Alexander Ovechkin hadn’t hit other people’s nets in the previous two games, but Washington took quite some breaks between games, so the Russians’ last puck to date was March 27. Yes, he scored Carolina after that, but here’s his goal It is cancelled. But now he’s scored his 43rd goal of the season and 773rd in his overseas career – Tampa has gone into the distribution. It is noteworthy that Washington lost if Ovechkin failed to score in the last games. This time he was successful and helped his team win.
Already in the 17th minute of the meeting, the audience saw five goals. First, Washington took the lead and expanded the lead with goals from Martin Fegervara and John Carlson, assisted by Evgeny Kuznetsov.
Then the leader of Tampa Nikita Kucherov, who wetted the score, said his heavy word, but Ovechkin answered his goal: with a score of 2:1 from the right crown circle, he gave a pass to Kuznetsov, returned the puck. compatriot and Alexander brought back the lead with two goals.
Before the first break, Nick Paul managed to reduce the guests’ backlog again, but towards the end of the second period Carlson scored a double, where Ovechkin served as an assistant. This puck turned out to be the winner: Tampa scored once again – in the 58th minute and with an empty net, Ross Colton scored, and Mikhail Sergachev made an assist. But it was not enough for more “lightning”. They lost 3:4 and got their third consecutive defeat.
“We definitely played a good game and won two very important points.
“Sometimes we played well, sometimes we didn’t play very well, but in the end, we did a lot for each other today, so the game was fun.”
– said after the Kuznetsov match, the words of which were quoted by the official website NHL.
With a victory over Tampa and two points, Ovechkin once again had many successes. Let’s start with the real issue – the goal-scoring race: He scored the 773rd puck in the NHL regular season, narrowing the lead by 28 goals, behind Gordie Howe, the second-highest scorer in league history by that indicator.
It’s unlikely that Alexander will overcome that milestone this season, but if he maintains the pace he is now – and currently has 43 regular season goals – then we can see how Ovi fares before this calendar year is over. How to get to the finish line: Wayne Gretzky’s “eternal” record of 894 goals.
There is another remarkable number. Ovechkin’s goal and pass in the game against Tampa allowed him to score a total of 1401 points (773 + 628) in the regular season. According to this indicator, he was the fourth among all players in the league to score 1400 or more points as part of the same team. Previously only Steve Yzerman (Detroit), Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh) and Stan Mikita (Chicago) managed to do this. Alexander also narrowed the gap to famous Canadian Dale Haverchak by eight points in the list of the best scorers in NHL history, where Russia is still in 21st place. Also, the “Washington” leader has improved his position in the list of the best assistants in the history of the NHL. His 628th assists allowed him to land a clean 82nd place on this list.
Finally, Ovechkin played his 1265th game against Tampa of the NHL regular season. This allowed it to reach the net 81st place in league history for this indicator. Meanwhile, he surpassed his former teammate Justin Williams, who retired after the 1264th game. The game-count record is San Jose, Pittsburgh and Toronto’s former forward Patrick Marlo – who appeared in 1,779 regular season games throughout his career.