There’s an unwritten rule in hockey that players go a bit easier against their own goaltenders in practice. Alexander Ovechkin didn’t know that.
“He took a one-timer that just missed me and went into the net. I was thankful it didn’t hit me,” Washington Capitals legend Olaf Kolzig joked to NBC News about Ovechkin’s first training camp as a rookie. “I hadn’t seen a shot that powerful in a long, long time.”
Kolzig, a veteran leader on the 2005 team, pulled Ovechkin, the No. 1 draft pick, aside to remind him they were in it together.
“‘Listen, I’m your teammate. I don’t need to see the full velocity of your shot,’” he told Ovechkin. “He was like, ‘OK, I’ll take some off.’”
And while Ovechkin agreed to lessen the intensity in practice, he has done the opposite in games. Eight hundred and ninety-five times.
On Sunday, Ovechkin, 39, surpassed Wayne Gretzky for the most goals in an NHL career. Though many saw the record as a near-impossible target — it had stood for more than 25 years — his teammates past and present knew he was capable of achieving the unimaginable.
“Never bet against him,” Capitals defenseman John Carlson said.
‘The hockey world kind of raised their eyes’
Ovechkin, born and raised in Moscow, entered the NHL with plenty of hype.
After a dominant young career at Dynamo Moscow in the Russian Super League as a teenager, he was selected No. 1 overall by the Capitals. According to a Washington Post story that day, Ovechkin was “heralded by scouts and general managers as the best prospect since Mario Lemieux.”
Ovechkin poses with head coach Wayne Gretzky of the Phoenix Coyotes during the 2006 NHL draft.Jeff Vinnick / Getty Images
Jeff Halpern, a center on Ovechkin’s rookie team, said you could see the talent right away. But his physicality — not his shot — is what initially stood out in his first game, against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
On his first shift, he crushed defenseman Radoslav Suchy hard into the boards, breaking the glass. Play had to be stopped.
“Ovi used to run guys over. He was a monster on a forecheck,” Halpern said. “Even with the puck, if a guy stood up on him, he’d almost go through him. … Ovi was a missile.”
He was also a scoring machine.
Ovechkin wasn’t just one of the top rookies that season; he was one of the best players. He finished third in scoring with 106 points and third in goals with 52.
Kolzig said the “blade of his stick is like a hook. And when he gets it right in the sweet spot, that thing just comes off like a slingshot. It just rockets.”
No goal that season — or possibly ever — was more impactful than the one against the Phoenix Coyotes on Jan. 16, 2006.
In the third period, Ovechkin picked the puck up at center ice and sprinted down the right wing. As he was headed to the net, Coyotes defenseman Paul Mara knocked him down. Sliding on his back and facing away from the goal, Ovechkin flung the puck toward the net with one hand. It flew past goalie Brian Boucher in what some consider the greatest goal in NHL history.
“When he scored that goal, everyone in the building and the hockey world kind of raised their eyes and couldn’t believe what they just saw,” Halpern said.
For all Ovechkin did on the ice, his teammates say they were just as impressed off it.
When he joined the team, he knew very little English. While he used Lithuanian Dainius Zubrus as a translator early on, he asked to room with a North American teammate when the team played outside Washington to learn the language.
That player ended up being right winger Brian Willsie, who said he helped Ovechkin navigate life on the road. He worked with his new teammate on how to dress for games, what time to make the team bus and, maybe most importantly, order room service.
Ovechkin skates against the Philadelphia Flyers at Comcast Arena in Philadelphia in 2005.Jamie Squire / Getty Images
Willsie and Ovechkin had a tradition for away games: No matter where they were, they would get desert when they got back to the hotel. Ice cream. Pie. Cookies and milk. Ovechkin, not confident in his English at the time, would cede ordering duties to his teammate.
Midway through the year, Willsie asked Ovechkin to order himself for the first time, and he refused.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m not ordering.’ So we kind of had a bit of a staring contest,” Willsie said. “I think that was the first night we didn’t have any.”
According to Willsie, Ovechkin didn’t have a great game the next night and he knew the lack of dessert was to blame.
“So he finally — frustrated and probably a little pissed off with me — ordered dessert. He didn’t think he did very well, but he did great. But it was kind of my little teaching moment that, ‘Hey, you gotta start doing some of these things for yourself. I’m not going to be here all the time.’”
‘He’s an animal. He gets shots off when you think he never could.’
Ovechkin has taken the hockey world by storm since that rookie season, adding more than 800 goals. What separates him from other legendary scorers? Willsie can explain.
“The visiting opponent knows exactly what he’s going to do and exactly where he’s going to score from, and he does it anyway,” he said. “That’s what he’s done for 20 years.”
Where Willsie is referring to is what many pundits call Ovechkin’s “office.” It’s an area on the ice just left of the faceoff circle where a majority of his goals have come from. He’s particularly lethal in power-play situations, as we saw Sunday afternoon in his record-breaking goal at UBS Arena.
