The Washington Capitals earned their third straight victory in the NHL regular season. Caps beat Columbus 3-2 away. The main event of the match took place in overtime: the decisive goal for the capital was scored by team captain Alexander Ovechkin. Thus, he not only secured the Caps’ victory, but also broke his personal record goalless streak of 14 games.
“Elvis has left the building” was on the social network “X” (formerly Twitter), where the Washington press service responded to Ovi’s winning goal. He scored on the power play shortly after Columbus goaltender Elvis Merzlikin was carted off the ice for rough handling. The Russian forward threw the puck into the net from his “office” – the left faceoff circle – and almost immediately went to the locker room. He did what the fans had been expecting from him for a long time.
“I don’t think we acted any differently. We moved and controlled the puck well. You saw how we behaved for the most part: we gained confidence. We scored two goals and then I said to the boys: “I hope you understand that this is a sign of how to play.” And we intend to continue in the same spirit.
Is drought my goal? A lot of time has passed. We must accept this and move on. We understood how to play, we fought, but we weren’t sharp enough and couldn’t move the puck well. We have solved this problem now.
I had a good chance of scoring in the first and second periods. Sometimes you just have to keep pushing and get through it. “I’m happy I was able to score, hopefully I’ll score even more goals in the future,” Ovechkin said in a post-match interview. press service “Washington”.
Caps head coach Spencer Carbery called Alexander one of the team’s best players in the last game. He expressed his confidence that the thrown puck would help the Russians.
“Of course, this puck could be a potential springboard for Ovechkin. Alexander was one of the best on our team today. He made dangerous shots, opened up well, the puck found him just right, he looked like he had better control. This puck will help him a lot,” Carbery said. . “Championship” Referring to journalist Ben Rabi.
In addition to the goal, Ovechkin also assisted Anthony Mantha in the first period. The “Big Eight” achieved a total of 20 points (6 goals + 14 assists) and a total utility score of -6 this season. The game with Columbus was his 1376th career NHL game, bringing his total to 1505 points (828 + 677).
Thus, the Russian forward continued to chase the sniper record of Wayne Gretzky, who scored 894 goals in regular season matches throughout his career. Ovechkin currently has 828 goals, so the difference is 66 goals.
It is also noteworthy that Alexander became the second player in league history after Gretzky to score 900 goals, taking into account the regular season and playoffs – the great Canadian has 1016 goals in total.
Ovechkin’s goal against Columbus was Russia’s 135th win of the regular season and playoffs. According to this indicator, he left Brett Hull behind and ranked second by far. Czech Jaromir Jagr continues his leadership with his 151st winning goal.
Additionally, this goal allowed Ovechkin to score his 40th point in overtime. Thanks to this, he surpassed Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin (39 points in overtime) and rose to the only second place in NHL history in this indicator. Just three points away from matching Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby’s record (43 points).
Ovi also made the 677th assist of his career. He ranks 68th on the NHL’s all-time assists list, but has closed the gap on Bobby Smith and Ray Whitney, who each have 679 assists.
Additionally, the Russian maintained his 49th place in career games in the NHL. He is one game behind Vincent Damphousse, Dean Prentice and Joe Sakic, who played 1,378 games.