Alex Ovechkin is better than the Buffalo Sabres

The Washington Capitals face the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night, which means hockey fans will be treated to one of the season’s greatest scoring races:

Alex Ovechkin vs. the Sabres power play.

As of Monday, Ovechkin has a league-leading 21 power-play goals. The Buffalo Sabres – as a team – have 20 on the year.

As ridiculous as this sounds, the Capitals star has come close to doing this before on a season-long basis. Last season, Ovechkin (24) nearly outscored the Florida Panthers (27) on the power play. In the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, Ovechkin scored 16 power-play goals, while the Boston Bruins had 18.

We decided to look at the rest of the tale of the tape between Ovechkin and the Sabres, and found that the Capitals star has a resounding advantage in puck possession and is outpacing the Sabres in some other metrics.

We included goals per game for context. And has Mike Harrington points out, Ovechkin is within a reasonable distance of outscoring all the Sabres combined:

We can, however, report that the Sabres have a signficant advantage over Ovechkin in one important category this season: Lottery odds.