NHLNHLOvechkin scored his 895th career goal on Sunday, beating Wayne Gretzky’s mark and putting him atop the NHL’s record books. It’s taken a long, winding journey to get here—one full of whimsy, drama, and above all: goals.
Getty Images/Ringer illustration
By Katie BakerApril 7, 3:51 pm UTC • 11 min
During a strange season of life for Alexander Ovechkin, the kind where time suddenly announces itself with a tap on the shoulder, the Washington Capitals captain talked to reporters about advice he’d received from old heads Sergei Fedorov and Viktor Kozlov. “You’re not young anymore,” Ovechkin said, and by “you” he meant himself. “You are going to feel all your old bruises. You need to get more sleep, go to bed early.” He sounded wistful and determined as he admitted: “You start to realize you can’t do those things you could do.” The year was 2014. A few months earlier, old man Ovechkin had turned … 29.
More than a decade later, halfway through a road game against the Islanders on Sunday afternoon, the disconnect between Ovechkin’s age and his actions played out in reverse. The silver-haired Caps elder, now 39, looked much more like a child on a Slip ’N Slide as he coasted belly first across the rink in sublime celebration, bruises be damned. It turns out that sometimes you can do those things you could do, and Ovechkin had just proved it by scoring the 895th goal of his career—a searing wrister that officially made no. 8 the no. 1 NHL goal scorer of all time. It was a moment that was more than 20 years in the making, and it happened in the blink of an eye.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was on hand to honor the Great Eight in a mid-game ceremony. The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, whose previous record of 894 goals had long been considered untouchable, was there, too. Ovechkin’s mother, Tatyana, a two-time Olympic hoops gold medalist for the Soviet team, beamed more brightly than I think I’ve ever seen and embraced Ovechkin’s wife, Anastasia. Ovechkin’s young children looked appropriately proud and bewildered by the occasion. The jumbotron broadcast a star-studded video of folks like Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps congratulating one of their fellow greats.
“What a day, huh?” Ovechkin deadpanned when it was all said and done.
And while it’s not over yet, what a ride, too. Since his NHL debut in 2005, Ovechkin has led the league in goal scoring nine times. He endured seven different Game 7 playoff losses before finally hoisting a Stanley Cup in 2018, with a primal and unforgettable roar of relief. He outlasted scores of teammates, a whole handful of coaches, the pressures of high potential, and the seeds of doubt. From the start, Ovechkin was never just the face of a franchise—he was also considered the future of the league. On Sunday afternoon, he cemented his place in history—and it was about time.
Twenty-two years ago, when Ovechkin was slim and pimpled and 17 years old, he performed so nicely at the under-20 World Junior Championship tournament that even Canadians were moved to invoke the name of their top hockey god. “Some have noted that the last 17-year-old who had a similar impact on the tournament was Wayne Gretzky,” wrote one journalist about Ovechkin, who led all scorers in the tournament and helped Russia win gold. Ovechkin shrugged this comparison off. “I don’t know about being as good a player as they are saying,” the teen said through a translator. “I’m another player on the team.”
Not everyone agreed with that humble self-assessment. A few months later, at the NHL draft, the Florida Panthers tried warping the very fabric of time and space in a twisted, transcendent case that they should be able to select the draft-ineligible Ovechkin (Ovi had been born two days after the 2003 draft class birthday cutoff). The Panthers argued that if you accounted for the four times Ovechkin had lived through a leap year and, I dunno, carried the one, the young man was actually of age! This was a preposterous gambit, but you know what? It was definitely worth the try.
Ovi would eventually become a player for the ages elsewhere. He was drafted first overall in 2004 by the bottom-of-the-barrel Washington Capitals on the eve of a season-long NHL lockout. After spending that lost year playing in Russia, Ovechkin returned to the U.S. to finally make his long-awaited NHL debut in 2005. And boy, did he ever.
In his very first shift for the Capitals, Ovechkin laid out an opponent with a body check that straight up broke a partition holding up the plexiglass boards. He also finished the game with two goals. “I was flying over there,” he later remembered. “I was young. I was crazy. When you have that strength in your body, I think you have to use it. Have to send a message.” He finished sixth in MVP voting that season and was named rookie of the year.
A year later, early in Ovi’s sophomore season, he had a similar performance against the Avalanche, shattering the glass with a hit and also scoring a goal. The next day, when reporters asked him about a puck he’d taken to the foot near the end of that game, he responded with a line that would follow him forever: “I’m OK,” he said. “Russian machine never breaks.”
