Goal record: Alex Ovechkin’s mother couldn’t care less

Alex Ovechkin is just 42 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record for most goals scored in NHL history.

He has 853 and will need to have an exceptional season if he is to make it to 2024-2025.

While fans get excited every time he scores, it’s a different story for No. 8’s mother.

In an interview Tatyana Ovechkina gave to Match TV, she was quite direct about the record her son is aiming for.

Tatyana Ovechkina “not interested at all” in hype surrounding Alex Ovechkin’s chase of NHL goals record https://t.co/oql2ptAjHH

– RMNB (@rmnb) August 17, 2024

Personally, I’m not interested at all. (…) Sasha (Alex) just plays hockey, without relying on his personal statistics – Tatyana Ovechkina.

She went on to say that, God willing, he’d break Gretzky’s record.

As for Ovechkin, he hears about it all the time in the media. All the journalists talk to him about it every year, it must be hard to “only play hockey”.

Ovechkin’s mother tells us that her son finds peace at home in Russia during the off-season. He occasionally goes to Turkey on vacation and doesn’t think too much about hockey.

At the end of last season, he remained realistic about the possibility of breaking the record. He admitted that 42 goals was a lot, especially at his current age. If only he had a better team around him, he’d have a better chance of accomplishing the feat.

It’s incredible to think that without NHL work stoppages, he would probably have surpassed Gretzky by now.