ELMONT, N.Y. — The floor was wet.
Beyond that, inside the visitors’ locker room at UBS Arena, there weren’t many obvious signs of what took place Sunday, what Alex Ovechkin accomplished. It felt crowded, sure, and there were a few more former All-Stars milling around than you’d typically see after a game in early April. Still, a person dropped in the middle of the scene would’ve noticed hockey players speaking into microphones and not much else.
Tom Wilson was one of those players. And the Washington Capitals winger, standing in a puddle of sweat and Stella Artois, had to clear his throat to maintain his composure.
“It’s just an honor to be living through this,” he said.
Wilson was speaking about the exploits of Ovechkin, whose two-decade chase of the NHL career record for goals had come to an end 2 hours and 21 minutes earlier. He scored No. 895 as he’d scored so many before: on a remarkable, bull-whip shot through an impossibly small window with his team on the power play.
“This is the true greatness of Alex Ovechkin,” Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. “I saw, there was nothing. I couldn’t even see (Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin), let alone netting.
“It’s the ultimate goal-scorer’s goal for the greatest of all time.”
Wayne Gretzky’s mark, initially set 31 years ago — then expanded to 894 — fell slowly, thanks to Ovechkin’s 14 40-goal seasons and uncommon durability, then quickly. Ovechkin scored six goals in his last five games, putting to rest the possibility that the chase would continue into October and imbuing the end of the road with a degree of surreality.
If you think that sounds like too big a word, consider this: the hockey world watched Sunday’s historic moment go from possibility to probability to virtual certainty over a span of a few weeks. Ovechkin is a 39-year-old man who broke his leg on Nov. 18. At that moment, he was 27 goals away from the record. This should not have happened — not in April, at least. And yet, here we are, with five games to spare.
“Yeah,” Carbery said, “you can’t rationalize that part of it.”
“We all knew it was 42 (at the start of the season),” center Dylan Strome said. “We all knew the number. And to break a leg and come back and do what he did, (I’m) speechless.”
Ovechkin said it himself. He was still reeling after tying Gretzky, which happened about 40 hours earlier with a two-goal game against the Chicago Blackhawks. Late in the third period, he came within inches, a few separate times, of scoring No. 895 in front of a home crowd. The fact that he fell temporarily short didn’t matter — Capital One Arena was a circus before, during and after. As it should’ve been. Two sleeps later, it was time to run it all back.
“(Friday) was such a great night, but this is something crazy,” Ovechkin said. “I’m probably gonna need a couple more days or maybe a couple weeks to realize what does it mean to be No. 1.”
Wilson played his part, firing a cross-ice pass to set up Ovechkin. On Friday, Wilson was on the bench and had to decide whether he wanted to jump off for the celebration. This time, the decision was made for him.
“When I was skating to the net and the puck went in the net, the next 15 seconds,” Wilson said, “I truly just kind of blacked out.”
Wilson, and presumably the rest of the Capitals, snapped out of it in time by the time Ovechkin’s post-goal belly slide was complete. He almost made it to center ice, but not quite. “Ice was bad today,” he said, “so I fell.”
The bench emptied. Strome said he felt like he needed to pinch himself. Carbery, who’s spent two years integrating Ovechkin’s chase with his team’s overall ambitions, ran the gamut of emotions from the bench.
“You’re caught off guard a little bit,” Carbery said, “and then it’s just pure ‘hug as many staff members as you can as quickly as you can.’”
Carbery had more time than he thought. The stoppage lasted about 25 minutes. That was all part of the NHL’s plan. Gretzky and his wife, Janet, came out to congratulate Ovechkin, his wife, Nastya, and their sons, as Gordie Howe and his wife did for them in 1994. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, as usual, basked in the boos. A league-produced montage of congratulations from sports and entertainment legends — led by Michael Jordan, Simone Biles, Derek Jeter, Michael Phelps, Danny DeVito and the guy from Train — played on the arena’s video board.
After another 27:26 minutes of hockey, the celebration moved to the Caps’ locker room. Gretzky, for the second game in a row, joined in. Ovechkin, for the second game in a row, was on the receiving end of a beer shower. Wilson, for the second game in a row, was in the middle of it all.
“You know, 10-year-old me or 10-year-old any of us, to be in a room with Wayne and Ovi during this moment is so special,” Wilson said. “He’s taken us on an amazing journey and it’ll be the honor of my career to play with him, learn so much from him, win with him, watch him score this goal. There’s really no words to describe it.”
Could’ve fooled us.
(Photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