This would wind up being an absurdly prescient thing to say. Ovechkin has indeed remained in near-constant working order for more than two decades, shaking off rust and cranking out gems, still operating like a champ despite the odd mechanical issue (he missed 16 games this season with a fractured left fibula like it was no big deal) and a few metaphysical challenges, too. “Has the NHL figured out Alex Ovechkin?” was representative discourse during one prolonged dip in his production in late 2011. It was the kind of inquiry that could have death-rattled a lesser machine, but Ovechkin just kept right on humming. It’s been 13 and a half years and 577 goals since the question was asked—which means that it has definitely been answered.
For the past few days, weeks, and even years, Gretzky has gamely given interviews about how records are made to be broken, right? But for a long time, it didn’t seem like anyone would catch his totals, which were set in a much higher-scoring era and required not only prolific scoring, but also consistent prolific scoring over many, many, many years. “This will take a lot of health, a lot of hockey love, and a lot of luck,” wrote John Buccigross about Ovechkin’s chances in 2010. Not only did Ovechkin manage to hit on all three, but he also scored enough to overcome multiple seasons that were canceled or shortened because of lockouts and COVID-19.
To look back on Ovechkin’s career is indeed to Remember Some Goals. Like the time he juggled the puck past Carey Price. Or the time he made a move that could be described only as “dangle-icious.” Or the countless times he set up shop by the left faceoff dot and let ’er rip. But no retrospective would be complete if it didn’t also include a journey through the many vital moments of whimsy, drama, and chaos that have also helped make up Ovechkin’s career.
This is a guy whose version of there’s no I in TEAM was to say, in 2012: “Sometimes you just have to put ‘I’ in your butt, and, you know, play for everybody.” This is a man who scored an overtime winner in 2018 and then explained: “Everybody kind of miss wives. So, go home and enjoy.” Want to immerse yourself head to toe in a bygone era? Check out this 2013 tweet where Ovechkin wrote: “Great to meet @McIlroyRory !! We both gr8 at carry tennis bags ))).”
A young Ovechkin used to pretend to warm his hands on the flames of his hot stick, and he was right to do so. An older, wiser Ovechkin got shirtless at his wedding, another good choice. In 2010, a GQ writer delved into the very meaning of the name Ovechkin—and emerged with the amusingly incongruous conclusion that it meant, of all things, “little lamb.”
Make no mistake: There have been some real lows over the years. Lip-readers sussing out the phrase “fat fuck,” the majority of 2014, that time Ovechkin refused to let go of the puck and that other time he refused to skate, his ongoing support of Vladimir Putin, and so on. But there have been better memories, too. Namely, the 2018 Cup run, which featured (a) Ovechkin splashing around in a D.C.-area decorative fountain and also (b) The Ringer publishing the phrase “bear-hugged (and sometimes kinda more like bear-humped).” Or the time a few years before that when newly hired Capitals coach Barry Trotz met with Ovechkin and gave him a pep talk that was straight out of that old Apple “here’s to the crazy ones” campaign.
“I told Alex he’s a little bit of a ‘wild child,’ and he didn’t know what that meant,” Trotz told USA Today at the time. “I told him some of the greatest, most iconic people in the world have been sort of wild childs, didn’t fit in the box, didn’t always conform to society. And so I said, ‘Do you know who Bob Dylan is?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’” (Trotz also name-checked Muhammad Ali.)
“He’s had all three acts,” Capitals owner Ted Leonsis told NHL.com about Ovechkin after Washington won the Cup in 2018. “The first act is this young kid comes out of nowhere and has this great success. Then, there’s a second act where there’s a fall. People love to write about the fall. Then, the third act is this great comeback, and we love a comeback.”
Leonsis, who bought the Capitals in 1999, never wavered in his faith in the Great Eight. He pushed the front office to draft Ovechkin in 2004 (another top option that year was fellow Russian Evgeni Malkin). More recently, in 2023, he made good on a promise to Ovechkin not to call for a rebuild just yet—even though the Capitals had failed to get past the first round of the playoffs ever since they won the Cup. One fun thing about the Gr8 Chase is that it’s been happening in the midst of an actually consequential season for the Capitals, who currently have the second-best record in the entire NHL.
