Gr8ness Achieved: How Alex Ovechkin Broke Wayne Gretzky's Unbreakable NHL Goals Record

It’s officially official. Alex Ovechkin has passed Wayne Gretzky to become the most prolific goal-scorer in NHL history.

Ovechkin, 39, sets the record almost a decade after passing Sergei Fedorov to become the NHL’s top Russian-born goal-scorer. He claimed that record with his 484th career goal against the Dallas Stars on Nov. 19, 2015, in his 777th NHL game.

That year, Ovechkin went on to win his fourth-straight Rocket Richard Trophy — and his sixth in total — while logging his fifth 50-goal season. But as prolific as he was, the idea that he’d be able to score another 411 to pass Wayne Gretzky was largely thought to be out of reach.

One person who could see a path to 895, even back then, was Ovechkin’s longtime teammate Brooks Laich, who played with him for 11 years.

“It’s within reason that he could potentially challenge for the all-time goal-scoring record,” Laich said when the Capitals visited Vancouver in October 2015. “That’s incredible to say in this day and age, with how tight the league is. He’s got the best shot in the world. He gets four or five good looks at the net every night. He can score in so many ways: individually, with traffic in front of the net, with deflections.” 

On April 6, 2025, Laich was proven correct. On the power play, with his family and Wayne Gretzky in the building, Ovechkin took a wrist shot from the left faceoff circle to score for the first time on New York Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin.

The biggest keys to Ovechkin’s success have been his ability to stay healthy and to maintain his scoring touch all the way into his late 30s. That was a challenge for Gretzky.

Early on, Ovechkin worked a volume proposition, leading the league in shots in 10 of his first 11 seasons. Now, he’s choosier. His shooting percentage this season is the highest that it’s ever been — and it’s not even particularly close.

While the 2004-05 lockout delayed Ovechkin’s NHL debut by a year, the rule changes that accompanied the resumption of play worked in his favor, spiking power-play opportunities to the highest level in league history and starting Ovechkin’s journey to an all-time record of 325 power-play goals.

But as Laich pointed out, Gretzky’s prime was a completely different era. When The Great One logged his record-setting 92 goals in 1981-82, he was one of 10 50-goal scorers across the league, in the only season since the 1940s where the average scoring rate was above four goals a game. Butterfly goaltending didn’t even become popular until Patrick Roy revolutionized the position a few years later. Many goalies were still playing stand-up at that time, and average save percentages hovered just above .870.

When defenses and goaltenders started to tighten things up in the late 90s, Gretzky’s scoring dropped accordingly. But when league-wide offense dipped during the mid-2010s, Ovechkin kept doing his thing. 

His totals may not always have been eye-popping on a historical scale, but he won or shared the Rocket Richard seven times in eight years between 2013 and 2020 — a run that started with 32 goals in 48 games in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 campaign and wrapped with 48 in 68 in the season that ended early due to the pandemic. 

During those years, here’s where he stood relative to his closest challengers:

There were only five 50-goal campaigns over those eight seasons. Ovechkin had four of them, and Draisaitl had the other. 

It’s another way of slicing the onion to show how he was in a class of his own during his most dominant period. And other than his one down year in 2016-17, his margin of dominance didn’t start to shrink until Draisaitl — who’s 10 years younger — challenged him in 2019.

Now, as the NHL celebrates Ovechkin’s historic moment, every other elite goal-scorer will now chase No. 8. He stands above the rest.

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