It's been a pretty fun season so far if you're a Washington Capitals fan. The main reason is the most obvious reason, this is a pretty good hockey team. Twenty-one games into the season and the team is 14-6-1.
They are fighting for first place in their division. They're ahead of teams in the standings that most would say are the "elite" teams. And they are not simply beating up on bad teams to get to the top either.
So far this season the Caps have beaten Vegas, Dallas, New Jersey, the Rangers and the reigning Cup champion Panthers. It's been fun to watch.
But winning isn't the only thing that has been exciting to watch. This teams has had a lot of interesting things to pay attention to this year. Lets take a look at a few of those things shall we?
Ovechkin
You don't need to say much more than one word here. It's Alex Ovechkin.
Watching someone chase down a record is fun enough. Watching someone potentially blow by a record is another thing. And watching a 39-year-old put up the kind of numbers he was before he recently got injured was nothing short of amazing.
It would be incredible if a guy Ovechkin's age scored 40+ goals in a season. It would be unbelievable if he scored 50+ goals in a year. He was racing past those numbers. He had 15 goals in 18 games played. That was putting him on pace to score 68 goals if he played all 82 games. He was on pace to score more goals as a 39-year-old than he did as a 22-year-old. He scored 65 goals when he was 22. Insane!
Would he have stayed on that pace? Who knows. I would say no. But I have also said plenty of times, if you bet against Ovechkin be prepared to lose a lot of money. In terms of scoring goals, he has defied logic and fought off "Father Time" long enough, if you want to bet against that, your loss.
Before Ovechkin got injured against Utah on the 18th he was on fire. In his last 11 games played he scored 13 goals. This was after he had an okay start. He scored 2 goals in his first 7 games.
His seemingly inability to miss is what made his injury so annoying, or even sad. It's not that he won't break the record. He will. What he was doing was the reason we watch sports.
In a time where all that gets talked about is ring culture we forget why we watch sports in the first place. It's entertainment. It's fun to watch people do things that not everyone can do. It's even more fun to watch the best to ever do it do incredible things.
Watching Ovechkin do his thing this season has been insanely fun.