Leonsis is one of several people whose legacies will always be totally, inextricably intertwined with Ovechkin’s. Nicklas Backstrom is another. For the entirety of his 17-year career in Washington, the reserved Backstrom was a perfect complement to the raving Ovi. No one played more regular-season games with Ovechkin—upward of 1,000. No one contributed to more of Ovi’s goals: Backstrom recorded 279 assists to Ovechkin. If Ovechkin sometimes resembled a slab of steak on skates, Backstrom was always the thoughtful spread of fruits and vegetables: the perfect second banana, the coolest cucumber. Backstrom was in the building when Ovechkin got goals 893 and 894 on Friday night, and again on Sunday to see no. 895. “As soon as I saw Nicky, I just wanted to cry,” Ovechkin said afterward. “He was such a big part of my success, and we’ve grown up together.”
And then there’s Sidney Crosby. Not since Bird vs. Magic was a personal rivalry between two players a bigger lifeline for a league than Sid the Kid vs. Ovi. Crosby was drafted a year after Ovechkin, but because of the lockout, they made their NHL debuts on the same night. And everyone’s been comparing them, and relying on them as stewards of the game, ever since.
They traded hat tricks in the 2009 playoffs. They headlined the first season of an HBO hockey docuseries in 2010. They each have their name on the Stanley Cup—Crosby three times, Ovi once. They’ve both played for a single franchise their whole careers. During the 2023 All-Star weekend skills competition, they nodded to all this shared history by teaming up, with the help of Ovechkin’s son Sergei—a joining of forces that enabled me to better understand why people so enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Fittingly, even Ovechkin’s recent scoring accomplishment has its own Crosby counterpart. Last month, the Penguins captain averaged more than a point per game for a 20th season—breaking one of Gretzky’s other records. “We always talk about our game, the players who were in it, from Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux, [Mark] Messier, on and on,” Gretzky said last Friday. “And we wonder, ‘OK, what’s going to happen when those guys retire?’ And along came Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin.”
Throughout his career, Ovechkin has played his best hockey in the manner of a bull in a china shop, living up to everyone’s expectations by smashing the old heirlooms, denting the good silver, and galloping on without another thought. So it made sense that the last few days of his record hunt felt both improbable and inevitable. On Friday night, playing at home in Washington in front of family and friends, Ovechkin scored twice—the second goal tying Gretzky’s record. Later, he’d say that Gretzky had texted him before the game to encourage him to score three and get it over with already. But late in the game, Ovechkin passed up an opportunity to try to complete the hat trick—and set a new record—on an empty net. The scenario just didn’t feel right.
Many aspects of the Gr8 Chase gave me the chills, though not always for the same reasons. When Ovechkin located the Great One in the crowd and bowed to him after the record-tying goal, things got a little dusty. When Gretzky waxed nostalgic about his idol and predecessor Gordie Howe, I felt a surge of love for the most beautiful game on ice. On the flip side, I probably could have done without the jump scare of seeing FBI director Kash Patel sitting next to Gretzky in the suite seats, a repeated reminder of some of the more unpleasant political alliances inside the hockey world.
Luckily, Friday night’s game in D.C. had an appealing Capitals reunion to distract me. A group of Ovechkin’s retired teammates—including Backstrom, Braden Holtby, and TJ Oshie—were there cheering on the big lug, many of them bringing their families. As he gathered some of them together for a group photo after the game, Ovechkin practically glowed. (Merry was the little lamb!) The scene was a reminder not only of the Washington Capitals’ camaraderie, but also of Ovechkin’s wild longevity. Once upon a time, he’d been the cocky young kid in that mirrored visor. These days, he’s a certified legend, his greatness reflected by the look in everyone else’s eyes.
On Sunday, on the road, Ovechkin found the spot that always feels like home, positioning himself near the left faceoff dot on a power play midway through the game. People refer to this portion of the ice as Ovechkin’s “office,” but that’s never felt quite right to me. Ovechkin doesn’t need an office—he needs a rec room. All NHL players work hard, but what has always distinguished Ovechkin is that the dude comes out to play.
A pass from Tom Wilson found Ovechkin in his rec room, and the winger didn’t waste a second. He snapped the puck toward the net with the collective power of all the 894 goals and 20 seasons that came before. And the rest is history—at least until the next great teenager comes along to begin rewriting it all, the way someone always seems to do.
Katie Baker is a senior features writer at The Ringer who has reported live from NFL training camps, a federal fraud trial, and Mike Francesa’s basement. Her children remain unimpressed.
