Wayne Gretzky’s National Hockey League record of 894 goals (set in 1999) was officially surpassed by Washington Capitals captain and franchise icon Alex Ovechkin earlier this month.
Ovechkin is now the leading goal scorer in NHL history, breaking a record that most thought was impossible to reach. He also continues to play at an extremely high level by having already reached 44 goals during the 2024-25 NHL season despite missing a month with a broken leg.
Alex Ovechkin Reveals Retirement Plans
But at age 39, how much hockey does he have left in him?
Before facing off against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins in their final regular-season game of the schedule ahead of the 2025 postseason, Ovechkin made it clear that he’s not ready to hang up his skates just yet and had a simple answer.
“I’m not retiring, so.”
Earlier in the week, Ovechkin said during a live interview with Pat McAfee that he has no intention of calling it a career yet.
“We’ll see what’s going to happen. I’ll be honest with you, I love the team, I love being around the boys, and as long as I can, I will try to stick around and put my ‘great body’, how you said, in the NHL,” Ovechkin told McAfee.
Ovechkin also reflected on how long both he and Crosby have played in the NHL and how the styles in play have shifted since then.
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“When we came into the league… it was a different system, different style of game,” Ovechkin said about Crosby. “Two decades, we kind of transform ourselves to stay at the same level, and show that yeah, we’re pretty good players.”
The NHL was in desperate need of preparing its tarnished image after a multitude of fans were turned off from the game after it became the first professional sports League to have an entire campaign wiped out because of a work stoppage.
Both Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby burst onto the scene as rookies with their respective clubs, and immediately began taking the NHL by storm and thrilling fans not only in Washington and Pittsburgh but across North America and the world.
They’ve also been postseason opponents numerous times; Crosby and the Penguins bested Ovechkin and the Capitals in 2009, 2016, and 2017 before the tables were finally turned in 2018 by Washington.
Each year they’ve met in the postseason, the winner of their respective series has gone on to win the Stanley Cup.