Capitals are joining Ovechkin's chase

Few thought Ovechkin would break Gretzky's goals record or that his team would command the East this season. It's all happening.

Wayne Gretzky cut to his left, shot the puck at the Islanders’ Wade Flaherty, watched Rangers’ teammate John MacLean dive near the crease to add to the havoc, and shot again. It was March 29, 1999, and the goal put the Rangers ahead in what became a 3-1 win. It also was Gretzky’s 894th and final NHL goal, and his ninth of the season, although his 62 points would lead the Rangers by season’s end.

Gretzky’s records were redundant by then. His numbers seemed imported from basketball, or maybe the stock market. At the time Gordie Howe was second with 810 goals. Mark Messier was the closest active player, with 551, and he would stop at 694. Jaromir Jagr had 345 and would get to 766 by the time he left the NHL at 45. The record seemed safe, even though scoring wasn’t the best thing Gretzky did.

Alex Ovechkin was 13 at the time, growing up in Russia. On Sunday he had three goals in Washington’s 7-3 win over Edmonton. That brought Ovechkin to 882, suddenly 12 goals short of the Great One. Fans are trying to guess when the big night will happen. Projections point to early April. Ovechkin is 39 now, with silver in his beard, and seven of his 29 goals this year have gone into an empty net. But the Capitals are 12 points ahead of everyone else in the Eastern Conference, and you don’t get “empties” unless you’re leading. Ovechkin’s successful pursuit is just the thing to piggyback upon the fabulously successful Four Nations Faceoff, even if he hasn’t been the most relatable player over the years. The least you can say is that he’s the most successful Russian asset in Washington (that we know of).

Ovechkin has always been measured against Sidney Crosby, whom the Penguins took first-overall in 2005, the year before the Capitals did the same with Ovechkin. It wasn’t a kind comparison. Crosby had three Stanley Cups before Ovechkin had his first, even though the Capitals always seemed in position to win one. In 2018 Washington broke through, beating the first-year Vegas Golden Knights in the final, and Ovechkin celebrated with a truly epicurean three-day bender, in which he and his mates dove into the Washington Harbor fountain with the Cup, then gathered at Cafe Milano to bellow “We Are The Champions” with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump inside.

That endeared Ovechkin to fans beyond D.C., but then people wondered how long he’d have to hang on to catch Gretzky. He only had 31 goals last season, and the Capitals had a minus-36 goal differential, somehow sneaking into the playoffs and getting kicked out summarily by the Rangers. “We lacked depth,” Ovechkin said. “We had only two lines, you might say.”

Clearly Washington was facing a rebuild. Who would get the puck to Ovechkin for his customary one-timers from the left side?

Instead of stripping it down and committing to spend the next half-decade, at least, in the NHL gulag, Brian MacLellan went for a detailing job. He was the general manager of the club until he was moved upstairs to Director of Hockey Operations, with Chris Patrick replacing him. The Capitals were accustomed to playoff games. Such games pay the freight, and they also reward the fans for showing up 41 times. Since 2008 Washington has missed the playoffs only twice. Why not postpone the pain and, in the process, give Ovechkin a chance at the most significant record in the sport?

So MacLellan hit the phones. He sent goalie Darcy Kuemper to Los Angeles for the maddening Pierre-Luc Dubois, whose lack of production and, at times, interest had almost became a Hazmat outfit. But Dubois is a big man with skill, and on Saturday in Pittsburgh he set up Jeff Chychrun twice for goals that created a 4-2 lead on the way to an 8-3 win.

Without Kuemper, the Capitals needed a goalie. Vegas was interested in dealing Logan Thompson before he hit free agency. Washington took him for two third-round picks. Today Thompson has a record of 25-2-5 with a .920 save percentage.

The Capitals then bumped up Alaiksei Protas, a 6-foot-6, 250-pound Belarussian moose who had struggled. Now he is a plus-32 player with 23 goals and 50 points and the friendliest of contracts, paying him only $3.3 million for each of the next four seasons. “He probably has the longest arms I’ve ever seen on a hockey player,” Thompson said.

In search of more oomph on the backline to augment 34-year-old John Carlson, the Capitals then sent Nick Jensen to Ottawa for Chychrun who, like Dubois, had watched his value suffer. Only a couple of years ago, at Arizona, Chychrun was one of the most coveted D-men in the league. And so he is again, ranking third behind Cale Makar and Zach Werenski in points among defensemen. He’s 26 years old and headed for free agency, and the Capitals are betting that he has several big playoff moments en route.

All those rising tides, including solid free-agent defenseman Matt Roy, has lifted some familiar boats. The Capitals were always counting on Connor McMichael, and the 24-year-old has 20 goals, two more than last year, and has gone from a minus-21 to a plus-20. Dylan Strome, once a third-overall pick by the Coyotes, is the center for Ovechkin and has 58 points, nine off his career high.

And in case you struggle to recognize the Capitals, they still have their second most-identifiable player and the guy who puts out the biggest force field. Tom Wilson, at 6-foot-4 and 200, has 26 goals and only 50 penalty minutes, compared to 133 last year. He hasn’t been suspended since March 22. At this point he doesn’t have to actually maim somebody to be intimidating. Besides, why miss any of the winning?

Because of all the good news around him, Ovechkin’s campaign has a purpose. He ran into Utah’s Jack McBain on Nov. 24 and broke his fibula. Since it’s hockey, he only missed 16 games, as he returned on Dec. 28 and scored in a win over Toronto. He’s been back for 21 games and has scored 14 goals.

Supervising it all is Spencer Carbery, 43, likely the Coach of the Year. Skeptical of sleep and enamored with detail, he fits right in with modern coaching, and he got the Caps’ attention early in his first year when he sat down Evgeny Kuznetsov, one of the warriors of 2018. Carbery was racking up the penalty minutes while he was playing for Fresno in the East Coast Hockey League — yeah, geography doesn’t mean what it used to — when the team folded. At that point he closed the book on hockey. His mother lived in Charleston, S.C., and he headed there with his family, looking to capitalize on his business degree and maybe a corner office.

Then Jared Bednar called. Bednar, who won a Stanley Cup in charge of Colorado in 2021, was coaching the South Carolina Stingrays and asked Carbery if he could postpone retirement for one year. Carbery did. But when he called to see if he could play the next season, he was told he could certainly return to coach. Carbery repeated that he’d like to play. He got the same reply. So he became an assistant coach, basically for sofa-cushion change, and began the trek that landed him in Washington.

There’s all kinds of convenient resentments that the Capitals can use down the stretch, but nothing was as motivating as the Four Nations rosters. Best players from Canada, the U.S., Sweden and Finland, right? At least 80 players, all told. Only one team, the Capitals, failed to place a player on any of those benches.

Russia wasn’t invited to Four Nations, so Ovechkin got a week-long break. So did everyone else. The result was 15 goals in the first two games back. The Capitals have a chance to be party people in April and then again in June. Fortunately they have a guy whose highs surpass all bars.