Tuesday's Top Ten: Best Goal Scorers in the NHL

Nothing gets a sports fan more excited than a highlight reel goal. Well, maybe a game breaking touchdown does, or a monster home run, or maybe a posterizing dunk, or... The point is, fans love goals. The NHL changed the rules so we'd see more of them. What makes a goal so exciting is that it can unexpectedly happen in a split second, or we can see it develop and already know the result before the puck hits the net. Let's see who makes my list of the top ten goal scorers in the NHL.

10. Jaromir Jagr: His production may be a little off this season due to nagging injuries, but he's unstoppable at 100%. This is Jagr's 17th season in the NHL. In all of those season except his rookie year he has scored 30 or more goals. That's incredible, and the definition of consistent.

9. Martin St. Louis: The 5'9'' winger seems to always be in the right place at the right time. He has 30 or more goals the past four seasons, and he appears to be well on track again this year with 12.

8. Marian Hossa: He seems to go largely unnoticed due to playing with flashier players with big personalities, but make no mistake about it, he's one of the best in the league. He scored 45 goals last season as well as 45 in the 2002-2003 season. He's probably the best player in the league at scoring goals off of face-offs.

7. Sidney Crosby: Uneducated hockey fans would expect Sid the Kid to be higher on this list, but he's actually more of a play maker than a sniper. He's still great at putting the puck in the back of the net though. Watch his highlights and you'll see he can score anyway or anyhow. From his knees, on his back, batting pucks out of the air. He'd be higher on this list if he was more selfish.

6. Jarome Iginla: A real force on the ice, and very hard to stop. Iginla is a true power forward that has scored 35 goals or more five seasons in a row. Imagine how much better he'd be if he had some actual offensive talent around him.

5. Henrik Zetterberg: So far this season he's the NHL's most improved player. No one scores prettier breakaway goals. He has so many tricks up his sleeve, and routinely embarrasses goalies. He has 24 goals in 33 games this season, which is phenomenal by today's standards.

4. Vincent Lecavalier: This guy can score from anywhere on the ice. He has pin point accuracy when he's in close, or he can rip one from the blue line. He led the league with 52 goals last season, and is only showing signs of getting better with 22 so far this season.

3. Alexander Ovechkin: Possibly the league's most exciting player, playing on one of the lousiest teams, Ovechkin is a one man gang on the ice. No player in the league does so much by himself. In his first two seasons he's scored an impressive 98 goals. He's so good at creating scoring opportunities for himself and will only get better.

2. Dany Heatley: The Senator's sharp shooter has scored 50 goals two seasons in a row. He's an incredible finisher, with close to a 20% shooting percentage this season. He makes things look remarkably easy. A goalie will know what he's gonna do, he'll do it anyways, and score.

1. Ilya Kovalchuk: This man can do it all. He has the accuracy of Heatley and the moves of Zetterberg. When he's breaking down the wing, it's practically a given that he's gonna snap the puck top shelf and score, and goalies have no answer for him. He leads the league with 26 goals so far this season, and has scored 202 in five full seasons. It's rare that a player who gets between 70 to 100 points a season to have more goals than assists. Kovalchuk always finishes the season with more goals. He's a pure goal scorer, and he's better than anyone else in the league at doing it.

Close but no cigar: Joe Sakic, Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk, Rick Nash, Daniel Alfredson.
-Joe Osborne