Alex Alexeyev was mid-sandwich when Alex Ovechkin broke all-time goals record: ‘My mouth was full, and everyone was shouting, ‘Run, run!”

Alex Alexeyev witnessed NHL history this spring as teammate Alex Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record. While Alexeyev didn’t play on April 6 when Ovechkin scored career goal no. 895, he still took part in all of the celebrations after the historic milestone.

Alexeyev recently recounted his memory of the goal to VseProSport’s Daria Tuboltseva, 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.

“I had just started eating a sandwich, drinking water, and then he scored,” he said, as translated by Google Translate. “My mouth was full, and everyone was shouting, ‘Run, run!’”

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’ 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.

“It was really cool, really,” Alexeyev said of the experience. “We 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’t in the stands; they were in the locker room. The other guys and I who weren’t playing had trained in the gym and were watching the game on TV downstairs.”

Sandwich forgotten, Alexeyev and his teammates made it to the ice in time to join Ovechkin for a mid-game ceremony commemorating the milestone.

The festivities later continued both in the visiting locker room after the game and back in DC once the team returned to Washington.

“It was a crazy atmosphere,” Alexeyev said. “Gretzky was there, his wife was out, everyone was there. It was crazy in the stands…It was great that we were allowed to experience that atmosphere.”

Alexeyev’s time with the Capitals came to an end soon after Ovechkin’s 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.