Alex Ovechkin isn’t the only member of the Washington Capitals’ organization who owns a piece of hockey history that once belonged to Wayne Gretzky.
Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery was recently asked by 106.7 The Fan’s Sports Junkies about Ovechkin’s opportunity to wear Gretzky’s game-used equipment after a practice in Edmonton. During the conversation, he revealed that he, like Ovechkin, owns one of Gretzky’s old wooden sticks.
“Oh, geez, this is gonna be – you ready for this one?” Carbery said. “So, actually in 198-, I think it was ’88 or ’87, I got a signed Wayne Gretzky stick. Yeah, so one of the original Titan wood. That’s what Wayne used back in his Edmonton Oiler days: a wooden Titan stick, red. I got that as a young seven, eight-year-old kid, personalized, and he signed it for me. So that was my prized possession growing up.”
Carbery revealed that the stick had been on display in his home in British Columbia, but he brought it to DC after the Capitals visited Vancouver last year. Now, he keeps it within reach at the Caps’ practice facility.
“I’ve always been nervous to transport it and mail it, [so] I got my dad to bring it over when we played the Canucks,” Carbery said. “I brought it back on the plane, so it’s currently in DC. I don’t know if it’s superstitious, but I had it in the office at MedStar, and I sort of have just let it sit there. And I feel like it’s been good karma for O as he’s chased this record over the last maybe 12 calendar months. It’s been sitting there just as a reminder, and it’s kind of pushing O in a weird way, I feel like.”
Since that March 16 game against the Canucks, Ovechkin has scored 34 goals in his last 48 games. The .71 goal-per-game rate would see Ovechkin score 58 goals over a full 82-game schedule.
After his most recent goal, an overtime winner against the Ottawa Senators, Ovechkin moved just 20 goals shy of sharing the all-time goals record with Gretzky. The 39-year-old winger is on pace to tie and break the 894 mark this season.
“Wayne and Ovi, as they go through this – they just appreciate the history of the game and are such great ambassadors because they’re always about growing the game and what’s best for the game,” Carbery said. “Wayne has never been protective of the record and has always embraced Ovi chasing it because he knows the positive attention it’ll bring the game of hockey and the NHL. And Ovi, I feel like, appreciates, on his side of it, the history and what’s been done before him.
“You see that with he’s a big-time collector of current players. Some of the young guys he tries to get a stick signed by, even some of the new guys that are just breaking into the league. So they are both just such great ambassadors for our game and appreciate the history of the sport.”
Ovechkin’s collection of game-used sticks from both modern peers and legends of the game is massive. He received his stick from Gretzky when the Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018 and told reporters in Edmonton on Tuesday that it’s one of his favorites among the hundreds he has collected.
“Well, obviously Gretzky, Mario Lemieux stick, yeah,” Ovechkin said. “I have lots of sticks, so, yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
