6 players in history who have achieved at least 18 seasons of at least 20 goals, Howe, Francisis, Shanahan, Andreychuk, Jagr and Ovi, but only Ovi also has at least 18 seasons of 30 goals as well.
In any given season since the 2005 lockout / Ovi’s rookie year only about 30 players per season scored at least 30 goals, although that has risen since the pandemic to eclipse 50:
2023-24, so far, 39 Players have reached 30 goals this season (43 have 29, 48 have 28 putting them on the cusp to reach the plateau)
2022-23 54 players reached 30 goals of the XXX that reached at least 10 goals
2021-22 51 players reached 30 of 312 that reached at least 10
2020-21 pandemic shortened 5 players reached 30 of the 193 that reached at least 10
2019-20 pandemic shortened 17 players reached 30 of the 247 that reached at least 10
2018-19 45 with 30 of the 293 with at least 10
2017-18 32 with 30 of the 301 with at least 10
2016-17 26 with 30 of the 275 with at least 10
2015-16 28 with 30 of the 258 with at least 10
2014-15 15 with 30 of the 267 with at least 10
2013-14 21 with 30 of the 258 with at least 10
2012-13 lockout shortened 1 player (Ovi) reached 30 of the 138 that reached at least 10
2011-12 30 with 30 of the 246 with at least 10
2010-11 29 with 30 of the 273 with at least 10
2009-10 24 with 30 of the 278 with at least 10
2008-09 39 with 30 of the 271 with at least 10
2007-08 28 with 30 of the 264 with at least 10
2006-07 42 with 30 of the 288 with at least 10
2005-06 47 with 30 of the 292 with at least 10
Alternatively, if we are only considering the first 30 goals for Ovi’s 18 30 goal seasons he would have 540 goals on his career, which would place 35 all time displacing Keith Tkachuk and right behind Stan Mitka and Richard Rocket
If we are only considering the goals in excess of 30 for Ovi’s 18 30 goal seasons that’s works out to 288 goals so far, which would result in a tie for 244th all time with Pat Mahovlich and Larry Murphy, and just shy of the current career output of Tarasenko, Zibanejad, Eberle and others.
The 30th goal on the season helped Ovi to continue to close in on some additional milestones, including:
129 Game Winning Goals, 2nd behind Jagr with 135. 5th on the season, tied for 42nd this year.
535 Even Strength Goals, 4th behind Jagr with 538. 17th on the season, tied for 81st on the season
1548 Points, 13th behind Borque with 1579. 63rd on the season, tied 66th for the season
961 Even Strength Points, T14 with Sakic and behind Trottier with 963.
Ultimately, one doesn’t achieve these kind of stats without a combination of elite talent combined career longevity which is a unique combination in a sport known for its intense physicality. Becoming the first player to reach the 900 goal milestone is now 48 goals away, so let’s be sure to continue to savor each and every one of them.