Alex Ovechkin scores twice in Utah to bring him 26 closer to Wayne Gretzky

The Washington Capitals defeated the Utah Hockey Club 6-2 to sweep the three game road trip and Alex Ovechkin was at it again in his pursuit of the NHL All Time Goals record held by Wayne Gretzky so far. And it was quite the spectacle for the Caps first time playing Salt Lake City which like the 2002 Olympics was quite the event.

Ovechkin's first goal came at 11:05 of the second period off a feed from Pierre-Luc Dubois to give the Caps the lead for good as everyone else including goaltender Charlie Lindgren did the rest.

Then Ovechkin added his second goal of the game at 5:38 on a power play srike with John Carlson and Dylan Strome helping out. It upped Ovechkin's goal total on the season to 15 which leads the entire NHL at the time of this writing.

It upped his career total to 868 in his storied 20 year career and it marked the fifth straight period Ovechkin scored. He is now 26 away from tying Wayne Gretzky for th most all time in NHL history.

With two goals in the game, it gave Ovechkin his fourth multi goal game of the season and the 177th of his career. Only Gretzky (189) has more multi goal games in the history of the League.

With the goal in Utah, Ovechkin is the first player in NHL history with 100 career multi goal games. It was he 18th different franchise he has scored in his first game against. He is tied with Evgeni Malkin and Eric Lindros as the only two in NHL history to accomplish this feat.

Ovechkin's first goal of the game marked his first career goal against Connor Ingram and he has now scored against 178 different goalenders to match Jaromir Jagr for the most in NHL history.

Ovechkin is now the NHL's outright leader in goals for the first time since Jan. 23, 2022. Back to today and this very moment. Ovechkin during the game against Utah recorded his 208th multi point game on the road to pass Joe Sakic for the seventh most in NHL history.

One final stat before the bad news, Ovechkin's 15 goals in 18 games has him at a current goals per game rate of 0.83, the highest in NHL history by a player age 39 or older. Prior to Ovi, the older player was Frank Mahovlich at 33 on Nov. 10, 1971.

Ovechkin would leave the game in the third period in what appears to be a lower body injury. Stay tuned as they say, as we should know more about the health of Ovechkin sometime in the next few days with the team traveling home after the road sweep.