Alex Ovechkin scored his 887th career goal against the San Jose Sharks on Saturday, moving just eight goals shy of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record.
As Ovechkin continues to inch closer to history, Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery admitted he’s noticed a difference in opposing teams — specifically with how they defend the future Hockey Hall of Famer, perhaps to avoid the highlight reel.
“It’s caught my eye a couple times,” Carbery said after practice on Monday. “Yeah, it’s just caught my eye a couple different instances where I felt like an individual player or a team in a game was overplaying ‘O,’ and really cheating on him as an option when he didn’t have the puck, when he was in a scoring situation, and leaving the puck carrier to go in all alone.”
During the Capitals’ West Coast road trip last week, Ovechkin appeared, at times, to face man-to-man coverage during opposing teams’ penalty kills. The PK setup essentially dared one of the other four Capitals players on the man advantage to score. Ovi did not record a power-play goal on the trip and has only one in eight March games.
“I would say this, though – he’s probably dealt with that through his career,” Carbery said. “He’s one of the greatest goal-scorers, so if someone did that four seasons ago, you wouldn’t be shocked. Of course, they overplayed or left the shooter alone and took away O.”
The Capitals’ power play, operating at 22.3 percent effectiveness 67 games into the 2024-25 campaign, has improved 2.5 percent from this stage of the season last year (19.8 percent). Despite that, Ovechkin actually has one less power-play goal (9) than he did at this point last year (10) and is second on the team in man-advantage goals to Tom Wilson (11).
While a majority of that has to do with Ovechkin missing 16 games earlier in the season due to a broken leg, his rate stats on the power play do reflect that he might be getting even more attention from opposing penalty kills. Ovechkin’s per 60-minute rate of individual shot attempts, expected goals, scoring chances, and high-danger chances are down across the board this season.
Alex Ovechkin’s individual rate stats on power play
| Season | iCF/60 | ixG/60 | iSCF/60 | iHDCF/60 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 40.71 | 1.84 | 12.01 | 2.67 |
| 2024-25 | 36.42 | 1.68 | 10.44 | 1.61 |
With less space on the power play, Ovechkin has found success by generating a larger share of his production at even strength.
Despite playing in 13 fewer games at this point of the season compared to this time last year, Ovechkin has recorded 11 more even-strength points. He has 40 (25g, 15a) through 51 games this season, while he had just 29 (11g, 18a) in 64 games last year.
So, despite the opposition potentially trying to lock down his classic power-play one-timer from his office, Ovechkin, 39, is still finding ways to produce 0.67 goals per game this season, slightly above his career goal-per-game rate (0.60). Given that level of production, Ovechkin is on pace to break the goals record sometime over the next month. And he’ll do so despite how badly other NHL teams have tried to avoid being plastered all over social media during the chase.
“I can say this, and I don’t know how teams will defend, pre-scout, what they’re thinking in their locker rooms, and what they’re coaching or what they’re talking about,” Carbery said. “I do think teams do not want to be the team that he scores [against]. Everybody appreciates the greatness of O, and you can feel it’s a big, big deal to the entire league. And the other 31 teams are all along for the ride and watching and paying close attention. But I promise you they do not want to be on the ice when O’s putting it into the back of the net. I know that for a fact.”
