Alex Ovechkin is on the precipice of NHL history as he heads into the 2024-25 season. The Washington Capitals captain sits 41 tallies away from a share of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record (894) — a once thought unbreakable mark.
Ovechkin’s teammates are well aware of their captain’s chase and are now even predicting when exactly they might think it’ll happen.
Martin Fehervary and Rasmus Sandin attended the NHL European Player Media Tour in Prague, Czechia last week and were asked by The Athletic’s Michael Russo to give their takes on Ovechkin’s record-breaking timeline.
“If I had to be honest, I’d say he’d go 25 this year and 20 next year,” Fehervary told Russo. “So I would say like next season December.”
“Next year December?” Sandin skeptically repeated, questioning Fehevary’s guess. “I don’t know with this guy… He could score like 42 this season. I’m just going to say … earlier.”
Fehervary’s guess seems to anticipate Ovechkin will regress due to his age. The Great Eight turns 39 on September 17 and Ovi will start the 2024-25 season as the fifth-oldest player in the league. Only 18 players at age 39 have scored over 20 goals in a season in NHL history.
Gordie Howe owns the record for the most goals at age 39 with (appropriately enough) 39 during the 1967-68 season as a member of the Detroit Red Wings. The top five is rounded out by Johnny Bucyk (29), Shane Doan (28), Jean Ratelle (28), and Joe Pavelski (27). Pavelski accomplished the feat last season with the Dallas Stars before retiring this summer.
Ovechkin has never scored fewer than 31 goals in a season not hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also been bucking age-related trends for the past several years, highlighted primarily by his age-36 campaign when he became the oldest player in league history to score 50 goals in a season.
While Ovechkin started slowly last year and scored just 8 goals in his first 43 games, he rebounded majorly in the second half, notching 23 goals in his final 36 appearances. Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery believes that Ovechkin is still capable of that second-half production over a full year.
“Do I think he can score 42 goals this year?” Carbery said last week to NHL.com. “Yes, I do.”
To accomplish that feat, Ovechkin needs to remain durable and avoid injury as he has over the past two decades. The big Russian has played on average 76 games a season over the last three years and if he achieves that exact level of availability again in 2024-25, he would need to score at a 0.54 goal-per-game rate to tie Gretzky and a 0.56 goal-per-game rate to move ahead of The Great One.
Ovechkin’s career goal-per-game rate is 0.60 and he scored at an even better rate in the second half of last season, tallying 0.64 goals per game down the stretch. He has also scored at least 42 goals in 13 of his 19 seasons in the NHL and did so as recently as 2022-23 when he scored exactly 42 times.
Ovechkin has a maximum of 164 games remaining on his current contract to track down the record. A goals-per-game rate of 0.26, playing in every game, would be the lowest rate of production Ovechkin can maintain to eclipse Gretzky.
