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Alex Ovechkin: “If it hadn’t been for the pandemic and the lockout, Gretzky’s record would already have been broken”.

 Christopher Brown
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Alex Ovechkin: “If it hadn’t been for the pandemic and the lockout, Gretzky’s record would already have been broken”.
Credit: Getty Images

At 38, retirement is fast approaching for Alex Ovechkin. One of the main reasons he’s still in the NHL is certainly his race for the NHL goals record. The record of 894 goals is held by Wayne Gretzky.

Ovechkin’s counter currently stands at 853, putting him 41 goals behind number 99.

The record hasn’t been broken yet, but the Capitals’ captain could already have eclipsed that mark, if his words are anything to go by.

Ovechkin recently appeared on a Russian podcast hosted by a man named Amiran Sardarov, and he explained that under different circumstances, Wayne Gretzky’s record would already have been broken (by him, of course).

“If there had been no lockouts or pandemic, Wayne Gretzky’s record would have already been broken.” – Alex Ovechkin

Drafted in 2004, Ovechkin has lived through two lockouts. The first, during the 2004-05 season, meant that his career started a year later than expected. The second, during the 2012-13 season, cut him off from 34 games.

And let’s not forget the pandemic, which cut games from the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.

It may not sound like much, but that’s around 150 fewer games in his career!

If we get out our calculators, his 853 goals in 1426 career games give him an average of around 0.60 goals per game. Multiply that by the potential 150 missed games and you get 90 goals.

So he’d effectively have already broken Gretzky’s record!

And even if he had missed some of those games and had a slightly lower production, he only needs 41 goals, which is less than half the 90 calculated.

Ovechkin admits, however, that these things happen and there’s nothing he can do about it.

He has two years left on his contract with the Washington Capitals, and can certainly be expected to leave the NHL when his deal expires. That gives him two seasons to score 41 goals.

His worst career season was 24 goals and he played only 45 games. We can therefore expect him to break the record. It’s only a matter of time.

Here’s the full podcast (unfortunately in Russian).


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