The Great Chase comes through Boston on Saturday, as Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals visit TD Garden for the first time since Ovechkin passed Gordie Howe to move into second place on the NHL’s all-time goals list in December.
With 32 goals in 52 games this season (good for eighth in the NHL), the 37-year-old Ovechkin is now 82 away from Wayne Gretzky’s all-time record of 894.
Most hockey fans in North America got their first look at Ovechkin in the fall of 2005, when he made his Capitals debut more than a year after getting drafted first overall. The NHL’s season-long lockout in 2004-05 had delayed his move to Washington by a year, leaving the World Junior Championship and World Championship as the only opportunities for American and Canadian fans to watch him unless you sought out Russian Super League games.
Bruins coach Jim Montgomery didn’t have to seek out those games. He lived them, and got a firsthand look at Ovechkin two years before the rest of us.
With his NHL opportunities having dried up, a then-34-year-old Montgomery played a year in Russia in 2003-04 with Salavat Yulaev Ufa. Ovechkin was 17-going-on-18 and in his third year playing for Dynamo Moscow in the Russian Super League, having jumped to his home country’s top professional league (in the pre-KHL days) at the age of 16.
Their first meeting was a home game for Montgomery’s team in Ufa. What Montgomery remembers most from that game wasn’t a goal or a big hit from Ovechkin, but rather an altercation with fans that introduced Montgomery to Ovechkin’s fiery nature.
“I remember we were in a game at home. I don’t really remember the score. I think we won 3-2 or 4-2. And he got into an argument with our fans,” Montgomery recalled Friday. “I remember him slashing at the glass. The fans were reaching out -- it was the short glass -- and they pulled on his jersey or something. I remember him turning around and it was like, ‘Oh, he’s got a temper.’”
Montgomery said the buzz around Ovechkin -- months before he would be drafted by the Capitals -- was impossible to miss.
“They were saying this was the greatest young player in Russia right now. Like he’s the next [Pavel] Bure, they were saying,” Montgomery said, adding that he couldn’t believe how big Ovechkin already was at that age and calling him a “man-child.”
Two years later, Ovechkin hit the ground running in the NHL, putting up 52 goals and 106 points as a rookie. He’s barely slowed down in the 18 years since. He’s topped 50 goals eight more times, including just last year, and has won the Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s top goal-scorer nine times.
As impressed as Montgomery was by the 18-year-old Ovechkin, he could’ve never predicted he would someday see him trying to chase down Gretzky.
“I guess his greatness and the longevity,” Montgomery said when asked what stands out to him about this chase. “Like, you think he’d be slowing down. He’s not slowing down. It’s amazing. His dedication to his craft, how special he is at what he does. It’s really impressive to witness. It’s not often you’re in an era where you see someone chasing Wayne Gretzky. I never thought someone would chase Wayne Gretzky’s records, and here we are. That’s a tribute to him.”
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