Alex Ovechkin keeps responses brief when questioned about NHL goals record: ‘We don’t talk about it — you guys talking about it’

Alex Ovechkin held a press conference at MedStar Capitals Iceplex two days after scoring his 887th career goal in San Jose. The Capitals captain beat Sharks goaltender Georgi Romanov with a third-period tip-in, bringing him to within eight of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s NHL goals record.

While Ovi’s march towards history is being heavily marketed by the team and talked about by the media, the human doing the actual goal-scoring has appeared to try and minimize the topic as much as possible.

“I don’t make plans, I just do my job,” Ovechkin said recently in a Russian language interview and translated by Google Translate. “I do what’s necessary for the team, for the result. And then – if it works out, it will work out. If it doesn’t, it’s not a big deal.”

On Monday, Ovechkin took questions for two minutes, with nearly every question concerning his chase of the goals record. Ovechkin, smiling and chuckling at times, didn’t have much more to say about his upcoming milestone.

Transcript

Only questions about the goals chase are included. Questions have been edited for brevity and understanding.

Q. You’re getting closer to the NHL goals record – what’s the feeling around the team?

Alex Ovechkin: Same. Doesn’t change, yeah.

Q. How much do you think about the record when you’re not here and we’re not asking about it? Do you think about it at all, a little bit?

Alex Ovechkin: No, you just focus on different things. Tomorrow, it’s a new day. We’re going to play against a good team fighting for playoffs, so we concentrate on that.

[Inaudible question on record chase]

Alex Ovechkin: Well, we don’t talk about it (the goal chase) — you guys talking about it, so.

Q. Since we’re talking about the record — you almost have a 1,000 goals in your career, do you have any that stand out?

Alex Ovechkin: All goals memorable. All goals [are] hard to score, so. You know? You can’t choose one.

Q. Are you keeping the goal pucks? What do you plan to do the with them?

Alex Ovechkin: I have [the] pucks. So yeah, put in museum.

Q. Has Wayne Gretzky reached out to you?

Alex Ovechkin: We talked a couple times, yeah.

Q. Was there ever a point, maybe during the pandemic, that you thought this might not happen?

Alex Ovechkin: No. You know, it’s life. You can’t change it, so it is what it is.

Q. Would it be nice to break the record this season and it not stretch into 2025-26?

Alex Ovechkin: How I said, we concentrate game by game and we’ll see what happens.

The one question Ovechkin received about something different — the Capitals’ 2-1-0 jaunt out west last week — got a bit more elaboration.

“It was a long road trip, obviously, time changing,” Ovechkin said. “It’s nice to be back, obviously. So yeah, nice to see family, kids.”

The Capitals return to Capital One Arena on Tuesday night to play the Detroit Red Wings at 7 pm.