The Chase
We might as well keep talking about Ovechkin. After all this is a franchise that has centered around this guy for twenty years now. Why not talk about him as much as we can.
And oh yeah, he is kind of on the verge of doing just a little something special. Like breaking a record that a lot of people thought might be unbreakable.
Ovechkin is 41 goals away from tying Wayne Gretzky. Any time you hear the sentence "tying Wayne Gretzky" you should start to pay attention. Ovechkin is going into this new season with 853 career goals. He needs 894 to tie and 895 sets the new record.
We know 41 goals is not that many goals for Ovechkin. Would anyone be shocked if he scored 41 goals this coming season? Probably not. Now, should you expect a guy who is turning 39 years old before the season starts to score forty plus goals in a season? Again, probably not. But if there is a guy to do it, why not him?
If you haven't been paying close attention to the Capitals, do you need a better reason to start watching than a player who is a legend of your team chase down a record? Not only is he chasing down a record, he might then go on to set a new record that could take a long, long, long time to catch. And you can say you saw it. You can say, "I watched that guy. I watched that moment."
There will probably be a lot of people who lie and say they saw the moment even when they didn't. One, don't be that person. Two, just watch.
I can speak from some experience here. Yes, this will be slightly controversial to some, but the topic is basically the same. As a kid in northern California I was not a baseball fan. Barry Bonds starts to break records, starts to chase the home run record, I start watching the Giants, now I have been a fan of the team for almost twenty years. Legit record? Steroids in baseball? Go argue that somewhere else. I'm just saying a record could fall and watching that could change your life in a way.
If you need a reason to start watching the Capitals more, I'm not sure I can think of a better reason than this.