Years from now, some young hockey player with a great shot and the thirst to score goals is going to be compared to the great goal scorers in NHL history. Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy, Brett Hull. One more player was added to that goal-scoring standard on Sunday night as Alex Ovechkin recorded his 500th career goal as a Washington Capital in their 7-1 win over the Ottawa Senators in front of a home crowd that was witness to history.
The goal came at the 16:19 mark of the second period on,
what else, a power play and from, where else, the left wing faceoff
circle. When Ovechkin took a feed from
Jason Chimera and rifled it into the top of the net, number 500 was also a “first”
in some respects. Ovechkin became the
first Capital to score 500 goals with the franchise, and he became the first
Russian to reach that milestone.
The game itself was an expression of utter dominance by a
team that had played a game the day before.
Justin Williams started the red light festival when he converted a superb
no-look, through the legs feed from Andre Burakovsky to beat goalie Andrew Hammond
from right wing faceoff dot to make it 1-0 just 8:07 into the game.
Less than three minutes later it was 2-0, courtesy of a T.J.
Oshie power play goal, the end result of a sharp triangle passing play, Nicklas
Backstrom on the right wing wall down to Evgeny Kuznetsov, and out to Oshie in
the middle of the 1-3-1.
Ottawa got one back on a turnover by the Caps high in the
offensive zone. Trying to work a high
cycle, Williams and Karl Alzner got tangled up with the puck squirting away
from them. Mike Hoffman jumped on the
loose puck and headed down the left wing.
With Williams trying to close the distance and take an angle to defend
the rush, Hoffman ripped a shot high over goalie Philipp Grubauer’s right
shoulder and under the crossbar to make it 2-1 at the 3:32 mark.
Any suspense the Hoffman goal might have provided was
snuffed out in short order. Zach Sill
scored his first goal as a Capital less than three minutes later. Skating down the left side, Sill threw the
puck in front as he was circling into the corner. The puck popped into the air, and when
Hammond failed to swat it away as it was falling to the ice, Sill circled out
from behind the Senator net and batted it under the crossbar to make it 3-1.
Dmitry Orlov made it 4-1 less than two minutes later,
finishing a game of keep-away conducted by the Caps in the Senators’ end. Working the puck in deep and below the Ottawa
goal line, Nicklas Backstrom worked the
puck back up the wall to Nate Schmidt at the right point. Schmidt fired the puck across to Orlov at the
opposite point, and with the Senator defense still on the other side of the
rink, Orlov had time to step up and fire a laser that beat Hammond cleanly to
make it 4-1 just under eight minutes into the period.
Then came the moment everyone had been anticipating. Andre Burakovsky manned the spot usually
occupied by Backstrom at the right wing wall.
Working the puck slowly down the wall, he fed it to Jason Chimera at the
goal line extended to Hammond’s left.
Chimera threaded a pass through the slot that Erik Karlsson got his
stick on, but not enough to keep the puck from Ovechkin’s reach. Ovechkin settled the puck, then snapped it
hard at the Ottawa net. Hammond flung
his glove up at the puck, but it was already past him and settling to the ice
behind him, and the crowd erupted in what would be a three-minute break to
celebrate the milestone.
The rest of the game was an obligatory running off of the
clock, the competitive portion of the game having long passed and the historic
moment having been witnessed. However,
the Caps being the team they are these days, they tended to business and made
things more difficult for the Senators in the third period. Tom Wilson scored an odd goal, taking a pass
from Chimera and backhanding a shot from below the goal line off Hammond and
into the net inside the near post.
Ovechkin got a start on his second 500 goals mid-way through
the period when he authored a replay of the overtime game-winner he scored in
New York on Saturday, skating down the left wing, powering past Erik Karlsson,
and cutting to the middle where he snapped the puck through Hammond’s pads to
make it 7-1. Goalie Philipp Grubauer took them
home from there, and the Caps skated off with their most lopsided win of the
season.
Other stuff…
-- Alex Ovechkin became the 43rd player in NHL
history to record 500 goals and fifth fastest to reach that milestone. In what might be a reflection of just how
special Ovechkin’s achievement is in a low-scoring era, only two of those 43 players
with 500 or more goals are active – Jaromir Jagr (736 going into Sunday’s games)
and Jarome Iginla (601).
-- Since Ovechkin came into the league in 2005, the closest
pursuer in the goal scoring rankings is Iginla, who has 351 goals. Since the 2001-2002 season, no player has
more goals than Ovechkin. Ovechkin was
16 years old when the 2001-2002 season started, and he was playing his first
season with Moscow Dynamo. It would be
four more seasons before he entered the NHL.
-- The milestone goal was Ovechkin’s 185th career
power play goal. Since he came into the
league, no one is close to him in that category. Thomas Vanek is second with 122. His second goal of the game was his 312th
even strength goal of his career. Since
he came into the league, Iginla is second on the list (238).
-- Ovechkin was a plus-2 for the game. If anyone is keeping score, that’s plus-21
for the season, third best in the league.
-- If there was one thing missing on the milestone goal, it
was that Nicklas Backstrom did not provide an assist. Never you mind, though. Backstrom still had three assists in this
game. He is now tied for fifth in the
league in helpers (28). And, in what
might be a Backstromesque sort of testimony to how effective he can be while
not bringing attention to himself on the ice, he recorded those three assists
in a game in which he did not record a shot attempt.
-- Ovechkin took over the league lead in goals with the pair
he had tonight (26). He became the fifth
player to record 25 goals in each of his first 11 seasons in the league. Mike Gartner, Wayne Gretzky, Jaromir Jagr,
and Bryan Trottier are the others.
-- Jason Chimera recorded his second three-assist game of
the season. The other came in the Caps’
7-3 win over the Colorado Avalanche on November 21st.
-- The six-goal margin of victory was the Caps’ largest
since they defeated the Philadelphia Flyers, 7-0, on November 1, 2013.
-- Nate Schmidt recorded an assist on the Orlov goal, giving
him points in four straight games, a career-best points streak.
-- Philipp Grubauer had a solid game in goal, stopping 32 of
33 shots. Over his last four games he is
3-1-0, 1.43, .954.
In the end…
When the bench emptied to celebrate Alex Ovechkin’s 500th
goal (and credit the league with granting permission to do so), one had the
feeling that if the fans could climb over the glass to join in, they would
have. It was one of the few unalloyed
moments of joy in the history of the franchise. Whatever else Ovechkin achieves in his
career, he has been a trailblazer for this franchise and for his Russian
countrymen.
But no accomplishment in a team sport belongs to the player
alone. Hockey might be the best
manifestation of this concept, a sport where it takes 20 guys a night to be
successful. The Caps did score four
goals before Ovechkin struck, and they got points from 12 players in addition
to Ovechkin for the evening. They were
solid in their own end and exerted oppressive aggression in the offensive
zone. For a lot of his career, Ovechkin
provided too many isolated highlights.
On this night, as has been the case so often in what has been a special
season so far, his highlight was as bright as any other he has had, but he is
able to share that light with a lot of other players who are making their own
contributions. It was a big night for
the captain, and for the team as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment