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.
Today, we’re revisiting a period of a couple of days in mid-June of 2008, when Ovechkin conquered The NHL Awards Show in Toronto and then returned to a daylong celebration of his feats in DC, not at all unlike what went down here over the last week in the aftermath of 895, from postgame revelry at Balos Estiatorio to Friday’s Gr895 City Celebration at Capital One Arena. Then as now, his off-ice stamina remains ever impressive.
Alex Ovechkin was a rock star in DC from day one, but his 2007-08 performance caught the attention of the greater hockey world in a big way. In this third NHL season – and first with rookie teammate Nicklas Backstrom – Ovechkin piled up a franchise record 65 goals to go along with 47 assists for 112 points, the second-highest total ever amassed by a Capital behind Dennis Maruk (60-76-136 in 1981-82).
Aside from a seven-game drought in February, Ovechkin didn’t go more than two games without a goal at any other point during the regular season, and his finishing kick of 17 goals and 29 points immediately after that dry spell helped the Caps to a 13-4-0 stretch run in which they won the last seven games of the season to claim the Southeast Division crown – and Ovechkin’s first career playoff appearance – on the final night of the season.
After winning the Calder Trophy as the League’s top rookie in 2005-06, Ovechkin’s production dipped just a bit in his sophomore season. But season three stands up as the best of his 20-year-career, and the hardware affirms as much.
At the NHL’s Awards Show in Toronto in June of 2008, Ovechkin brought home the Hart Trophy (most valuable player), the Richard Trophy (leading goal scorer), the Art Ross Trophy (top point scorer) and the Ted Lindsay Award (most outstanding player, selected by NHLPA members), and becoming the first player in League history to earn that combination of awards in the same season.
(With his earlier Calder Trophy and later Conn Smythe Trophy – in 2018 – Ovechkin is also the only player ever to win each of those six trophies.)
Ovechkin also became the first player in NHL history to win the Calder and then the Hart within three seasons. At the time, only Bobby Orr, Bryan Trottier and Mario Lemieux had won both the Calder and the Hart Trophies.
For the third time in as many seasons, Ovechkin was named to the NHL’s postseason first All-Star team, a distinction that only previous NHL player – goaltender Terry Sawchuk (1950-53) – achieved in his first three seasons in the League.
When he went to Toronto for the NHL Awards Show at Toronto’s Elgin Theater on June 12, 2008, Ovechkin had some excellent travel companions. First-year Caps bench boss Bruce Boudreau was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year, and Backstrom was a finalist for the Calder Trophy for rookie of the year.
Boudreau won the Adams while Backstrom was runner-up to Chicago’s Patrick Kane for the Hart Trophy.
Prior to the Awards Show on that Thursday night in Toronto, Ovechkin worked the red carpet that stretched onto Yonge St.
“First year is always first year,” said Ovechkin, when asked to remember his feelings when he was a Calder nominee two years ago. “You’re a little bit shy. Right now, I have more experience. I’m happy I’m here and Bruce and Nick are with me. We support each other and we are all on one team.”
One reporter wondered what Ovechkin might do to improve his game next season.
“Nobody’s perfect,” answered Ovechkin. “You’re not perfect, that’s for sure. Everybody has to improve all the time. I just want to continue what I’m doing but play better and better and better.”
And as we recently witnessed during the ongoing chase to 895 career goals, he prefers to talk about his team and his teammates over talking about himself.
“I think we have a pretty good team, a pretty talented team,” said Ovechkin. “Every year we move forward. Every year we get older and get more experience and move forward. Especially last year. We had so much experience and it will help us.
“We were [in] last [place], we won the division and we made the playoffs and [fell behind] 3-1 and we got this experience. Every year we move forward. I think next year will be much better and I can’t wait until the season starts.
“We love what we’re doing. We never give up. We believe in each other, we believe in our staff, we believe in our coach, we believe in everybody. When these situations happen, it’s good. Only when you believe do you win the Stanley Cup or anything else.”
Even when asked about the individual awards he was up for, it always came back to the team.
“These awards and all awards are all about my teammates, coaches, training staff and everything, all Capitals organization,” he said. “They gave me a great chance. They gave me trust to prove what I can do on the ice. And the fans are unbelievable. They support us and love us; it doesn’t matter what happens, we still have our fans.”
