Although thrilled with breaking a record he and most of the hockey world previously believed would never be touched, Ovechkin gave no indication he was ready to ride off into the sunset after overtaking Gretzky. If anything, losing in the second round of the playoffs after the Capitals (51-22-9) finished first in the East during the regular season, seemed to leave him wanting more.<\/p>\n
Ovechkin had six points (five goals, one assist) in 10 playoff games, but he was held to one point in the five games against the Hurricanes — a power-play goal in a 5-2 loss in Game 4 — and Washington fell short of adding a second Stanley Cup championship to the one Ovechkin led it to in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was really disappointed after the Carolina series,\u201d Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said earlier this week. \u201cThat was a hard series, especially for our top skill guys, our top offensive players, our power play. So, they take that personal, and [Ovechkin] is not a hard guy to get up and motivate. You know he\u2019s going to have that smile and he\u2019s going to be ready, and when the puck drops, he\u2019s going to, (a) want to win that hockey game, and (b) he\u2019s going to want to put the puck in the back of the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because he\u2019s broken the record, I don\u2019t see his motivation level or his determination to try to score and win hockey games changing whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carbery laughed when asked about their expectations for Ovechkin at 40 years old. They\u2019ve heard the questions about his age before and know it\u2019s folly to try to predict when it will catch up to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is something that I continue to learn,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cYou never count out or bet against Alex Ovechkin or cap him at certain expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrick agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe defies logic and Father Time and everything else,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cSo, I honestly don\u2019t know what to expect with him. \u2026 I\u2019ll just be happy to watch it and kind of savoring every time we get to see him go out in a Caps uniform. So, we\u2019ll just see what he does this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing will surprise me because I\u2019ve learned that you can\u2019t be surprised by this guy because he\u2019s just one of one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carbery said he\u2019s communicated with Ovechkin \u201cquite a bit\u201d during the offseason. After vacationing with his family in Turkey, Ovechkin returned to Moscow and resumed training full time in early July. He\u2019s balanced family time and training with various charity games and events in his homeland honoring him for passing Gretzky.<\/p>\n
Moscow Dynamo will host another celebration of Ovechkin at its arena Friday. Ovechkin grew up playing in Dynamo’s program before the Capitals selected him with the No. 1 pick in the 2004 NHL Draft. He joined Washington for the 2005-06 NHL season.<\/p>\n
Ovechkin has talked about possibly returning to Dynamo to play after he\u2019s finished in the NHL, but when remains unknown. He\u2019s within striking distance of more individual NHL milestones: He needs nine games to reach 1,500 for his career, and with 1,623 points, he\u2019s 19 away from passing Joe Sakic<\/a> (1,641) for 10th in League history.<\/p>\n And, of course, he needs three goals to become the first player to reach 900 in the NHL, a continuation of his record total that would put it further from the reach of potential pursuers.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s got couple more milestones right off the hop here early in the season that are within reach, so I\u2019m sure those are in the back of his mind, and it will be fun to see when he hits those,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cThen I think his focus will turn to more, \u2018We want to win as a team and what do I need to do to help the team win?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAlex first and foremost wants to win games and win Stanley Cups. I think that was his motivation late in the season right after he broke the record. \u2026 and I think that\u2019s what he\u2019d like to do here this season again is try to have a team that can compete for a Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although thrilled with breaking a record he and most of the hockey world previously believed would never be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-101596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}