Next, Wayne Gretzky.
Alex Ovechkin on Friday overtook Gordie Howe to take second place on the NHL’s career goalscorers list. With 802 goals, he is now second only to the Great.
Ovechkin moved up to second place after scoring two goals in the Washington Capitals’ 4-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets.
Ovechkin, a 37-year-old left winger, is a longtime with the Capitals, who picked him with the first overall pick in 2004. “If you go first, you are the best,” he said at that time. “I always wanted to be the best. Yes, I can play in the NHL, I can score goals.”
That turned out to be an understatement. While there are high hopes for Ovechkin, “scoring as many NHL goals as Gordie Howe and possibly as many as Wayne Gretzky” is not one of the attractions.
In 18 seasons, Ovechkin won three Hart Trophies, awarded to the league’s most valuable player, and in the 2017-18 season he lifted the Capitals’ only Stanley Cup. He played for Russia at three Winter Olympics, but never won a medal.
And throughout it all, he has scored a lot of goals. He has led the league nine times, most recently in the 2019-20 season, a season shortened due to the coronavirus pandemic, when he drew with David Pastrnak of the Boston Bruins with 48 goals at the age of 34.
He left the current generation of players a long time ago. Next on the positive scoring list is the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosbywho began his career with Ovechkin (Crosby was the No. 1 pick in the 2005 draft, but the NHL’s cancellation the previous season delayed Ovechkin’s start).
Crosby, a 35-year-old centre-back, played more than Ovechkin, having 536 goals.
Ovechkin is in the company of immortals. Gretzky finished with 894 NHL goals, and Ovechkin now looks down the list of scorers greats such as Jaromir Jagr (766), Brett Hull (741), Marcel Dionne (731) and Phil Esposito (717).
And Howe, the man Ovechkin had just met near the top, scored 801 goals in a monstrously long career of 1,767 NHL games – with Detroit and Hartford – more than 400 goals more than Ovechkin. And he added 174 points over six seasons in the World Hockey Association.
A year ago, Ovechkin’s capture of Gretzky seemed good bet but not sure one. After all, age will likely slow Ovechkin’s scoring rate and his aging body injuries could keep him out.
But he looked forever young last season and a half. In both the previous season and the current campaign, he is average just over 0.6 goals a game, right at his career average. He played 77 of the Capitals’ 82 regular games last season and hasn’t missed a single one so far this season even as the Capitals (19-13-4) struggled.
Amazingly, Ovechkin is averaging more than 20 minutes per game, ranking among the top 20 strikers in the league. Only one person – Mats Zuccarello of Minnesota Wild – is over 30 years old.
Let’s say Ovechkin is close to maintaining a 0.6 ratio this season and is unaffected: He could score another 30 goals. If he slips down to, say, 0.5 next season, that’s still another 40 goals. He will then be about 20 years younger than Gretzky and ready to break records in the 2024-25 season.
Earlier this season, Gretzky admitted that it was a matter of when, not whether Ovechkin would surpass his record. Given that in 2021, Ovechkin signed a 5-year contract worth $47.5 million that will get him through 2025-26, you’ll have to agree.
Don’t cry for Gretzky. His record of 1,963 assists is more than 700-plus second-place (Ron Francis, now Seattle general manager) and over 1,000 ahead of Crosby, who has 916 assists. Ovechkin, whose main talent is scoring, has 649 assists and has a number of active players ahead of him.
With the latest major milestone, however, Ovechkin continues his way to the top of the hockey pantheon, and it doesn’t look like he has any intention of stopping anytime soon.
