{"id":547430,"date":"2026-03-27T00:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T00:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/547430\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T00:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T00:41:08","slug":"heading-into-tonights-start-against-the-capitals-vitek-vanecek-is-the-active-goaltender-with-the-most-saves-against-alex-ovechkin-without-allowing-a-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/547430\/","title":{"rendered":"Heading into tonight\u2019s start against the Capitals, Vitek Vanecek is the active goaltender with the most saves against Alex Ovechkin without allowing a goal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vitek Vanecek<\/a> was named the Utah Mammoth\u2019s starting goaltender for the team\u2019s game against the Washington Capitals on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

The start will be Vanecek\u2019s first against the Capitals since joining the Mammoth in free agency last July. Since departing the Capitals after the 2021-22 campaign, Vanecek has made five total appearances against his former team, and in those games, he has yet to be scored on by the NHL\u2019s all-time leading goal scorer, Alex Ovechkin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, among all active goalies currently on NHL rosters, Vanecek has made the most saves on Ovechkin without allowing him to light the lamp. He is also one of only two active goalies, the other being Golden Knights backstop Akira Schmid<\/a>, to have faced off against Ovechkin five times without being beaten by the Capitals captain.<\/p>\n

Active NHL goalies who have faced an Ovechkin shot and never surrendered a goal<\/p>\n

There are only 12 active NHL goalies on the list and 32 total in Ovechkin\u2019s career that have faced a shot from him and not allowed a goal. The 20 netminders not currently on NHL rosters are either retired, unofficially retired<\/a>, playing overseas, or playing in the AHL or ECHL.<\/p>\n

Overall, in his five career games against the Capitals, Vanecek is 1-2-0 with a 3.83 goals-against average and a .875 save percentage. His only win against the Caps came on November 26, 2022, a 37-save performance while he was with the New Jersey Devils.<\/p>\n

Ovechkin has scored against an NHL record 188 different goalies during his 21-season career<\/a>. He has added to that list four times this season, scoring against Jakub Dobe\u0161<\/a>, Eric Comrie<\/a>, Drew Commesso<\/a>, and Justus Annunen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coming into Thursday night, Ovechkin has two goals in his last four games. In his career against the Mammoth, he has scored twice and recorded five total points in three games. The last time he and the Capitals were in Utah at the Delta Center, Ovechkin scored two goals before breaking his leg in a third-period collision with Jack McBain<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vitek Vanecek was named the Utah Mammoth\u2019s starting goaltender for the team\u2019s game against the Washington Capitals on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-547430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547430","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=547430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}