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WASHINGTON — Sometime soon — Sunday maybe, perhaps Thursday — Alex Ovechkin will reach the summit.
In a career jammed with consequential goals, none will be remembered more than the next one. We’ll talk about it then, and we’ll do it in the grandest of terms, because that’s how it all works.
To say he’s chasing immortality, whole cloth, would be incorrect; that’s a fish he caught long ago. He is, though, still chasing something. The biggest record in his sport. The biggest name. The biggest number. Scoring one goal is hard. Scoring more of them than anyone else, ever, is something else, and Ovechkin is about to walk through that door.
On Friday night, he knocked.
Ovechkin began the Washington Capitals’ game against the Chicago Blackhawks with 892 goals, three away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career record. He finished it with 894. He was inches away from 895. And 896. And 897.
On a different night, in a different set of circumstances, that would qualify as some sort of disappointment. There are six games left on Washington’s regular-season schedule — starting with Sunday’s road game against the New York Islanders — which makes breaking the record a near-certainty. Just two of those games, though, are at Capital One Arena, in front of the fans who love him most. If you’re shooting for the dream scenario, that bit of math isn’t kind.
Still, what Ovechkin got on Friday night — what he gave the people in attendance, and the way he gave it to them — was more than good enough.
“Everybody here saw it,” longtime teammate Tom Wilson said. “Everybody in the building got to experience it. Everybody in this locker room got to be a part of it.”
If you doubted that Ovechkin would make a run at the record on Friday night, you haven’t paid attention. It’s not just about his resume, either, remarkable as it is; it’s about how he’s played over the last few weeks. He had scored in each of his last three games. He hadn’t gone more than two games without a goal since Jan. 1. For the season, somehow, he was clipping along at a 54-goal pace, waylaid only by a broken leg — and far more briefly than the standard-issue 39-year-old would be out.
In hockey, nothing is truly inevitable. The margins are too slim. The game, by definition, is too chaotic. Ovechkin, though — scoring in bunches, and doing it early — is as close as you can get.
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