Alexander Ovechkin has overtaken Wayne Gretzky as the best goal-scorer in the history of the NHL today. By scoring his 895th career goal today against the New York Islanders, Ovechkin now stands all alone in the record books.
The superstar Left Winger, with his historic slap shot power and accuracy, has scored 40+ goals in 14 of his 20 seasons in the NHL. He scored 50+ goals in 8 of those seasons and reached as high as 65 goals back in 2007 as a 22 year old.
He only has one season with under 30 goals in his entire career and it came in a covid-shortened 56 game season where he played in only 45 of them. He still managed to score 24 goals, which was enough to lead the Capitals. Only 5 players scored more than 30 goals in this shortened season.
These stats are simply mind-blowing. The consistency of goal-scoring for over 20 years is a nod to his durability, competitiveness, and the sheer talent he possesses while shooting a puck. He obviously is nowhere near Gretzky in assist and overall point totals, and no one ever will be, but he absolutely accomplished something that no one thought would ever be done tonight.
Only 8 players have ever scored more than 700 goals while only 3 of them (Gretzky, Ovechkin, and Gordie Howe) eclipsed 800. Ovechkin is now in shouting distance of 900 and I do not think we will see this beat for quite some time. The only players who can realistically touch this at this rate are Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but they are more in line with Gretzky in that they get way more assists than Ovechkin.
Alex Ovechkin is #11 all time on the point scoring list and he trails Gretzky by more than 1200 points, illustrating how untouchable the former Oiler is in every other category. Only two players in the history of the NHL have scored 1900+ points. Jaromir Jagr sits at #2 on the all-time leaderboards with 1,921 points. Even he has over 900 less points than Gretzky.
“The Great One” stands all alone at 2,857 points and I do not think that anyone will come anywhere near this number. His fellow Oilers brethren, McDavid and Draisaitl, could come close to 2,000 points if they each average 100 points per season for the next 12 years, but nowhere near his record.
Feels fair to fully demonstrate his dominance over the entire sport of hockey, but also shout out Ovechkin here as he now reigns supreme at the top of the all-time goal-scoring list.
I will also dish out massive props to Gretzky as he attended multiple Capitals games so he could be in attendance for the record-breaking moment, and he has been nothing but classy all the way through. He has shown a massive amount of support for Ovechkin throughout this entire ordeal, and that should be applauded. As the Great One himself once said when he broke the goal scoring record back in 1994, “Records are meant to be broken.”
The Washington Capitals play five more games this season and sit at the top of the Eastern Conference. I do not see Ovechkin hanging up his skates after this season, so we may see him bring this goal tally to even more unreachable heights.