Even when opponents are ready for it, they can’t stop it.
“When teams are playing the Washington Capitals, they’re going to try to make sure they take away Ovi as much as possible. And it’s pretty unreal how every game he seems to be getting prime scoring opportunities,” Capitals goaltender Charlie Lingren told NBC News. “Sometimes you just ask yourself, ‘How is it possible when you know there are teams that are zeroing in on him?’”
Connor McMichael, a 24-year-old center on the Capitals, said Ovechkin’s ability is more than just power play goals, however.
“A lot of people talk about his one-timer, but I think he’s proven that he scores in so many different ways,” he said. “Even when teams are shading him on the power play, taking away his one-timer, he’s still able to find ways to get the puck and put it in the back of the net.”
Said Carlson, a Capitals defenseman who has played 16 seasons alongside Ovechkin: “He’s an animal. He gets shots off when you think he never could or he finds space. He’s probably underrated in just how smart of a player he is.”
‘Ovi has never had a bad day in his life’
One common theme among former and current teammates is Ovechkin’s love for the game and how he treats those in it.
“I always say Ovi has never had a bad day in his life,” Capitals center Lars Eller said. “He’s always joking around. He’s got a good sense of humor. He laughs at others, but he also laughs at himself. That’s one of the things I appreciate about him.”
Alex Ovechkin tosses a puck to fans during warmups against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Capital One Arena in Washington on Dec. 4, 2021.Jason Andrew / Redux
Mike Knuble, who is the only player to be teammates with both Ovechkin and Gretzky, was living with his family in Michigan when he signed with Washington in 2009. The first player welcoming him to the team was Ovechkin, who called from a club in Moscow.
“You could hear the music in the background — ‘oonz, oonz, oonz’ — and he’s just like, ‘Hey, I heard you signed. We’re happy to have you,’” Knuble remembered. “You’re standing there in the driveway with the kids and you’re like, ‘That was Alex Ovechkin who just called me.’ You see their jaws drop.”
Devante Smith-Pelly, who joined the Capitals before the 2017 season, said Ovechkin couldn’t have been a better teammate.
“You hear these stories in the media of how they assumed he would be, but he was the total opposite,” Smith-Pelly said. “He was great to everyone — great to the younger guys, great to the new guys on the team.”
That season, Smith-Pelly and Ovechkin led the franchise to its first Stanley Cup. Ovechkin had three goals and two assists in the series against the Las Vegas Golden Knights, including a one-timer in the decisive Game 5.
Kolzig, who played 14 seasons with the Capitals and was in a management role with the team at the time, has one particularly fond memory of that night.
“Ovi had taken the Cup and he was heading back to the dressing room, and he spotted me out of the corner of his eye. He beelined it right to me, and he goes, ‘Can you f—ing believe we won this b—-?’ And he handed it to me, and we had a moment there,” Kolzig said. “It just showed that Ovi understood the history of our organization and the role I had in the organization. We went to the finals in ’98 and we didn’t win. So he knew how special it was for me, as well, and he wanted to honor that.”
‘He’s literally is the most dangerous hockey player that has ever played’
With the all-time goal mark now in hand, Ovechkin has solidified himself as one of the best players ever to put on skates. He may never top Gretzky — the “Great One” has far more points and assists, as well as four Stanley Cups.
But “he’s going to be in the argument of the best two or three of all time now,” Knuble said. “He played his heart out every game, and that’s something you always remember and always respect.”
Willsie was more to the point.
“He’s literally is the most dangerous hockey player that has ever played,” he said.
Ovechkin skates before the second period of a game against the Calgary Flames at Capital One Arena on Feb. 25. Jess Rapfogel / NHLI via Getty Images
Kolzig said Ovechkin respected the history of the game — he didn’t let it define him.
“Bombastic. Everything he does is bombastic,” Kolzig said. “The way he shoots the puck, the way he skates, the way he hits people, the way he celebrates goals, the way he interacts with his teammates. There’s nothing subtle about Ovi.”
Karl Alzner was Ovechkin’s teammate from 2009 to 2017. He agreed with Kolzig, pointing to Ovechkin’s uniform differences as an example.
“It’s normally all the same — the white laces, the normal visor, everything kind of very clean-cut,” Alzner said. “Ovi kind of broke that with the yellow laces, the skate lace hanging from his pants, a tinted visor. He definitely was nontraditional.”
Alzner added that Ovechkin’s unique leadership style stood out to his teammates.
“You have so many different types of leaders: the ones that talk a lot, the ones that lead by example. He was kind of a mix, because he would go out there and work his tail off and crash and bang and bring energy. But he would also do it in a way that was different. … I don’t think there’s anybody that’s done it quite like him.”
