Five goals in a single knockout match is the kind of haul that turns a great performance into pure myth, a level of domination almost never seen at elite level. This was the night defenses stopped looking like a puzzle for him and more like a training exercise.

Fifty goals in a single campaign is the kind of video-game number most forwards never touch once in their careers. Hitting that benchmark again shows his “off” seasons still matched the lifetime peak of almost everyone else.

A quarter of a thousand career goals before many forwards ever reach 100 underlined a scoring pace that was warping expectations of what a modern attacker could do. The leap from 200 to 250 came so fast it felt like the numbers on his tally were skipping steps.