Alex Ovechkin isn’t quite ready to look back and fully appreciate his incredible feat of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s once thought unbreakable all-time NHL goals record.
The 39-year-old Russian superstar scored the record-breaking 895th career goal against the New York Islanders on April 6, completing a nearly 20-year journey to the top of the goal-scoring mountain. When asked on Sunday by Championat’s Vladislav Kruglov if the summer had allowed him to fully realize the achievement, Ovechkin revealed he is still more focused on the present than the past.
“The realization of the record will come when I finish my career,” Ovechkin said, as translated by Google Translate. “Mine is still going on. But I see the excitement around me. I understand that it’s really cool. People watched, cheered, worried. Everyone who comes up to me really knows that this happened.
“I understand that thanks to my family, father, mother, wife, friends, team, I did it. I realize that I have a wonderful career when this drive passes. And now I just see that there is hype. Were there tears of joy? I will cry later.”
Ovechkin still has one more year remaining on what could be his final contract with the Washington Capitals. The legendary winger has indicated he plans to play out all of the 2025-26 season with the Caps before making a decision on the future of his NHL career.
“Would I like to stay at the club? A year will pass, and we will think about it,” Ovechkin said in July. “We will live and see.”
Next season will be Ovechkin’s 21st in the NHL, and he will enter the year just three goals shy of becoming the first player ever to score 900 career goals. He is also just nine games away from becoming just the 23rd player to ever play in 1,500 career games.
Ovechkin’s desire to stay in the present mirrors his comments from this past year, where taking things “game by game” and “shift by shift” became his common answer to the media even as he drew within single digits of Gretzky’s record. He also did not include his record-breaking goal when recently asked to share the three best goals of his career.
Ovechkin has the potential to capture a few more goal-scoring records if he continues his career past the 2025-26 campaign, including Gretzky’s NHL record for combined regular-season and playoff goals (1,016) and the all-time professional goals record held by Jaromir Jagr (1,106).
