Alexander Ovechkin scored for the first time after 14 matches without a single goal

The highlight of the next day of the NHL regular season was Alexander Ovechkin’s goal in overtime that brought the Washington Capitals a 3:2 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets. With it, the great Russian sniper interrupted what was already beginning to seem like an endless series of matches without scoring goals. He has 14 of them.

To understand how Washington players value Alexander Ovechkin, you had to see their reaction to the episode in the final minute of overtime, when he sent the puck into the Columbus net. Almost the entire team poured out onto the ice to congratulate Ovechkin, and their emotions were overflowing. Such carnivals are more appropriate in situations where, for example, the playoff round has just been completed.

And the point, of course, was not so much the importance of this goal for Washington itself, although, it must be said, you can’t take that away from this puck: the club is desperately fighting for the high, what gives the right to compete in the Stanley Cup, a place in its Metropolitan division, and so far its position is rather precarious. First of all, it was important for Ovechkin – in the context of what happened to him in the last month.

And it was a strange month. On November 18, in a match with the same Columbus, Alexander Ovechkin scored his fifth goal in the championship. The figure even at that time seemed rather modest, but still did not spoil the feeling that at 38, the Russian, perhaps not as quickly as his most devoted and optimistic fans would like, but was quite successfully chasing Wayne Gretzky’s sniper record with his 894 goals in the regular season. The Russian legend had 67 goals left before the Canadian legend, and there were a lot of matches ahead even in the current championship. Gretzky is about to be very close.

But then something terrible began. Ovechkin failed to hit the goal in one meeting, in the second, in the third… In the end, this series without a single goal from the great sniper stretched for 14 games – this has never happened in his career.

And it was already possible to decide that it was all about mysticism, metaphysics. Ovechkin, of course, did not play as aggressively and brightly as in his youth. But, whatever one may say, during these 14 matches he accumulated almost six dozen shots on target and at least a dozen not just good, but the surest chances to distinguish himself. However, he missed everything. And the words of the partners that the series would soon be interrupted, and the liberated Ovechkin would then get back what he had lost earlier, looked like a weak reassurance. She didn’t want to interrupt.

And yet it was interrupted – in a match that could literally become the quintessence of this whole dramatic story about a curse or an evil eye. In it, Alexander Ovechkin, strictly speaking, was not bad at all in regular time. But the puck again stubbornly refused to fly into the goal. Six shots on target were wasted, and once, having shot as if for sure, Ovechkin hit the post.

However, in addition to regular time, which ended in a draw, this match also had extra time. And luck smiled on Ovechkin in him.

The smile was a completely unnecessary breakdown by Columbus goalkeeper Elvis Merzlikins, who, at the end of overtime, attacked forward Tom Wilson, who was stuck in his goal after a break, and earned himself an ejection.

And then there was a power play in a format convenient for attackers “4 on 3” and a pass to Alexander Ovechkin, who was in his favorite spot, in the left circle of face-offs. Usually in such cases he fires to touch. This time he did everything less impressively, but more reliably: he stopped the puck and, taking aim, threw it into the corner, instantly setting up a carnival on the ice, the participants of which hardly knew that the goal was Ovechkin’s anniversary. Now he has exactly 900 goals, if you add up those scored in the regular season and playoffs. More – 1016 – only again from Gretzky. But in those seconds, all sorts of anniversaries receded into the background under the onslaught of thoughts that the best sniper of the century, probably, had smashed karma to smithereens.

Alexey Dospehov