For ice hockey players in the National Hockey League (NHL), scoring 500 regular season goals is considered a highly significant achievement.
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As of the completion of the 2015–16 NHL season — the 98th regular season of play of the National Hockey League — a total of 43 players have scored at least 500 regular season goals in their NHL career.
A 500-goal career was first achieved in 1957–58, the 41st season of the NHL, when Maurice Richard scored his 500th goal in his 863rd game played. The most recent player to score 500 goals is Patrick Marleau who achieved it on February 2, 2017.
Season achievements
The 2006–07 NHL season saw the largest number of players (five) achieve their 500th goal. A total of four players scored their 500th goal in the 1995–96 season.
Starting with Maurice Richard's achievement in the 1957–58 NHL season, the greatest stretch between 500 goal scorers was the eight seasons between Gordie Howe in the 1961–62 season and Bobby Hull in the 1969–70 season.
Player achievements
The 45 players to score 500 goals consist of 33 Canadians, five Americans (Brett Hull, Joe Mullen, Mike Modano, Jeremy Roenick, and Keith Tkachuk), two Finns (Jari Kurri and Teemu Selanne), two Slovaks (Peter Bondra and Marian Hossa), one Czech (Jaromir Jagr), one Swede (Mats Sundin), and one Russian (Alexander Ovechkin). Jari Kurri has the honour of being the first non-Canadian to score 500 goals. Of note, Stan Mikita was born in Sokolče, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), and was the first not born in Canada; however he immigrated when he was young and represented Canada internationally.
The fewest number of NHL games required to reach the mark was 575, set by Wayne Gretzky. Second quickest was Mario Lemieux, achieving the mark in his 605th game.
Of the 45 players to score at least 500 goals in their career, 18 reached the mark in fewer than 1000 career games played.
Of those on the list, Lanny McDonald came closest to 'not' achieving 500 goals—reaching the mark with only four games remaining in his final NHL season. Similarly, Joe Mullen scored his 500th goal with only ten games remaining in his final season.
Four players have scored their 500th goal on an empty net: Wayne Gretzky, Mike Bossy, Jari Kurri and Keith Tkachuk.
Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy is the only net minder to concede more than one opponent's 500th career goal: Steve Yzerman in 1996, Joe Mullen in 1997 and Brendan Shanahan in 2002. A contributing factor for this statistical coincidence is Roy's record for the second-most games played by a goaltender, at 1,029.
In 2006, on Hockey Night in Canada, Mats Sundin scored his 500th goal short handed, in overtime, to finish off a hat trick and to win the game for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Team achievements
A total of 20 different franchises have had a player score their 500th goal while playing for the franchise. The Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks have both had five different players score their 500th goal while playing for the team.
To date, no team has had the coincidence of multiple players reaching 500 goals on the same team in the same season. The 2001–02 Detroit Red Wings were the first team to have three 500+ goal scorers on the roster (Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille), and would finish the season with four players in the exclusive club after Brendan Shanahan joined them at the 500-goal plateau. Yzerman, Hull, Robitaille and Shanahan are four of only thirteen players with 650 or more goals in NHL history.
500-goal scorers
Updated through the end of games played on March 12, 2017