Hockey
The incredible Ovechkin will be the best sniper of the season? The Russian has already scored his second double!
The Washington Capitals captain is once again approaching Wayne Gretzky’s record.
Alexander Ovechkin helped Washington recover from a disappointing defeat by scoring his second double of the season! Ovechkin played a great match and came close to several cool records. And the Capitals simply destroyed their opponents, throwing a string of pucks at them.
Apparently, this season Alexander is aiming to break Wayne Gretzky’s record, and the capital club is aiming to claim the Stanley Cup.
They quickly forgot about the failure
For Washington, the loss to Pittsburgh in the last match was probably painful. Spencer Carbury’s side lost to a key rival who had made a terrible start to the season. In addition, in that meeting, Capitals captain Ovechkin broke his five-game scoring streak. But there was no panic in the capital’s club after the unexpected loss.
Moreover, one of the leaders of the defense and Washington newcomer Jacob Chickran, who missed five games due to injury, finally returned to the lineup. And Carbery immediately identified the reason for the failure, saying that his hockey players underestimated their opponent and only woke up in the second half of the meeting.
On the road against St. Louis, the Capitals players did not make such a mistake. From the first minutes they did not lose concentration and actively loaded goalkeeper Jordan Binnington with work. As a result, the capital’s team managed to confidently recover from their defeat to the Penguins, and Ovechkin played a great match.
Fantastic game from Ovechkin
The guests opened the scoring in the 59th second, doing it very beautifully: 23-year-old Connor McMichael picked up the puck in his own zone, drove around two opponents at once, and then completed the attack with a wrist shot from under a defender. Thus, McMichael scored a goal for the third match in a row.
St. Louis staged a scoring response in the eighth minute. Defenseman Scott Perunovich received a pass on the nickel and found himself all alone in front of Logan Thompson. The American did not invent anything and, instead of trying to beat his opponent, he fired hard at the goal, which brought success. Interestingly, Thompson has started six times this season and has never lost.
The Washington hockey players did not want to spoil the goalkeeper’s ideal statistics and began to methodically destroy the opponent. It all started with Ovechkin, who put the guests ahead in the 28th minute. During the Capitals’ counterattack, Alexei Protas delivered the puck to the “office”, from where the Russian forward immediately hit Binnington’s goal.
After a few shifts, the “bluesmen” started a fire in the middle zone, causing a loss out of the blue. Washington took the opportunity to punish the opponent’s mistake and increased the lead to two goals. This time, Chikran, who returned to the lineup after a break, scored due to injury.
After two periods in which the teams showed approximately equal play, St. Louis unexpectedly collapsed and had almost the worst stretch of the season, conceding five goals in a row in less than 15 minutes. At the start, the Capitals converted their first power play in this game, and Ovechkin scored again! After active shelling of Binnington’s goal, at some point the Russian was brought out to shoot. Alexander had such an ideal position that all he had to do was hit the empty corner, which he did – 4:1.
The Washington captain reduced the gap from the great Canadian’s record to 31 goals. Also, the Russian striker, who has already scored 10 goals in 14 meetings, has taken second place in the list of the best snipers in the league. The first line is occupied by three hockey players who scored 11 goals each – Nikita Kucherov, Sam Rinehart and William Nylander.
After Ovechkin’s goal, the Capitals finally broke up and brought the matter to defeat. As a result, the guests won a convincing victory – 8:1. The visiting captain’s first goal was the winner. In terms of the number of decisive goals (131), Alexander came close to the record of Jaromir Jagr (135).
And even this is not the end of the Russian hockey player’s statistical exploits. According to the NHL’s official website, the match against St. Louis was Ovechkin’s 175th career multi-goal game. According to this indicator, he is second only to Gretzky (189).
Source: Sportbox
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