My post from last Wednesday offered up a few hockey thoughts and observations, with the occasion being that the official midway point of the NHL's 2019-20 season had passed and the All-Star break was around the corner.
Well, seeing as how the All-Star break is still around the corner -- the skills competition is scheduled for this coming Saturday and the three-on-three tourney game for Sunday -- I figured I'd offer up a few more. And since these particular thoughts and observations are about a pair of individual accomplishments, and are not necessarily about the current season per se, I'll probably do another post before the weekend arrives.
Anyway, here goes:
Anyway, here goes:
The Great Eight
The Mario Lemieux Hat Trick is legendary and will always garner a lot of votes for "the best hat trick of all-time," even though it was not, technically speaking, actually a hat trick.
But now it has competition, for as far as "conventional" hatties go I do not see how anything can beat the one Alexander Ovechkin pulled off this past Saturday... and it's all because of what it accomplished.
Ovechkin's first goal Saturday came midway through the opening period, when he was sprung on a breakaway by a perfect stretch pass from (who else?) Nicklas Backstrom and blasted a rocket into the net behind NY Islanders' goalie Semyon Varlamov: The 690th marker of his career, it put him into a tie with Lemieux for #10 on the all-time goals list.
Then, 5:18 into the third, he went to his backhand on a second effort while barreling through the left circle and banked the puck past Varlamov off the leg of defenseman Ryan Pulock: The 691st of his career, it gave him sole possession of the #10 spot.
Later, with Washington up 5-4 in the waning minutes, the Islanders pulled their goalie for an extra skater, and you know what an empty net portends when a sniper like Ovechkin is on the ice. After T.J. Oshie got the puck and sent it to him in the neutral zone, Ovechkin took a few contested strides, let it rip, and of course hit pay dirt: The 692nd of his career, it moved him into a tie with Steve Yzerman for ninth-most of all time.
You can watch it here.
More Great Eight
This is Ovechkin's 15th season in the league, and the fewest goals he has ever finished with is 32. He already has 34 this campaign, making him only the third person in history to score 30+ goals 15 consecutive times. The others are Jaromir Jagr and fellow Caps legend Mike Gartner. If he goes for 30+ again next year, Ovechkin will stand alone at 16.
But why talk about seasons with 30 or more goals when he has had ten seasons with 40 or more? Only three other players in history have pulled that off: Wayne Gretzky (12) plus Mario Lemieux and Marcel Dionne (10 each). Barring injury, it's a given that The Great Eight will pass 40 again this season, seeing as how there are 33 games left to play, and that would move him past Lemieux and Dionne and leave him needing "just" one more 40-goal campaign to catch The Great One himself. Which certainly feels doable when you consider that Ovechkin topped the league with 51 goals last year and is on pace for 51 again this year.
Oh, and speaking of him being on pace for 51 goals this year, if he does reach the half-century mark he will move into a first-place tie for the most seasons ever with 50 or more goals. It would be his ninth, equal to Gretzky and Mike Bossy.
It is remarkable that he is continuing this torrid pace of production after all these years. Age be damned!
And lastly: If Ovechkin does finish with 51 this spring, he will not only pass Yzerman on the all-time list but also pass Gartner and Mark Messier, which would leave him needing "just" 33 more to leapfrog ahead of Dionne, Phil Esposito, and Brett Hull into the #4 spot. And fyi, Jagr has "only" 25 more than Hull.
In other words, Ovie is on the final ascent to historic greatness and we should appreciate that we get to watch that ascent while it happens.
K-Man
Ovechkin was not the only person to reach a milestone this past weekend. Patrick Kane did so as well, notching his thousandth career point when he assisted on Brandon Saad's goal against Winnipeg on Sunday.
To put that into perspective: More than 7,100 non-goalies have played in the NHL since it was founded over a century ago, and more than 4,800 of them (i.e., more than two-thirds) finished their careers with fewer than a hundred points. Only 486 players (i.e., less than seven percent) have managed to get even halfway to 1,000. So Kane reaching that plateau is a big freakin' deal.
