As we count down these last eight games of the 2024-25 regular season – the 50th season of Capitals hockey – and as we continue to celebrate the end of Alex Ovechkin’s chase of Wayne Gretzky’s goal mark last weekend, we’re going to share a personal memory of these last 20 years with the Gr8 Eight every game day until season’s end.
For today's final installment, we go back just a couple of years, to the night of Dec. 13, 2022 in Chicago and another night of Ovechkin dazzling the hockey world, this time with a hat trick to reach the 800-goal level on one fell swoop. But not only that, like Babe Ruth in the 1932 World Series, Ovechkin called his shot on the morning of the game. The milestone markers came like a torrent, not unlike the way we just witnessed him going from 890 to 895 so swiftly, but that’s been a trademark of his for quite a while now.
As his career progressed, Ovechkin would often take off on these white-hot streaks as he approached milestone goals, and he often reached those round numbers with multi-goal performances, too.
This trend started as he approached the 400-goal mark in December of 2013. Goal No. 400 was an anti-climactic empty-net goal in Carolina on Dec. 20, 2013, but when he reached the milestone, he did it by scoring in his third straight game, and it was also his 16th goal in a span of 17 games.
Goal No. 500 came on Jan. 10, 2016 against Ottawa; it was one of two he scored that night which gave him five goals in three games and nine goals in eight games as well.
Goal No. 600 was scored on March 12, 2018 vs. Winnipeg, less than three months before Ovechkin and teammates hoisted the Stanley Cup in Vegas. He reached 600 with a two-goal effort against the Jets, giving him six goals in eight games at the time.
Ovechkin joined the sparsely populated 700 club in New Jersey on Feb. 22, 2020, less than three weeks before the season was eventually suspended early, while the world went through the COVOD-19 pandemic. And although Ovechkin endured a five-game dry spell just ahead of goal No. 699 – he scored No. 700 the next game – one of the hottest sustained scoring streaks of his career came less than a month earlier.
Over a 10-game span from Jan. 7-Feb. 4, 2020, Ovechkin had three hat tricks and six multi-goal games in racking up 16 goals (and just one assist) on 49 shots. In the process, he motored his way into the all-time top 10 in goals and surpassed Mario Lemieux (with a hat trick on Long Island on Jan. 18.), Steve Yzerman (on Jan. 29), and Mark Messier (with two goals at Ottawa on Jan. 31).
Once the NHL resumed operations for the abbreviated, 56-game 2020-21 season, Ovechkin rolled past Mike Gartner and Phil Esposito, just over a month apart, to move into sixth place behind Gretzky, Gordie Howe (801), Jaromir Jagr (767), Brett Hull (742) and Marcel Dionne (732). Ovechkin blazed past the trio of Dionne, Hull and Jagr in 2021-22, and he entered the ’22-23 season with 780 goals, still well shy of Gretzky’s mark, but only 20 south of Howe.
But with longtime center and setup man Nicklas Backstrom rehabbing from offseason hip surgery and missing the first half of the season, how would the Gr8 Eight fare in his 18th NHL season at the age of 37?
Not to worry, kid. The duo of Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dylan Strome supplied five helpers each on Ovechkin’s first 17 goals of the season, putting him on the cusp of 800 as the Caps arrived in Chicago for the finale of a two-game trip on Dec. 13, 2022.
If we back up just a bit here, the Caps embarked upon a road heavy stretch of scheduling right after American Thanksgiving that season, playing eight of nine away from DC. They blanked Calgary in their traditional Black Friday home game on Nov. 25, 2022, and the next night in New Jersey, they started a six-game road trip that spanned both coasts: New Jersey, Vancouver, Seattle, Calgary, Edmonton and Philadelphia.
And after a quick stop at home to host Seattle on Dec. 9, they were back on the road in Winnipeg on Dec. 11 and Chicago two nights later.
Ovechkin started the season with nine goals in 20 games, then began to catch fire before the Caps left for that long trip. He scored twice on the team’s Thanksgiving homestand, scored a pair in Vancouver, and netted two more in a Dec. 7 game in Philly to reach 795, and then notched another in the one-off home game against Seattle.
As the Caps took to the road for Winnipeg, the hockey world was taking notice. The 800 Club was about to grow.
When we arrived in Winnipeg on that Saturday night, many of us staffers were worn out from the recent spate of travel, border crossings, de-icings and wee hour hotel arrivals. My plan was to hole up in my room on that Saturday night, and to save my stamina for Monday night in Chicago, an area where I lived for a large swath of my life.
But almost immediately upon arrival, my plans were altered.
I got a text from Sergey Kocharov, Caps senior vice-president of communications and broadcasting, letting me know that Ovechkin was taking he and I to dinner that night. As beat as I was, I started getting dressed to go out and off we went.
This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; Ovi takes staff out for dinner in singles and in small and large groups frequently. This was a Saturday night in Winnipeg, and upon arrival, the woman at the front desk looked at the largest of the three of us with a puzzled, quizzical look.
“I feel like I should know you,” she said tentatively. “Like I’ve seen you somewhere before. Who are you?”
Without missing a beat, Ovechkin says, “Mike Vogel, Caps 365!” (Only the long-timers know what’s up here.)
Sergey starts howling with laughter and I’m cursing Jason Chimera under my breath as we are led to a booth inside a large and absolutely jam-packed restaurant at peak Saturday night busy level.
Usually when I’ve been to previous dinners with Ovi, we’re in a private room somewhere, or we’re in a town where he’s not as recognizable. There are no such places in Canada.
