Alex Ovechkin stepped onto the ice for the first day of Training Camp, Thursday, officially beginning a sprint toward his 20th season in the NHL.
The Capitals’ captain will enter the 2024-25 campaign 42 tallies away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s once-thought-unbreakable NHL goals record of 894.
While Ovechkin only scored 31 goals last season, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery shared his belief over the summer that Ovi could have a bounce-back year and break the record this season.
Consider Capitals defenseman John Carlson on that bandwagon, too.
“Yeah,” Carlson, Ovechkin’s longtime running mate, said when asked if he thought it was possible. “I think we all would love that. You know, for him, the weight off his shoulders. For us, 40-goal-scorers don’t grow on trees. I think one thing I’ve learned is not to doubt him and his goal-scoring capability. So we’d love him to get that this year.”
Carlson, who is entering his 16th season playing alongside Ovechkin, admitted that he struggles to truly appreciate the history the Russian winger is approaching due to how close they are as friends and teammates.
“I think it’s just a monumental kind of thing that we don’t really (comprehend),” Carlson said. “Being around him so much, you don’t really think about it as much as maybe the outside world does, but at one point, I’m sure we’ll all catch up to that.”
While Ovechkin routinely preaches that he takes things one game/one shift at a time and appears cool as a cucumber, Carlson believes that the worldwide headlines and pressure have been challenging to handle at times.
“I don’t know how it couldn’t honestly,” Carlson said. “I think we can all, I’m sure you asked him, some days he might give you something. Some days you might say it’s not, and maybe that’s true, but as anybody could imagine, there’s a lot that weighs on him every day being the captain of the team, being the Hall of Famer that he is, and even being in the conversation of that, you know, every time he steps on the ice, everyone’s thinking the same thing: ‘Is he gonna score?’ And if he doesn’t, it’s, ‘Yeah, not a good shift, right?’ So that’s that’s a tough line to live on all the time. I guess rightfully so, with the success of his career, but I think everyone’s human.”
As Ovechkin has traversed his career, his success can be attributed to his durability and consistency despite the game constantly changing. As a young player, Ovechkin used his speed and a curl-down-the-wing move to beat goaltenders with a wicked wrister. Later in his career, he found his office — the left faceoff circle — and hammered one-timers home on the power-play. He’s even become defensively responsible, being trusted to close games out which then in turn give him opportunities to score on an empty net.
“Incredible run,” Carlson said. “Seemingly, the amount of times he’s had to change how he scores goals, where he scores him from, you know, the game changes seemingly every five or so years, you know, different kind of different ways they play him on the power play, all these different things. To just keep coming back year after year for 20 years and answering the bell, that’s a special, special run.”