Obviously, when the 31-year Buffalo native hit his mark on Sunday, he did so with less dramatic flair than the 34-year-old Moscow native displayed the day before. But doesn't that seem about right? Although Kane has been a speedy, highlight-reel star since Day One, much of his game is based on stealth, on an ability to shift around and elude notice until the moment he strikes. I remember Nikita Kucherov commenting that when he and Kane were on opposing sides of the 2015 Stanley Cup Final, the main thing that impressed him was how Kane could render himself invisible while skating to the right places on the ice -- despite being the Blackhawks' biggest offensive threat and already having a Conn Smythe to his name.
You know the resume when it comes to this 5'10" winger: How he helped steer a proud franchise out of the doldrums and deliver three Stanley Cups to its trophy case; how the first of those championships was secured by him scoring the Cup-winning goal in overtime of Game Six as a 21-year-old in his third season; how he was the league's playoff MVP in his sixth season; how he missed the final two months of the 2014-15 regular season with a broken collarbone, but returned for the playoffs and scored 23 points in 23 playoff games to help bring the Cup back to Chi-town (damn it); and how he is ostensibly age-proof, seeing as how he's clipping along at more than a point per game for this, his 13th season, while his most prolific campaign to date was just last season when he racked up 110 points (44, 66) in 81 games.
Stan Mikita, Bobby Hull, Denis Savard, Tony Esposito, Chris Chelios, Charlie Gardiner, Glen Hall, Ed Befour. They all suited up for the Chicago Blackhawks and left indelible marks on the franchise's history. But there is a strong case to be made that Patrick Kane should go down as the greatest Blackhawk of all.
And lastly: If Ovechkin does finish with 51 this spring, he will not only pass Yzerman on the all-time list but also pass Gartner and Mark Messier, which would leave him needing "just" 33 more to leapfrog ahead of Dionne, Phil Esposito, and Brett Hull into the #4 spot. And fyi, Jagr has "only" 25 more than Hull.
In other words, Ovie is on the final ascent to historic greatness and we should appreciate that we get to watch that ascent while it happens.
K-Man
Ovechkin was not the only person to reach a milestone this past weekend. Patrick Kane did so as well, notching his thousandth career point when he assisted on Brandon Saad's goal against Winnipeg on Sunday.
To put that into perspective: More than 7,100 non-goalies have played in the NHL since it was founded over a century ago, and more than 4,800 of them (i.e., more than two-thirds) finished their careers with fewer than a hundred points. Only 486 players (i.e., less than seven percent) have managed to get even halfway to 1,000. So Kane reaching that plateau is a big freakin' deal.
Obviously, when the 31-year Buffalo native hit his mark on Sunday, he did so with less dramatic flair than the 34-year-old Moscow native displayed the day before. But doesn't that seem about right? Although Kane has been a speedy, highlight-reel star since Day One, much of his game is based on stealth, on an ability to shift around and elude notice until the moment he strikes. I remember Nikita Kucherov commenting that when he and Kane were on opposing sides of the 2015 Stanley Cup Final, the main thing that impressed him was how Kane could render himself invisible while skating to the right places on the ice -- despite being the Blackhawks' biggest offensive threat and already having a Conn Smythe to his name.
You know the resume when it comes to this 5'10" winger: How he helped steer a proud franchise out of the doldrums and deliver three Stanley Cups to its trophy case; how the first of those championships was secured by him scoring the Cup-winning goal in overtime of Game Six as a 21-year-old in his third season; how he was the league's playoff MVP in his sixth season; how he missed the final two months of the 2014-15 regular season with a broken collarbone, but returned for the playoffs and scored 23 points in 23 playoff games to help bring the Cup back to Chi-town (damn it); and how he is ostensibly age-proof, seeing as how he's clipping along at more than a point per game for this, his 13th season, while his most prolific campaign to date was just last season when he racked up 110 points (44, 66) in 81 games.
Stan Mikita, Bobby Hull, Denis Savard, Tony Esposito, Chris Chelios, Charlie Gardiner, Glen Hall, Ed Befour. They all suited up for the Chicago Blackhawks and left indelible marks on the franchise's history. But there is a strong case to be made that Patrick Kane should go down as the greatest Blackhawk of all.
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