Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals celebrates after scoring against the Philadelphia Flyers on April 16, 2024, in Philadelphia. He’s now in his 20th season in the NHL.
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WASHINGTON — Step into Washington’s Capital One Arena, and the number 895 pervades every curve of the concourse — there’s even a stack of exactly that many pucks, topped by a goal horn waiting for a certain historic moment to blare.
It’s the magic number in hockey this spring: the number of career goals it will take for Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin to break one of the most significant records in National Hockey League history.
When the sport’s all-time great, Wayne Gretzky, retired in 1999, he left the NHL having scored 894 goals in his regular-season career, 93 more than any player before him. To many, Gretzky’s record seemed like it might never be broken.
Wayne Gretzky waves to the crowd at New York City’s Madison Square Garden after his last game in the National Hockey League, against the Pittsburgh Penguins on April 18, 1999.
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Ovechkin, with 888, is on the brink. He only needs six more goals to tie Gretzky’s record — and seven to set a mark of his own. The chase has come to loom large over every Capitals game, broadcast and hockey front page.
“He amazes me night in, night out. I mean, he truly is the best,” Capitals goalie Charlie Lindgren said after a February game in which Ovechkin scored three goals, the cheers of the delighted Washington crowd growing more deafening with each score.
Even Ovechkin’s teammates were starstruck that night — and every night, as the record draws nearer. “You can’t deny how special this is,” Lindgren said. “I’m trying to soak it in every single chance I can.”
“Russian machine never breaks”
The career goals record, along with the career points record (in hockey, a statistic that counts both goals and assists), are the two most significant records in the sport, according to hockey historian Andrew Podnieks.
“As the game progresses, and [with] the quality and the skill and the coaching and the styles of play, fewer and fewer records — those big records — are going to be broken,” he said. “Those are the kinds of records, when Ovechkin retires, that will stand the test of time.”
From the start of his career, Ovechkin has always been a threat to score. But scoring capability alone is not enough to claim a record like this. It’s the combination of skill and Ovechkin’s remarkable longevity that has made claiming the record possible.
Early in his NHL career, Ovechkin took a hard shot to his foot and had to be helped off the ice. The next day, he had completely recovered. When a surprised reporter inquired, Ovechkin famously replied, “Russian machine never breaks.”
At 39, Ovechkin might not blaze across the ice like he used to, but he’s already scored 35 goals this season and is tied for fourth-most league-wide — even though a broken fibula sidelined him for more than a month.
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Patrick Smith/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
That durability has never been more salient. In his 20th season in the league, Ovechkin has already scored 35 goals — tied for fourth-most league-wide. Nevermind that he was sidelined for more than a month after a leg-on-leg hit in a November game left him with a broken fibula.
“Scoring goals is a difficult task, and if you look at everybody’s career arc, goal scoring goes down as you get older. It’s a fact of life,” Podnieks said.
The years are visible on Ovechkin, who at 39 moves slower on the ice these days. His unruly brown hair has turned grey, and he has lost a tooth and a half. He moves more slowly than he once did, drifting down the ice when the younger Ovechkin more often barreled toward the goal.
Yet he has scored more goals this year than the season when he was 25. Had he not broken his leg, he might have scored 50 this year.
“That’s just mind-boggling,” Podnieks said.
“Ovi’s office”
Ovechkin’s consistency as a scorer is due in part to his trademark move — a one-timer slapshot from the left side of the ice. That shot is especially deadly during the power play, when his Capitals are up a man while an opposing player sits in the penalty box.
His preference for that particular spot on the ice — around the left face-off circle, stick raised, ready to slap the puck into the net — was evident early in his career. Before long, commentators and fans were calling it his “office.”
Ovechkin skates against the Montreal Canadiens in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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“That is not a play that ages you easily,” Podnieks said. “You can stand there when you’re 50 years old, and if someone puts the puck on your stick and you’ve got a great shot like he’s got, it’s going to go in the net.”
Even when opponents know it’s coming, they struggle to stop it, said Capitals forward Anthony Beauvillier, who played against Washington for years before being traded to the Capitals this spring.
“It’s so hard to score goals in this league the way he’s been doing it over and over and over again, with guys knowing exactly where he’s going to stand in the power play, and still being able to get it off and score a goal from there,” Beauvillier said.
Ovechkin’s career has seen the NHL reach new heights after its low point
Ovechkin is no stranger to pressure, or to the spotlight of an entire league. He entered the NHL at its lowest point: the lockout of 2004–’05, when union negotiations between the team owners and players grew so acrimonious that an entire season of hockey was wiped away.
It remains the only time in major North American professional sports that a labor dispute erased a whole season. At the time, there was serious anxiety about whether attendance and viewership could recover.
Ovechkin went No. 1 in the 2004 draft, signing with the Washington Capitals. He didn’t begin his NHL career until 2005, because a labor dispute wiped out the 2004-’05 season.
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Hopes rested on the shoulders of two young phenoms who entered the league the year the lockout ended: Sidney Crosby, the divine 18-year-old Canadian drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins, and of course, Ovechkin, the bruising 20-year-old from Moscow.
It was billed as a rivalry for the ages, and TV broadcasts played it up, hoping to lure back hockey fans and spark the league back to life.
Two other players so young might have wilted under the pressure. But not Crosby and Ovechkin, said the historian Podnieks. “They welcomed the attention, and they thrived on the attention, and they thrived on the rivalry,” he said. “These two young … players really did take the league and drive the energy and the enthusiasm after the lockout.”
A dozen games to go
The Washington Capitals took their first Stanley Cup on June 7, 2018, knocking out the Golden Knights in Game 5 in Las Vegas. Ovechkin, the team captain, later won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the playoffs.
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John Locher/AP
Twenty years later, Ovechkin has performed beyond any Washington fan’s loftiest dreams. He helped reverse the fortunes of a long-suffering franchise and brought the team its first Stanley Cup, in 2018.
Now, skating into the twilight of his career, his current contract is set to expire after the end of next season. It could be his last. Barring injury or unexpected early retirement, he is essentially certain to claim the goals record for himself, whether it comes this spring or next fall.
The Capitals have 12 games left to play this regular season. The NHL plans to start bringing Gretzky and Commissioner Gary Bettman to every Capitals game, to have them both on hand for the historic moment when it comes.
Ovechkin says he won’t feel any disappointment if the chase stretches into the fall. “It’s life. You can’t change it, so it is what it is,” he told reporters at practice last week.
His teammates say they will enjoy this ride while it lasts.
“I’ve never seen a guy so hungry. Some guys score and they go, ‘OK, I had a good night.’ He comes back to the bench, and he’s asking if he can go out again right away,” said forward Tom Wilson. “It’s been an amazing journey watching him do what he can do.”
The Caps have a dozen games left this regular season. The NHL plans to start bringing Wayne Gretzky to all the games so that he’ll be there for the inevitable moment when Ovechkin breaks his career goals record.
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Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
