While Connor Bedard began his NHL career remorselessly firing the puck in ways you rarely see from a rookie, veteran counterpart Alex Ovechkin is experiencing a rare shooting drought.
For the first time in his 19-year NHL career, Ovechkin went consecutive games without registering a single shot on goal.
As noted by NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti, this is the second straight season that Ovechkin has failed to score a goal in the first three games of his campaign. To put things mildly, these types of droughts are a rare occurrence for the future Hockey Hall of Famer.
Those miniature cold streaks also rarely keep Ovechkin off of the scoreboard for very long.
Ovechkin goes without a goal in first 3 games for 2nd straight season and 3rd time in his career. He finished with 42 goals last season.
The longest Ovechkin went before scoring his 1st goal was 2012-13, when he went the first four games without. Led NHL in goals that season.
— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) October 19, 2023
Ovechkin has now been held without a shot in just 19 games in his entire NHL career.
On the bright side, Ovechkin did record an assist on Wednesday, factoring into the Capitals’ only goal in a 6-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators. That assist marked Ovechkin’s first point of the season, though he did have a more “Ovi”-esque debut with four shots on goal against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Oct. 13.
In all, Ovechkin has taken 18 shot attempts this season, including four against the Senators that were either blocked or fired wide.
After the loss, new Capitals head coach Spencer Carberry mostly framed the team’s collective scoring struggles as players needing to find their game — albeit more than you’d usually see to open a season.
Carbery to reporters in OTT on the 6-1 loss: “We’re really struggling right now from a standpoint of we’ve got a lot of guys that are looking to find their game early in the season, and aren’t there yet…Usually, it’s a few but we’ve got more than you would call normal.” #Caps
— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) October 19, 2023
It’s not as though Ovechkin is alone in fighting through a frosty opening stretch. Washington has only scored four goals through three games, which includes a tally awarded from a 3-2 shootout win against the Calgary Flames. The Capitals were also the last team in the NHL to score their first goal of the season, albeit in part due to a scheduling quirk.
Clearly, the hope is that both Ovechkin and the Capitals will rekindle their scoring touch. It’s almost inevitable that they’ll rebound to some degree, but it’s fair to wonder how much given the club’s aging core.
A rare drought for Ovechkin, the NHL’s all-time volume shooter
This funk leaves Ovechkin idling at 822 goals, second all-time to Wayne Gretzky’s record 894. The 38-year-old winger rebounded from a cold start in 2022-23 to finish with 42 goals, 75 points and 294 shots on goal in 73 games last season.
Ovechkin already holds the NHL career shots on goal record with 6,359, or about 4.71 SOG per game — a healthy margin ahead of second place Ray Bourque, who has 6,209 SOG and is the only other player to eclipse 6,000 for their career.
