Marian Hossa is, at long last, a member of one of the more prestigious clubs in the NHL: the 500 goal club.
With his tally in the Blackhawks’ 7-4 win, he became the 44th player in NHL history to ever score 500 goals, tying with Lanny McDonald.
It’s been quite the wait for Hossa, who was scoring goals just here and there as the 2015-16 season drew to a close. His 499th goal came on March 29, and he missed most of the rest of the regular season.
That meant an entire summer of waiting to score goal #500 – which, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, is a first.
Hossa is the first player in NHL history whose first goal of a season was the 500th goal of his NHL career (or the 600th, 700th or 800th goal).
Six hundred might be too tall an order for the now-37-year-old Hossa, but only 19 players have ever reached that mark. What he’s done through his career is clearly still incredible.
In fact, only three other active players have scored as much as Hossa has: Jaromir Jagr, Jarome Iginla, and Alex Ovechkin. Ovechkin is the oddity in this group, because he’s so much younger than the other three – he’s just an insane goalscorer.
It takes a long time to get to 500 goals. Hossa’s one of the very few to finally make it.