Washington Capitals superstar Alexander Ovechkin entered the season looking like a lock to break Wayne Gretzky's career goal record, but he sputtered out of the gate in a major way and left many wondering if he was really going to get to 895.
But a recent hot stretch has seen Ovechkin find his form yet again, and this race against time is looking like it's going to go down to the wire.
Ovechkin entered this season as a 38-year-old with 822 career goals, putting him 72 behind Wayne Gretzky's career mark of 894.
That essentially meant that two seasons with an average of 36 goals would tie the record and anything more in either of those seasons would break it.
That felt like a foregone conclusion, as Ovechkin was coming off seasons of 48, 24 (in 45 games), 50, and 42 in the last four years.
He showed no signs of slowing down, and he had plenty of room to regress from his 92 in the two prior years in the two seasons to come before he turned 40.
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Alex Ovechkin's Sudden Regression
Father Time comes for every single exceptional athlete at some point, but Ovechkin really seemed to be doing a better job at staving him off than most.
Then this season began, and the man who put up 42 goals last year suddenly struggled to score at all. Ovechkin scored just 7 goals in October, November, and December, including a career-long stretch of 14 games without a goal.
It was the exact type of start to the season that Ovechkin couldn't afford, although there was some bad luck involved as he did take 126 shots in those three months, good for an abysmal shooting percentage of 5.5%, well below his career average and well below what any regression in that department would look like.
But still, the combination of bad luck and decreased ability significantly decreased his margin for error in the record chase.
Now, he's hard at work at undoing that bad start. Ovechkin has scored in his last five games, getting one tally each against the Stars, Canadiens, Bruins, Panthers, and Canucks, a tough stretch of teams to do so against.
It's important not just for the goal chase, but for the Capitals, who are facing an uphill battle to return to the playoffs after missing out last season.
Ovechkin has two seasons left on his contract after this one, and he'll be 39 and 40 in this season. If he wants to break the record, the focus for the rest of this year needs to be on leaving as little work to be done in those last two seasons as possible.
This record was once seen as totally unbreakable, and while hockey fans are now used to this conversation, that shouldn't be lost in the greater context of the sporting achievement we're seeing here.
The advances in defense and goaltending since Gretzky's era are difficult to measure, and the fact that Ovechkin is even close is a truly unparalleled feat of dominance and longevity.
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