Photo credit: Chris Gordon

A 24-year-old Mike Knuble, then a promising forward prospect, played nine games for the Detroit Red Wings during the 1996-97 season.

Players who were still playing during Knuble’s first season in the NHL include Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Patrick Roy, Dominik Hasek, Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull, Mark Messier, Dino Ciccarelli, Brian Leetch, Grant Fuhr, and Ron Hextall.

Just days after Knuble’s first game, Phil Collins announced that he was leaving Genesis to focus on his solo career, M.C. Hammer wasn’t yet bankrupt, and it would be months before The Daily Show debuts on Comedy Central.

I guess what I am trying to say is Knuble is old getting up there in years, but don’t tell him that.

“I’m out there playing for another deal,” he said. “I’m not riding off into the sunset. I want to make that point clear to everybody. This is no farewell song.”

I agree with him, but it is one of the last tracks on a darn good Greatest Hits album.

Players like Knuble who are productive over the age of 35 tend to keep their production rates in the league relatively stable as they age. Knuble was also a late bloomer: He had averaged eight goals per season his first three years and has almost tripled that production in his last three.

Using wingers who played at 39 years old post-lockout, we can make an educated guess on Knuble’s production for 2011-12. I will caution you that the entire player pool from which to draw from is limited, containing only Bill Guerin, Brendan Shanahan, Mark Recchi, and Teemu Selanne.

Using these players as a guide, we can speculate that Knuble will play 75 games, score 34 points (21 G and 13A) while taking 188 shots on goal.

Here are some probabilities for goals and point scored:

“It’s going to be a challenging year, definitely, with more competition,” cautioned Knuble. “Nothing is guaranteed.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Could Ovi join Maurice Richard as one of five players to score 50 in 50?

Alex Ovechkin kept his pace for an 82-goal season intact against the Islanders which got me thinking: is 50 in 50 even close to a reality?

50 goals in the first 50 games is a rare feat indeed. It has only been done by five players: Maurice Richard in 1945. Mike Bossy in 1982. Lemieux in 1989. Brett Hull did it twice, and in back-to-back seasons no less (1990-1 and 1991-2). The Great One accomplished the feat three times: 1982, 1984 and again in 1985. So why not Ovechkin?

To estimate his chances I will use something called a Monte Carlo simulation. It starts with me using the shots on goal and shooting percentage for Ovechkin since he made his debut in the league 5 years ago to the last game of the regular season in 2009-10. Only regular season games were counted. For instance, he has only been held to zero shots on goal 3 out of 396 games, or .76% of the time. He has shot 20% in 32 of his regular season games, or 8.08% of the time.

Using this data, and Excel’s random number generator, I simulated goal-scoring totals for 50 games. Then, I ran this 50-game season 10,000 times and calculated the results.

Before I reveal the chances, take a guess at what you think they are. I’ll wait….

Ok, now that you have your guess, let’s look at the numbers.

Based on 10,000 50-game seasons in my cold, heartless math universe, Ovechkin will average 26 plus or minus 6 goals. He only hit the magical 50+ mark two times out of 10,000 – once with 58 goals and another with 53. He just missed the mark once with 49 goals in 50 games and 48 goals 4 other times.

For kicks I also ran this for an 82-game season when I saw NHL Hot Stove predicted Ovechkin would only score 37 goals. For an 82-game season, I have Ovechkin scoring on average 42 goals, plus or minus 8.

So ~68% of the time he should be between 34 and 50 goals. A 37-goal season looks light. I would take the over.

It’s no secret that Mike Knuble is a fan favorite not only among Capital fans, but around the NHL in general. He’s a hard-working winger who lurks in front of the net, regularly crashes the crease and & capitalizes on rebounds in front of the net. This garbageman-mentality helped him score goals at a higher rate in 2009-10 (.42 per game) than in any other season in his career. And he did it all at the ripe age of 37.

But we here at RMNB are worried. Should Mike Knuble’s age cause us to temper our expectations in 2010-11?

The boxcar stats on Knuble were impressive last season: 69 games played,  29G/24A/53Pts +23. Other wingers who played 40 games or more while producing at least .5 Points Per Game after age 38, which is where we should expect Knuble to be if he continues playing on the Caps’ top line with Ovechkin and Backstrom, include:

1. Brendan Shanahan
2. Brett Hull
3. Dean Prentice
4. Gordie Howe
5. John Bucyk
6. Mark Messier
7. Mark Recchi

We can see on the chart this group’s production holds relatively stable through ages 39-40 before the sample size becomes increasingly small.

Games Played and Points Per Game Ages 37-43

This allows us to project Knuble’s production to fall somewhere between 43 – 48 points this year. Not terrible for an old man, but is it enough to sustain him on the top line with Alexander Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom?