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Alex Ovechkin scored his 892nd career regular-season goal last night in the Washington Capitals’ 5-1 loss at Carolina. That puts him just three away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL record, which No. 99 has held for 31 years.
Washington has just seven games left on its schedule, but Ovechkin seems very determined to not wait until next season to grab the record. Last night’s goal, on (what else?) a one-timer from the left circle during a Caps powerplay, was his sixth in his last nine games, and he’s now scored in three straight.
With 39 goals on the season, the 39-year-old Russian is tied for third on the NHL leaderboard despite missing nearly six weeks with a broken leg. Based on his scoring pace for both this season and his entire career, Ovechkin is now projected to surpass Gretzky on April 13 at home against Columbus, with two games to spare.
It’s even quite possible that he’ll own the record before the week is out. On Friday night, Washington hosts lowly Chicago, which has surrendered more goals this season than every team except San Jose. On Sunday afternoon, the Caps visit the New York Islanders, who are fading from playoff contention and mediocre in terms of goal prevention.
Plus, Ovechkin might be extra-motivated to get the record over these next two contests. That’s because he’s now played 1,485 games — two fewer than Gretzky’s career total.
WATCH | Ovechkin inches closer to record, scores 892nd goal:
Ovechkin scores his 892nd career goal, now only 3 goals shy of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s NHL record
To duck in under the Great One, Ovechkin needs to score his 33rd career hat trick on Friday, which would move him into a tie with Brett Hull for the fourth-most ever. But he’d still trail Gretzky (50), Mario Lemieux (40) and Mike Bossy (39) by a wide margin.
That’s a fun fact. And, as the so-called “Gr8 Chase” nears its conclusion, I thought it might be fun to compile a few more Ovechkin (or at least Ovechkin-adjacent) tidbits that you may or may not know. So here goes:
* Ovechkin, who’s in his 20th season, is one goal shy of extending his record for career 40-goal campaigns to 14. Gretzky previously held the record with 12.
* Ovechkin also has the most 30-goal seasons (19) and shares the record for 50-goal seasons (9) with Gretzky and Mike Bossy. But he lags well behind their shared record of five 60-goal seasons with just one of his own. Toronto’s Auston Matthews, who’s 12 years younger than Ovechkin, has already hit 60 goals twice, while Ovechkin’s career high of 65 goals (in his third year in the league) ranks just 25th all time.
* Remember when Gretzky (supposedly) said “You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take?” Apocryphal or not, Ovechkin seems to have taken that quote to heart: he’s by far the career leader in shots on goal with 6,844. That’s an average of 4.6 per game and it puts him a whopping 635 (and counting) ahead of anybody else since the NHL began recording shots in 1959.
* Bet you can’t guess who’s No. 2 in career shots. It’s defenceman Ray Bourque, who still holds the single-game record. He fired 19 (!) of the Bruins’ 73 (!) pucks on Quebec Nordiques goalie Ron Tugnutt on March 21, 1991 at the old Boston Garden, but scored on just one of them in a 3-3 tie (remember ties?). Ovechkin’s career high for shots in a game is 15, which he’s done twice.
* I know we all thought Gretzky’s goals record would never be broken. But I think we can still say (for real this time!) that Gretzky’s points record will never be broken. While no other player in history has reached 2,000 points, the Great One racked up an absurd 2,857 in his 1,487 games. That’s almost two per game and works out to an average of about 158 points per season under the current 82-game schedule. The last player to record that many points in a season? Mario Lemieux — 29 years ago.
* I’m certainly not the first person to recite this fact, but if you took away every single one of Gretzky’s 894 goals, he’d still be the all-time points leader with his 1,963 assists alone.
* Back to Ovechkin: thanks to those lethal off-wing one-timers of his, he’s easily the all-time leader with 323 power-play goals — 49 ahead of crease merchant Dave Andreychuk. Interestingly, Gretzky ranks just 18th with 204 power-play goals, giving weight to the argument that he was the more impactful scorer.
* Ovechkin is also the career leader in empty-net goals with 65 — nine more than the second-place Gretzky, whose record he broke just over a year ago. Empty-netters have been on the rise since coaches started listening to the analytics guys’ advice to pull their goalies earlier when trailing late in games.
* Gretzky did a ton of scoring early in his career, notching at least 51 goals in each of his first eight seasons and averaging a ridiculous 81 goals in years three through six, including his record 92 in 1981-82. He later evolved into more of a playmaker and, aging like a normal human, averaged a modest 20 goals over his final four seasons — including just nine in his farewell 1998-99 with the Rangers, when he turned 38. Ovechkin, though, just keeps on scoring: over the last four years (since his age-36 season), he’s averaging better than 40 goals.
* Defying the classic aging curve and avoiding injuries has been the key to Ovechkin’s success. While he’s surely benefited from modern weight training, nutrition and the fact that he plays in an era where guys don’t smoke cigarettes during intermissions or chug beers after every game (though, yes, Ovie has been known to enjoy a brewski or two), his ability to stay healthy is almost supernatural. Over his first 19 seasons, Ovechkin missed just 35 games because of injury — and he wasn’t exactly shy about throwing his weight around.
For more on Ovechkin’s incredible longevity and his quest to become the greatest scorer of all time, I’ll once again recommend this excellent piece by Chris Jones for CBC Sports.
