Heading into the final stretch of the 2024-25 season, Alex Ovechkin is just 16 goals shy of overtaking Wayne Gretzky for most goals in NHL history. Ovi’s journey to the top began nearly 20 years ago on October 5, 2005, when he scored both his first and second NHL goals against the Columbus Blue Jackets during his NHL debut.
Ovechkin’s first tally came 7:21 into the second period after Jeff Halpern shoveled a pass to Dainius Zubrus behind the Blue Jackets’ net. Zubrus peeled around and fed Ovechkin in the high slot for a one-timer. Ovechkin’s shot jumped off his blade, beating an overwhelmed Pascal Leclaire.
Halpern, now a longtime assistant coach with the Tampa Bay Lightning, had a front-row seat for the milestone goal, and recently spoke to NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti about riding shotgun next to a rookie Ovechkin.
“You’d say it’s almost like a coincidence, but obviously where he scores that first goal, and it’s not exactly in his power-play spot, but it was a one-timer,” Halpern said to NHL.com. “It was kind of foreshadowing what was about to happen over the next 15-20 years.”
Ovechkin would score 4:30 later in his debut — the first of his 318 all-time leading power-play goals — and Halpern was involved again, sliding a pass to the Capitals captain at the back door.
“It was just a play at net-front and no one was off to that side,” Halpern, Potomac, MD native, said. “Man, if you knew then; just throw pucks over there and they end up in the net.”
While Ovechkin was impressive offensively, he also put the rest of the league on notice with his physicality. During his first NHL shift, Ovechkin nailed Radoslav Suchy behind the Columbus net with a rink-rattling hit that knocked one of the board stanchions at the then-MCI Center out of place.
“You know when you talk about a baseball player and it’s just a different sound coming off a bat, or a golfer, it’s a different sound?” Halpern said. “The hit was a different sound. It was like someone getting hit with a right hook, and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God.'”
The body check was the first hit of Ovechkin’s career, although it’s not included in his 3,707 career hits as the NHL did not start tracking the stat until the 2007-08 season. Since then, Ovechkin sits third in hits, behind only Matt Martin (3,922) and Cal Clutterbuck (4,029).
Ovechkin’s presence helped fuel Halpern’s best post-lockout offensive season. The undrafted Princeton University standout had 16 points through the first 23 games of the 2005-06 season and ended up with 44 points (11g, 33a) in 70 games for the Capitals.
However, mid-way through the year, Halpern asked then-head coach Glen Hanlon to be removed from Ovechkin’s line. Halpern, a two-way player who preferred more defined positional roles, couldn’t handle Ovechkin’s roving up and down the ice from wing to wing.
“The next game Chris Clark was on that line with Ovechkin, while I was playing with Brian Willsie and Matt Pettinger,” Halpern told ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski in 2021. “Two very good players and exceptional people who are not Alex Ovechkin. So that was a mistake.”
Halpern’s mistake turned out to be a boon for Clark, who ended the 2005-06 campaign scoring 20 goals for the first time in his eight-year pro career. Hanlon stuck with the Ovechkin-Clark connection during the 2006-07 campaign, and Clark notched single-season career-highs in goals (30) and assists (24) in 74 games.
Halpern, the Capitals’ captain at the time, departed Washington for the Dallas Stars in free agency during the 2006 offseason. He would never reach the 44-point mark in a season again but did return to the Capitals for one year, the 2011-12 campaign, near the end of his playing days. Before retiring, he made other stops in the NHL with the Lightning, Los Angeles Kings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Phoenix Coyotes.
In 2016, Halpern started his coaching career, joining Tampa Bay’s AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, as an assistant coach. He spent one more season in that role before joining Jon Cooper’s staff with the Lightning as an assistant during the 2018-19 campaign.
Since then, he has won two Stanley Cups with the Lightning after being part of just one playoff series victory as a player (2012, Capitals). Halpern has been mentioned as a potential future NHL head coach, even reportedly interviewing with the Capitals before they hired Spencer Carbery in 2023.
