Re-Ranking the Biggest Moments in Alex Ovechkin's NHL Career

It's only seven days old, but Alex Ovechkin has had a pretty amazing April.

The "Great 8" became the greatest career goal-scorer in NHL history on Sunday when his power-play wrister beat Ilya Sorokin and got him to 895, one ahead of the mark Wayne Gretzky had established upon retiring in 1999.

But if you think it was the only big moment he's had, think again.

In fact, the 39-year-old has stacked them like cordwood since reaching the NHL radar in 2004, when he was selected first overall by the Washington Capitals.

The B/R team kept the revelry going and took a deep dive into Ovechkin's time in the league, compiling a list of the biggest moments of his career. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments.

Who could have imagined where things would go way back in June 2004, when the Washington Capitals made Ovechkin the first pick of an NHL draft that included five other eventual All-Stars in the first round, most notably Evgeni Malkin?

No one.

But Brian MacLellan, who's worked in a number of positions with the organization on the way to his current role as president of hockey operations, had an instant inkling.

“I remember him coming into our meeting room, going around and shaking everybody’s hand," MacLellan said. "He didn’t really have a great grasp of the language, but he was just all-in. He came around, shook everybody’s hand, and he engaged the way he engages.

"There was no doubt that he was going to turn out, and that he was the guy that everybody wanted to pick. He just took over rooms with his energy. He lives life at a high-energy level, and I think that attracts the scouts; it attracts everybody. It attracts the fans, attracts ownership, and it’s worked out.”

Yeah, pretty much.

Yep, Pascal Leclaire can go ahead and thank Ovechkin, too

Because let's face it: There's an excellent chance no one would remember his 174-game stint in the NHL from 2004 to 2010 if he hadn't been the guy who gave up Nos. 1 and 2 in the prolific Russian's debut on Oct. 5, 2005.

A first-round pick of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2001, Leclaire became the first of a now-NHL-record 183 goalies who Ovechkin has scored on. He wound up surrendering three more to Ovechkin in his career, which ended with a 61-76-15 record, a 2.89 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage.

Ovechkin remembered him as the chase for Gretzky drew to a close, sending an autographed jersey with the message, "You Were #1."

"I'm the one who put Ovechkin on the map," Leclaire, now an analyst at Quebec-based TVA Sports, said. "My daughters didn't believe me when I told them I'd faced (him)."

Score enough goals and some of them are bound to be highlight-worthy.

Ovechkin has surely had plenty out of his 895, but perhaps none more unconventional than the 32nd of his rookie season, scored in January 2006 against a Phoenix Coyotes team coached by, of all people, Gretzky himself.

The sequence began as Ovechkin carried the puck in from the right point and cut through the slot while drawing contact from Coyotes defenseman Paul Mara. Mara's check sent him to the ice, but, as he was falling to his back, Ovechkin somehow managed to maintain control and backhand the puck past Brian Boucher.

Boucher, ironically, worked as an analyst during TNT's broadcast of Sunday's game.

"That was the sixth goal in a 6-1 win," Boucher said.

"There was no reason for him to go to these great lengths to score another one of his magical goals. It was just one of those plays that was magical. I would guess that he was as amazed as we all were that the puck went in."

The climb to 895 goals began in 2005 but the chase was officially on in December 2022, when Ovechkin scored against the Winnipeg Jets to get to 802 on his career and pass Gordie Howe for second place on the all-time list.

Howe had been the all-time leader from the time he passed Maurice Richard in 1963 to the moment Gretzky passed him 31 years later in 1994. Gretzky's mark also lasted 31 years until Ovechkin passed him with Sunday's goal against the Islanders.

Ovechkin beat David Rittich to tie Howe at 801 before stuffing 802 into an open net at the end of a 4-1 win on home ice at the Capital One Arena.

He finished that season with 42 goals in 73 games to get to 822 for his career.

It's the greatest head-to-head rivalry of this NHL generation:

Ovi vs. Sid.

Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby came into the league together in 2005-06 and the Capitals' sniper instantly went one up on his contemporary by winning the Calder Trophy at the end of their rookie season.

But Crosby was the winner more often than not on the ice, including the second round in 2009 after Washington had been the No. 2 seed to Pittsburgh's No. 4, and the second rounds in both 2016 and 2017 after the Capitals had won consecutive Presidents' trophies only to watch the Penguins win two Stanley Cups.

So it's no surprise that it meant an awful lot a year later when Washington got over the hump with a six-game knockout of the champs in the second round, on the way to the franchise's own first Stanley Cup win against Vegas the following month.

Ovechkin had 27 points in 24 games during his championship run, with three goals and four assists–including an assist on Evgeny Kuznetsov's OT series winner–against Crosby and Pittsburgh.

Mission accomplished.

In a career full of individual exploits, none ranks higher than Sunday's.

There was a time in NHL history when simply approaching Gretzky's goals record, let alone tying and surpassing it, seemed absurd. Because no one could average the 49 goals per season it would take to reach 894 in 1,497 games like the "Great One" had.

Until Ovechkin, in precisely the same amount of career games, did.

And when he ripped the power-play wrist shot past first-time victim Ilya Sorokin in the second period against the Islanders, you could tell it mattered to him.

The 39-year-old threw both arms in the air, pivoted toward center ice and dove onto the ice like a toddler on a slip and slide, reveling in the celebration as his teammates poured from the bench to share the moment.

"I'm probably going to need a couple more days, a couple more weeks to realize what it means to be No. 1," he said after the game, "but I'm proud for myself, I'm proud for my family and for all my teammates that helped me reach that milestone and for all my coaches. It's huge."

Hockey is a team game and the players often seem programmed to defer talk about themselves to celebrate the group of guys in "the room."

It's Ovechkin's default setting, too.

Which means the 2018 championship run gets first place here, particularly because of how long it took to get there and how many times he'd been denied.

The Capitals missed the playoffs in Ovechkin's first two seasons, then went 2-4 in six series after winning four consecutive Southeast Division regular-season titles.

They lost to the New York Rangers in three of the subsequent four seasons and missed the tournament entirely in the other, then finished as the league's top overall team in 2015-16 and 2016-17, only to lose to eventual champion Pittsburgh.

So, even after another division title in 2017-18, optimism was fleeting, particularly after Washington went down 2-0 to Columbus in the first round.

The team rallied for four straight wins, though, then shook off a Game 1 loss to the Penguins at home to win the next two games, scored four times in the third period to win Game 5, and dispatched the champs with an OT goal in Pittsburgh in Game 6.

Another rally, this time from down 3-2, came in a seven-game Eastern final against Tampa Bay, which was followed by a five-game demolition of expansion foe Vegas, highlighted by Ovechkin's earning of the Conn Smythe Trophy.

"It's just like a dream," Ovechkin said. "I can't explain what I feel. It's unbelievable."

Enough said.