Watching Wayne Gretzky highlights can be like peering into another universe, one that closely mirrors our own but in which everything is just a little bit off. Yes, it’s hockey. All the hallmarks are there — the ice is the same, the dimensions of the rink are the same, even most of the jerseys are the same. But everything’s a tick slower, enough so that some shifts casually bleed into two minutes, three minutes or more. There’s time and space enough for old-school slap shots, even in transition. The game is somehow both more physical — violent, even — but less defensive.
Then there are the goalies. They’re 5-foot-something. They’re standing upright, kicking and flailing at the puck, the butterfly still viewed by most with skepticism, and reverse VH an unknown concept from the distant future. Their pads look deflated compared to the life rafts strapped to goalies today, the ones that make stringy 6-foot-4 bean poles look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. And they’re constantly giving up goals that simply would never go in these days.
Simply put, it was undeniably easier to score in the 1980s than it is in the modern era. It’s incontrovertible fact. In Gretzky’s first 12 seasons (1979-80 through 1990-91), during which Gretzky scored an almost unfathomable 718 goals — 12 40-goal seasons, nine 50-goal seasons, five 60-goal seasons, two 70-goal seasons, two 80-goal seasons, and one truly absurd, record-setting 92-goal season — the leaguewide save percentage was .878. Teams scored an average of 3.78 goals per game. By comparison, this season, teams average approximately 2.8 goals per game.
None of this is to discredit The Great One. At the height of Gretzky’s career, he posted the only four 200-point seasons in NHL history. During his record-setting 215-point campaign in 1985-86, he had 163 assists alone. Only 11 times in the history of the league has anyone posted even 163 points in a season, and Gretzky owns nine of those (Mario Lemieux has the other two).
In the middle of Alex Ovechkin’s career, in 2014-15, Dallas’ Jamie Benn led the entire league with 87 points.
Gretzky is the undisputed (well, outside of Pittsburgh and Boston, at least) greatest hockey player of all time. Perhaps no individual athlete since Babe Ruth so dominated a North American team sport the way Gretzky did, and it’s likely none ever will again. But he hasn’t been the game’s greatest goal-scorer for some time now. Gretzky has held the record, but Ovechkin has held the mantle.
Now Ovechkin has both. The ageless Washington Capitals winger’s relentless two-decade assault on Gretzky and goalies around the league culminated on Sunday on Long Island with his 895th career goal, a mark never before reached, and a mark considered by most unreachable for a quarter century, since Gretzky’s storied career ended in 1999 as a New York Ranger.
Gretzky was 38 years old that final season. He scored nine times in 70 games.
Ovechkin is 39 years old. He has scored 42 times in 61 games.
He is singular in the game’s history, one of one.
Gretzky had the highest peaks. Lemieux might have had the most talent. The New York Islanders’ Mike Bossy was the most efficient. But Ovechkin is the most prolific, the most consistent, the most enduring — combining those legends’ finishing ability with a durability none could match, and doing it in a vastly more difficult era in which to score.
“It’s so hard,” Gretzky said on Friday, moments before Ovechkin tied him with No. 894. “I don’t care what era you play in: 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. It’s hard to score goals. Good for him. Players are better today. The equipment’s better. The coaching’s better. But that’s the progression in our game, right? And that’s a positive.”
It’s often folly to try to compare legends across eras — Ruth vs. Willie Mays vs. Shohei Ohtani; or Otto Graham vs. Joe Montana vs. Tom Brady; or Wilt Chamberlain vs. Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James. Ruth never faced an integrated team, Graham and Montana never played in the wide-open passing games of the modern NFL, Chamberlain played in an era without the 3-point shot. There’s no way to cleanly line up their accomplishments.
But we’re not here to compare Gretzky to Ovechkin as hockey players. That’s not even a debate. Not a soul in the hockey world even considers Ovechkin the best player of his era, a title that goes to his longtime rival, Sidney Crosby. But in terms of sheer goal-scoring, Ovechkin stands alone. Nobody’s found the back of the net more, and it’s only gotten harder to score over time.
So putting Ovechkin in his place in history isn’t difficult. He scored goals, and he did it better than anyone else. Ever. Yes, in his heyday, he was a human wrecking ball, third all-time in hits (a stat that’s only been tracked since 2007-08). Yes, he led the Capitals to the Stanley Cup in 2018. But Ovechkin scored goals. It’s who he was, it’s what he did, it’s what he’ll be remembered for, long after he scores for the last time. We’ll remember that one-time slap shot from the left circle — his office — the one that everyone knew was coming for 20 years, but nobody could ever do anything about. We’ll remember the goal he scored flat on his back, stick over his head in 2006. We’ll remember the jubilant, glass-crashing celebrations — the sensation of scoring never seeming to get old with the man who’s done it the most. He has the most power-play goals (325), the most empty-net goals (65; Gretzky is second at 56), the most overtime goals (27) and the most game-winning goals (136). And he reacted to nearly every one of them like it was his first.
He’s not done yet, either. When he started last season with just five goals in his first 29 games, the hockey world was wondering aloud if he was cooked, washed up, done. Maybe Gretzky’s record was unbreakable, after all. Then all Ovechkin did was score 26 goals in the last 50 games of the season, and a staggering 42 in 61 so far this season. No, he doesn’t move like he used to. No, he’s not wreaking havoc on every shift these days. Yes, there are some shifts when it looks like his controller was unplugged, his feet barely moving until a teammate slides a puck his way in that left circle — then, boom, goal. He’s 39 years old, the fourth-oldest player in the league. TNT broadcaster Darren Pang recently caught flak for calling Ovechkin a “one-trick pony,” and at this stage of his career, maybe he kind of is.
But it’s one hell of a trick. And he keeps pulling it off, time and time and time again.
(Photo: Hannah Foslien / Getty Images)
