Washington Capitals: Upcoming Player Milestones To Watch For
By CJ Witt
Anthony Mantha
When looking at milestones I tend to only point out the “bigger” ones. Anything over 500 games and some more special smaller numbers like Kuznetsov’s 300 assists. Anthony Mantha will hit a nice round number this season though, and while not very big, it’s still impressive and kind of shows you’ve made it as an NHL player.
Mantha needs just one goal to hit 100 career goals. It’s obviously not Ovechkin and his chasing 894, but for a younger guy 100 is still very impressive and should be pointed out.
T.J. Oshie
T.J. Oshie will soon be one of those guys we will be counting down to 1,000 NHL games played. However that will not be this season. This year he will have to settle for 900 games played. If he can play in the vast majority of this season he can set himself up for a possible 1,000th NHL game in the 2022-23 season.
Oshie is sitting on 856 games needing 44 games to hit 900.
Alex Ovechkin
Every time I talk about this guy it seems like I’m talking about him breaking records. I won’t really do that today, but Alex Ovechkin does still have some milestones to look out for.
Going into this season Ovechkin has played in 1,197 games. Very early in the season we’ll be talking about 1,200 games for him.
Ovechkin is also sitting pretty with 590 career assists. I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb and say he will get more than ten assists this season to get over 600 for the career.
As we speak he has 499 career power play points. How cool would it be if Ovechkin were to register his first power play point of the season with a goal, and that were to get him to 500 career power play points?
The last possible milestone for “The Great Eight” will be the hardest for him to achieve this season. Ovechkin will need 80 points to get to 1,400 for his career. Ovechkin is not a big point producer over the last decade. Since 2010 Ovechkin has scored over a point per game only five times. He’s scored over 80 points four times since then as well. He has a chance at 1,400 this season, but it’s definitely not a sure thing.