It’s a debate as old as organized athletic competition itself. Who is the greatest of all time? Alex Ovechkin is now making his own GOAT case in professional hockey. With his 895th career goal on Sunday, the Washington Capitals star has accomplished what was once unthinkable and surpassed “The Great One,” Wayne Gretzky, as the all-time leading goal scorer in NHL history.
When Gretzky hung up his skates after his 1998-99 season with the New York Rangers, nobody could have imagined his record being broken. Now, after watching Ovechkin’s historic season, I can’t help but wonder if this will be the last “unattainable” record to fall in my lifetime.
When Gretzky hung up his skates after his 1998-99 season with the New York Rangers, nobody could have imagined his record being broken.
In baseball, it’s Barry Bonds’ 762 career home runs. For those denouncing PEDs, it’s Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs. In basketball, it’s LeBron James’ all-time career points total (which is increasing as we speak). In football, it’s Tom Brady’s 649 career passing touchdowns and 89,214 passing yards.
But I think there’s something about Ovechkin’s record that puts it in a special category as far as individual records are considered.
Bonds’ steroid use will forever place an asterisk next to his statistics in record books. While Brady is widely considered the football GOAT, the NFL’s offensive-minded era of football has certainly helped. James is somehow still dominating games 20 years into a surefire spot on the Mount Rushmore of the game. But like Brady, I’d argue the league he plays in now is a physically softer one. If you simply breathe on a quarterback in the wrong way, you can draw a flag. Heck, the league made a rule banning lunging for a quarterback’s legs while on the ground — a rule widely believed to be the result of Brady tearing his ACL in 2008.
Ovechkin, on the other hand, is playing in an era when goal-scoring is down compared with Gretzky’s generation. Goalies also had far smaller pads in the ’80s and ’90s than the goalies of today. Anecdotally, you can also argue the league has far more parity today than a few decades ago, with talent widely dispersed around the league. Gretzky played alongside a series of Hall of Famers for years, forcing opponents to split their focus. Ovechkin is generally the main target of defenses.
None of this is to say that Gretzky isn’t the greatest hockey player to ever lace up ice skates. His ability to distribute the puck shows in his insane career points total. And keep in mind that Gretzky still has more career assists than any other player has total points for his career. He’s more than 1,200 points clear of the second-best player. But if we’re just looking at goals scored, Ovechkin seems to have broken the record fair and square — including in the same number of games that it took Gretzky to set the benchmark.
Ovechkin is 39 years old. He has one year remaining on his current, and most likely final, contract in the league. That means he could realistically push his all-time total to around 950 goals. He’s already won a Stanley Cup for his championship-starved franchise. And even without another year, it’s likely his goal record may never be broken. In fact, if the Capitals win it all this year, I wouldn’t be surprised it Ovechkin retired at the end the season.
Few athletes get to walk off the stage at the very pinnacle of their careers. A broken-down Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos before retiring, David Robinson exited stage left after winning a title with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003, and Jerome Bettis ran off the field for the final time after a 2006 Super Bowl. What could be better than breaking the unbreakable record, winning a Stanley Cup and riding off into the sunset? For Ovechkin, it would be a final hat trick in a career filled with them.