I’d forgotten about this, but the night before the Awards Show, Ovechkin launched his own clothing line. The Ovechkin Designer Street Wear Collection for men was comprised of short- and long-sleeved t-shirts, fleece, and assorted headwear. Asked about his latest venture, he again started by making it about something else.
“I think I’m the happiest 22-year-old guy on the planet right now,” said Ovechkin. “I have a great family. Everything I have I made myself from working hard. And I know it’s improving. I’m happy right now with what I’m doing and how everything is going.”
Pressed further about the threads, he acquiesced.
“It’s something new,” he shrugged. “When I was a kid, I don’t have style. I have only one [pair of] socks and one pants and that’s it. I think it’s always fun when you do something new for you and for somebody. It’s new stuff in my life and I hope it’s going well.”
I know I didn’t sleep much that Thursday night, and I had an early flight home the next morning. Upon arrival at our offices in Ballston, I ran into the estimable Phil Pritchard, keeper of the Stanley Cup and one of the many great humans who populate our sport. Along with a couple other staffers, I helped Phil get Ovechkin’s four trophies up the elevator and into the offices. I carried the Lindsay Trophy, and once upon a time there was film footage of us lugging the hardware up to the ninth floor.
I remember dragging so hard and feeling so beat after a couple of long days and nights before this one, but here was a bubbly and effervescent Ovechkin – who kept pretty much the same schedule I’d been on – receiving the key to the city of DC from then-mayor Adrian Fenty later in the beautiful late spring day, outside the John A. Wilson building on Pennsylvania Ave.
I remember marveling at his ability to drop one-liners in his second language when he took the key from Fenty.
“I have key for the city, and I am president this day in the city, so everybody have fun.”
And after a short, well-timed pause, “No speed limits.”
That night at the late, great Teatro Goldini on K St., the Caps and Capitol File teamed up to host a grand party in which Ovechkin was again feted for his unprecedented hardware haul. Among the well-wishers that night were the late, great John Thompson, Rod Langway and Peter Bondra, and of course, the indefatigable Pritchard, because all the Trophies were there as well.
When I think back that whirlwind 72-hour span of going to Toronto and back and witnessing all the love and adoration for Ovechkin and how he handled it as a 22-year-old sleep shorn superstar, I’m always reminded of the wise words of Boudreau, whose own star didn’t ascend until well after the end of his playing career.
“You don’t want Alex to change a thing that he does,” said Boudreau. “He told me last night, he said, ‘This is what I plan on doing for training.’ I said, ‘Whatever you did last year, just duplicate it. Don’t alleviate or deviate from your training regimen or anything else.’ It’s the same way with playing hockey. He is such a thoroughbred that you don’t want to say, ‘Listen, don’t do that because you might get hurt. Don’t do this.’ He has got to play like he plays, which is foot on the gas pedal and go as hard as he can for as long as he can. We take it for that. It’s a Bobby Orr-type syndrome, only you hope he stays healthy.
“I can’t read into the future, but I don’t see his personality changing too much. It hasn’t changed at all from what I’ve gathered since he got in the League, and he’s had nothing but individual success. He has stayed the same. He stays the same when you interview him off the ice and he stays the same on the ice, his personality. I think he loves to play, and he loves to win. Once we start winning more playoff rounds, it’s going to be like a hunger. He is never going to be satisfied, and he is always going to want more.
“If you looked at our team at the end of the year, when guys scored, everybody started showing more enthusiasm. There was more jumping on people and more demonstrative [displays] after a goal. I think the team has taken on a little bit of his personality, and I think the team will continue to take on Alex’s personality with the more success we have.”
Quite honestly, I feel like that’s been the case this season, too. The chase to 895 was every bit as memorable for his teammates this season as it was for him, and their daily reverence and agape love for their captain have in turn elevated him. And as Boudreau suggested all those years ago, Ovechkin’s magnetism and his charisma haven’t dimmed in the slightest from the first day he arrived here. All he must do is be who he is, and the rest follows and flows from there.
Where’s the party? It’s wherever Ovi is, whether it’s just after a goal or just after the celebration of a hardware haul, or a 20-year quest to take down one of the NHL’s most vaunted records.
