VseProSport\u2019s Daria Tuboltseva<\/a>, sharing the experience of being a healthy scratch in the record-breaking game. He states that he knew the goal could be coming, but the moment still managed to catch him by surprise.<\/p>\n\u201cI had just started eating a sandwich, drinking water, and then he scored,\u201d he said, as translated by Google Translate. \u201cMy mouth was full, and everyone was shouting, \u2018Run, run!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather than taking in the game from the press box, Alexeyev and fellow scratches Ethen Frank and Dylan McIlrath were watching from the locker room, ready to spring into action if Ovechkin scored. The Capitals\u2019 traveling party also included the recently-injured Aliaksei Protas as well as Nicklas Backstrom and TJ Oshie, who both spent the 2024-25 season on LTIR.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really cool, really,\u201d Alexeyev said of the experience. \u201cWe all knew that when he scored, we would run onto the ice. We went on the road together, even the injured guys were with us. The substitutes weren\u2019t in the stands; they were in the locker room. The other guys and I who weren\u2019t playing had trained in the gym and were watching the game on TV downstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandwich forgotten, Alexeyev and his teammates made it to the ice in time to join Ovechkin for a mid-game ceremony commemorating the milestone.<\/p>\n
The festivities later continued both in the visiting locker room after the game and back in DC once the team returned to Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a crazy atmosphere,\u201d Alexeyev said. \u201cGretzky was there, his wife was out, everyone was there. It was crazy in the stands\u2026It was great that we were allowed to experience that atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexeyev\u2019s time with the Capitals came to an end soon after Ovechkin\u2019s record-breaking marker. The team declined to extend him a qualifying offer this summer, and he signed a one-year deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins as an unrestricted free agent<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Alexeyev witnessed NHL history this spring as teammate Alex Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky\u2019s all-time NHL goals record.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-71589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}