Alexander Ovechkin set a record with someone else’s stick

Alexander Ovechkin, having distinguished himself in a match in which his Washington Capitals team lost – 6: 7 – to the Columbus Blue Jackets, set another NHL record – in the number of regular championships with at least 40 goals. At the same time, it seems that the personal achievements of the outstanding Russian forward, who is slowly approaching Wayne Gretzky in the race for the title of the best sniper of all time, will remain for Washington fans the only truly bright memory from this season. The team looks almost doomed to miss the playoffs for the first time in nine years.

Washington’s game against Columbus had a dashing plot. The hosts managed to squander a huge (they were leading – 3:0) advantage, miss the victory less than a minute before the end of regular time, losing in overtime, and in total the rivals scored 13 goals against each other. But the central place in the highlights of the game still, of course, belonged to the very first one, although it turned out to be rather stupid. Alexander Ovechkin passed the ball to Dylan Strome, who was standing in front of an empty corner, and Columbus guard Nick Blankenburg, interrupting it, cut the puck into his own net. Own goals in hockey are not recorded, and the Russian forward became the author of the goal.

But everything is clear. This goal was for 37-year-old Alexander Ovechkin 820th in the regular season in his career (74 remained before Wayne Gretzky leading the list of NHL top scorers of all time) and 40th in the current championship.

40 is not such a beautiful milestone as 50, but in this case, the statistical nuance mattered.

This was the 13th season in which Alexander Ovechkin achieved it, breaking, thus, God knows what the statistical record is. Prior to Columbus, he co-owned the world championship record with at least 40 goals with a hockey player he can’t escape comparison to, that is, Gretzky.

Moreover, the NHL, attentive to the numbers, also recorded another record, noting that Alexander Ovechkin had six such seasons after he turned thirty. And in this sense, he also outran the Canadian legend with whom he shared the championship: Phil Esposito, at the age of thirty, scored at least 40 goals in five championships.

Washington has ten more games on the regular season calendar. And this means that, theoretically, Alexander Ovechkin can still reach the very, very beautiful milestone, despite the fact that he missed a lot of matches in the season by his standards – four due to the death of his father, two due to injuries. And then he will record another record in the asset, knocking out the “fifty kopeck” for the tenth time and beating Gretzky with Mike Bossy.

Another thing is that the tricks of Alexander Ovechkin, most likely, will be the only bright memory of this season for those who are not indifferent to his club.

In 2014, Washington, with the Russian leader in his prime, had an extremely unsuccessful season and flew past the cup stage. Since then, he has not missed the playoffs, and in 2018 he won the Stanley Cup. But now, it seems, the series is doomed to end.

About the match in which Alexander Ovechkin scored his 40th goal, you need to know that Washington met in it with a team that, even after this victory, is still on the bottom line of the league standings and generally looks throughout the entire championship extremely weak. And this misfire is by no means an accident, but a continuation of a sad trend.

The loss to Columbus was Washington’s third in a row. Before that, he was beaten by the troubled St. Louis Blues and the Minnesota Wild, which lost its key player Kirill Kaprizov.

And before the start of the black series in five matches, the Washingtonians recorded only two wins. And the game of the club is quite consistent with its performance. As, by the way, corresponds to the ideas about what the middle peasant does not count on much, the personnel policy of the club management is closed for exchanges before it comes into force in early March. “Washington” gave the “Boston Bruins”, located at the top of the classification of “regular season”, the leading defender Dmitry Orlov and forward base Garnet Hathaway, as if he had already spat on the results.

Indeed, it is difficult to assume that he will still break into the playoffs, taking into account the unpleasant dynamics. In the top three of the Metropolitan Division, which guarantees itself a ticket to the Stanley Cup, “Washington” will definitely not penetrate: the New York Rangers, which closes it, have 18 points. The chances of getting one of the two wild cards from the Eastern Conference are extremely small. The bottom eight Florida Panthers are five points ahead of the Washingtonians with a game in reserve.

Alexey Dospekhov