Alex Ovechkin has just two goals and seven total points through 10 games to start the 2025-26 season.
Ovechkin started the beginning of this year on the mend as he suffered a lower-body injury on the first day of training camp and missed all but the last two games of the preseason. The two goals through 10 games match the worst 10-game start of his career, which he has done three previous times: 2008-09 (56 goals at season’s end), 2012-13 (32 goals), and 2023-24 (31 goals).
Head coach Spencer Carbery is the leading man tasked with unlocking his captain, who is coming off a 44-goal year. Carbery chatted with 106.7 The Fan’s Sports Junkies about Ovechkin’s cold start on Wednesday morning.
“O’s been solid,” Carbery said. “I don’t think the production’s been there thus far. He’s got the two goals coming off of faceoff plays. But they just haven’t been falling for him early in the year, much like a lot of our group. So it’s a little bit different than last year. Felt like everything went in for him last year. His shooting percentage was through the roof, best of his career, and now it feels like it’s flipped a little bit through 10 games.
“Nothing to panic about. It’s just, you know, sometimes you go through these stretches where pucks aren’t finding the back of the net for you, so you just have to work through it and continue to put yourself in good spots, generate the looks, and eventually you keep doing the right things and they’ll go for you.”
Ovechkin is shooting just 9.1 percent (2 goals on 22 shots), which is more than half below his career-best 18.6 percent from the 2024-25 campaign. His career shooting percentage is 13.1 percent, scoring an NHL record 899 goals on an all-time leading 6,886 shots.
One clear issue for Ovechkin this season is his low shot volume, as he is averaging just 2.2 shots per game. His career average is 4.6 shots per game, and he averaged 3.6 per game last year. He is also having a tough time getting his few looks on net every night, as opponents have blocked 28 of his shots, which ranks first among the Capitals and eighth in the NHL.
In all 20 of his prior seasons, Ovechkin has led the Capitals in shots on goal. He only ranks fourth on the team (22) through 10 games this year, behind Jakob Chychrun (29), Aliaksei Protas (25), and John Carlson (24). Part of that is likely due to the team’s overall ineffectiveness on the power play, as only five of Ovechkin’s 22 shots have come while up a man.
Carbery doesn’t believe that scoring goal number 900 is impacting Ovechkin’s early-season play, but he does think the veteran winger’s lack of a full training camp could be a factor.
“I’m not going to dispute that missing camp is a hindrance for a 40-year-old in the National Hockey League,” Carbery said Thursday. “Like that’s impossible for me to argue against that. So there’s no doubt that him missing as much time in training camp is not a positive. It’s a negative when you’re preparing for the NHL season.
“I still think, though, that he’s playing in the situations that he’s playing on our team, with Stromer now with Mikey – he’s getting himself in enough good situations and spots similar to last year. I don’t think they’re going in for him right now. Could he generate a little bit more? Does he need a few to fall to maybe get him feeling a lot better with the puck? Yeah, I think that’s fair.”
In the prior seasons in which he’d scored just twice through 10 games, Ovechkin has quickly turned his fortunes around. During the 2008-09 campaign, he rattled off a five-game goal streak (six goals) after scoring just twice through 11 games. After his 10th game in 2012-13, he then went on a three-game goal streak. And, finally, after 12 games with just two goals in 2023-24, he responded with three goals in his next three games.
Ovechkin is currently on pace to score just 16 goals this season and end the year with 913 if he plays in all 82 games.
