Hockey player Alexander Ovechkin ended his goalless streak with a double

Alexander Ovechkin ended a six-game streak without scoring goals by scoring twice in the NHL regular season match, which his Washington Capitals team won against the New York Islanders – 4:1, and closed the gap with the leader of the list of the league’s best snipers of all times. Wayne Gretzky era to 68 goals.

In the match in which Washington defeated the Islanders away, the central figure was easy to determine. North American media resources, of course, paid tribute to the surprisingly reliable play of the unremarkable Washington goalie Hunter Shepard, who, at 28 years old, made his NHL debut only this season. But all the same, this unexpected rise of his was overshadowed by the performance of the main Russian hockey player of the present century. Overshadowed for two reasons.

The first is the scale of Alexander Ovechkin’s contribution to the success of his club. And he really was great.

It was Ovechkin who opened the scoring in the match after a combination about which the losing coach Lane Lambert later said that, probably, with its help the great forward scored “60 goals in his life.”

Lambert meant that everyone knows about it, but a perfect antidote has not yet been found.

This combination is simple. Someone (in this case, another Russian forward, Evgeny Kuznetsov) wins the faceoff by throwing the puck back. And from the point where it was sent, Alexander Ovechkin’s trademark smashing throw follows, to which even such seasoned goalkeepers as Ovechkin and Kuznetsov’s compatriot Semyon Varlamov from the Islanders are unable to react.

Everything happens too quickly, literally at lightning speed.

Well, in the end, Washington’s leader distinguished himself again. True, it was a very simple goal – into an empty goal, which Varlamov left for the appearance of a sixth field player on the court.

The second reason is the importance of goals for Alexander Ovechkin himself. Strictly speaking, by his standards, a double is not exactly a grandiose achievement. But the context gave it value. The fact is that for several days now, hockey experts have been discussing the topic of whether they were too hasty in predicting that pretty soon Alexander Ovechkin will triumphantly complete the chase, watching which has become an absolute must for every self-respecting fan. We are talking about the pursuit of the title of king of snipers, currently owned by Wayne Gretzky.

Before the start of the season, Ovechkin was 72 goals behind Gretzky, then the gap was reduced to 70… And suddenly the Russian slowed down.

He continued to score productive assists (he already has seven in total), but he was unable to hit someone else’s goal for as many as six matches in a row – a long streak even by the standards of an ordinary forward. Moreover, one cannot say that he had many chances to hit them. In general, the version that at the age of 38 Ovechkin lost his sniper talents and that it would not be as easy for him to get the Canadian legend as it seemed before has acquired a certain relevance.

But now the situation, presumably, has changed a little. When projected over the entire regular season of 82 meetings, Alexander Ovechkin’s performance still doesn’t look that impressive. Well, or rather, the main indicator for him. Four goals in 13 matches is about 25 at the end of the championship: not enough to expect, say, to get ahead of Wayne Gretzky next season.

But it’s well known that explosions like the one against the New York Islanders free up hitters and make them more effective. By the way, something along these lines happened with Ovechkin more than once: after periods of “dryness,” albeit not as long as the one just experienced, a much more productive period would inevitably come. And the veteran should be helped by the fact that his “Washington”, contrary to forecasts that promised the team, which has a rather modest roster, another flight past the Stanley Cup, in the fall looks quite decent and lively and is staying in the “play-off zone”.

Alexey Dospehov