I hope you’ll understand how grateful I feel today toward Alex Ovechkin.
I have been writing very little here lately, in large part because my two favorite topics — family and politics — have been very depressing.
But when the Washington Capitals captain scored his 895th career goal Sunday to become the all-time leading scorer in the National Hockey League, it was an amazing accomplishment in so many different ways.
First, the amazing amount of class he showed. Friday night in Washington, he scored two goals to pull into a tie for the record with Wayne Gretxky, who held the record for more than 31 years. He could have broken the record in that same game. More than a hundred of his goals (and Gretzky’s too) have come shooting into an empty net when the trailing team pulls its goalie. He had the chance Friday night, but he had told his coach he wanted the record-breaking goal to come against an actual goalie.
Second, consider these names. Babe Ruth. Hank Aaron. Tom Brady. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Michael Jordan. LeBron James. And yes, even Wayne Gretzky. All seven were all-time greats who at once time or another were considered the greatest ever to play their games.
You know what none of them did?
None of them played their entire career with one team.
Now it’s entirely possible — although highly doubtful — that Ovechkin could go somewhere else for a year or two at the end. I doubt that will happen, but it could.
I have a hard time imagining why he would want to go anywhere else when he is as beloved as he is in Washington. In 2017-18, he led the Capitals to their only Stanley Cup victory. That’s not a negative. Plenty of NHL teams have never won. But the Caps had a history of always breaking their fans’ hearts in the playoffs.
I’ll never forget the game known as the Easter Epic on April 18, 1987, when the Caps lost game seven of their series with the Islanders in four overtimes. I was working in Colorado then, and I had the game on in the office. I could be wrong and it certainly wasn’t the last time they broke my heart in the playoffs, but I think it was the last hockey game I saw on television.
I don’t think I ever saw Ovechkin play in person, although I was blessed to see Gretzky play an entire season of home games for the Los Angeles Kings in 1991-92. The reason I’m not sure about Ovi is that his career started in 2005, and I have been exactly one game in Washington sometime around 2005.
I don’t know if anyone back then thought they were seeing the greatest scorer in NHL history. It’s sort of like someone in 1895 running up to a friend and saying, “Guess what! Babe Ruth was born today.”
Will Ovechkin be the greatest sports hero in D.C. history?
I hope so. The only one I think compares was a hero a hundred years in the past. Walter Johnson won more games as a pitcher than anyone else from 1900 on, and he was part of Washington’s only World Series winner of the 20th century.
The one who could have been abd maybe should have been was Juan Soto, but he didn’t stay.
Hail Ovi.