Within five minutes, I’m keenly aware that all eyes in the establishment are on us. Ovi is used to it; Sergey and I are not. We are just having beers and waiting to order at this point, three co-workers out for dinner, but soon the small parade of admirers makes its way over to our table to pay their respects.
Everyone is very polite, and most are just passing along well wishes and kind words. One guy is too shy to approach; he sends his girlfriend in to say hello. Many are Jets fans, and they admit they want their team to win the game the following day, but they’re hoping to see Ovechkin score. Ovi is kind, gracious and smiling as they step up.
The whole scene reminds me of Ovi’s second NHL season, and the first time he was able to play in Western Canada; the schedule didn’t send every team to every city in those days – and the Winnipeg franchise was still located in Atlanta – it leaned more heavily towards divisional games in that era. But once we went to Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary in late October, 2006, it was clear that things were much different.
Suddenly, there were Caps No. 8 sweaters dotting the arenas of these cities, and in greater numbers than I had seen in American cities during his first season. The adoration was significant, as were the crowds of autograph seekers awaiting us at hotels and airports along the way. This paragraph is from a piece I wrote on Oct. 27, 2006 in Vancouver:
By the way, it’s not just the media that is mobbing Ovi on this trip. Whenever the team bus arrives or departs the hotel, there is a horde of autograph seekers and photo opportunists looking for a bit of Mr. Ovechkin’s time. Ditto when the bus arrives at the arena. The groups are polite for the most part; Ovechkin sat outside a coffee shop with teammates Dainius Zubrus and Alexander Semin and a couple of Caps staffers this morning for several minutes while waiting for the bus. The autograph hounds left Ovi alone while he sat with his friends, and they only began requesting signatures after he rose and began walking toward the bus. --
On that night in 2006, Ovechkin left the building with a Roberto Luongo stick, and he signed autographs outside after the game until Bruce Boudreau exhorted him to get on the bus so we could get to the airport and on our way to Edmonton.
That night some 16 years later in Winnipeg was the same. Canadians have such respect and reverence for the game and its players, and I always enjoy my visits up north.
Ovechkin did score in that Dec. 11 game against the Jets, he scored into an empty net soon after future teammate P-L Dubois scored in the third period for Winnipeg, to pull his team within two goals of the Capitals.
On the morning of Dec. 13 in Chicago, Ovechkin was idly hanging around the hallway. Over the years, his teammates’ nickname of Ovi has been typically shortened to a simpler “O,” but I’ve always called him “Ocho.”
I see him sitting on a laundry cart as I come down the hallway outside the visiting locker room of Chicago’s United Center.
“Ocho, how many goals are you going to score tonight?”
“Three, I think?”
Okay, then.
Sure enough, 24 seconds into the first, he scores No. 798. On a Caps power play at 8:14 of the first, he nets another, No. 799.
We are forced to wait all the until the third period, at 6:34, but there it is, goal No. 800 becomes part of his first hat trick in over a year, since Nov. 26, 2021. The hats pour down on the ice and his teammates pour off the bench to mob him. Chants of “Ovi, Ovi, OVI!” ring from the rafters of the barn, as the fans in the Original Six city pay homage to one of the all-time greats. Longtime Hawks Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane skate up to offer their congratulations.
After the game, the scene in the visiting locker room is not unlike what we witnessed earlier this month, on April 4 in Washington and two days later, on Long Island. After fulfilling postgame media obligations on the ice, Ovechkin is ambushed with a shower of domestic beer, and mobbed once again by his teammates, who are even more exuberant than their captain typically is after scoring.
A heap of the hats that had been hurled onto the Chicago ice were piled up in front of his locker stall, and the suds soaked bunch hastily assembled for a team photo with their captain to commemorate the rare milestone.
“That’s great,” said Ovechkin afterwards. “They chant my name, throw their hats. Even in warm-ups, I was feeling that energy right away, that the fans were watching me and the fans wanted to see those historical moments.”
After the postgame media was finished, I hustled up into the stands to spend 20 minutes with my son, Mac, who had driven down from his home Milwaukee at the last minute, arriving just in time to see the first of the three goals Ovechkin scored.
These postgame visits are always quick, typically just 15-20 minutes before we’ve got to be on our way to the next city. Mac marveled at his good fortune in making the trip south, proudly sporting an Ovechkin sweater in enemy territory and being able to witness history.
And I marveled at this now-grown man, and I recalled a day when he was just seven years old, and he and GM George McPhee’s son Graham spent an entire employee Christmas party at Capital One Arena (Verizon Center in those days) skating and playing hockey with a 20-year-old Ovechkin, then just a couple months into his rookie season. The two kids and Ovechkin literally spent the entire party on the ice, skating, shooting and goofing around; they simply would not leave the ice for any reason. It's similar to seeing Ovechkin on the ice with his own two sons, Sergei and Ilya, these days.
The passage of time.
After Mac and I said our goodbyes, I hustled through the now empty – except for the pile of hats – locker room and hustled to the bus for the ride to the airport and the flight home, finally.
He had done it again. Ovechkin scored seven times in four games in the quick leap to 800.
“That’s special,” said Kuznetsov in reverence, after the game. “It’s not every day you see a guy scoring 800, right?”
Nope, it’s not. It’s not every day that the guy scoring 800 calls his shot on the morning of the game, either. For twenty seasons now, Ovechkin has made the ordinary extraordinary.
