
#1 700vi
There was no doubt an Alex Ovechkin milestone was going to be at the top of this list and of course we were going to go with the big 700th goal. Back on Feb. 22 against the New Jersey Devils, the great eight became the eighth and second fastest NHL player to reach the mark of 700 career goals.
Ovechkin reached that milestone in his 1,144th career game trailing Wayne Gretzky who took 886 games to reach that mark. Ovechkin has 706 career goals before the pause in the season. He’s just three goals shy of passing Mike Gartner (708) for the seventh most goals in NHL history.
Ovechkin passed some elite company on his road to 700 goals including Luc Robitaille (668), Teemu Selanne (684), Mario Lemieux (690), Steve Yzerman (692) and Mark Messier (694) on the NHL’s all-time scoring list.
Ovechkin’s best stretch that catapulted him to the cusp of 700 goals came from Jan. 13 through Feb. 4 when he scored 14 goals over seven games, which included three hat tricks. Ironically his last hat trick was his first natural hat trick with three goals in the final seven minutes of regulation against the Los Angles Kings, a complete takeover.
Here’s hoping Ovechkin gets a shot at 800 later in his career which would get him one step closer to Wayne Gretzky.