ELMONT, NY — Spencer Carbery had watched the tape. The execution was flawless. It followed years of preparation by a club that’s had the same power play modus operandi for two decades: Get the puck to the sniper at the top of the left circle.
The Washington Capitals head coach, who is not quite four years older than Alex Ovechkin, said he’d try to not get too “coachey” with reporters after Sunday’s game at UBS Arena, the home of the New York Islanders just beyond Queens in Nassau County, when he was asked to describe the play that ended in Ovechkin’s 895th career goal — the one that broke Wayne Gretzky’s record for the most all-time in the NHL.
Most NHL teams, Carbery explained, defend rushes on the penalty kill in a one-three, where a forward stays high and the other three players form a line behind him. The New York Islanders are different. They’re one of a few — maybe five — teams, according to Carbery, that use a box formation, with two players high and two deep.
“There’s more room down the walls,” Carbery explained. “Because, one–three, they’ve got three lanes basically filled. With two-two, there’s a little bit more room.”
That extra space allowed Capitals forward Tom Wilson, who received a pass from Dylan Strome on the right flank as Washington’s power play entered the Islanders’ zone, to make a cross-seam pass. The puck cut through New York’s two high forwards and two low defenders, landing perfectly in Ovechkin’s magazine.
*****
Ovechkin defies the laws of aging and regression. In his age-39 season, he has 42 goals in 61 games. And the Capitals — a club that hasn’t won a playoff series since the 2018 Stanley Cup Final and is coming off two seasons in which they missed the playoffs, then got swept by the New York Rangers — are first in the Eastern Conference by nine points.
“A lot of people talk about his durability as a player,” Carbery said. “But what people will reflect on his career about would be how he was able to maintain a level of scoring this late into his career. That is unheard of.”
A big reason for the Capitals’ renaissance, according to their coach, is Ovechkin’s leadership and determination to win.
“The way that he started this year before he broke his leg,” Carbery began, “this was someone that you could tell right away was just so determined to get to this number and to this record and to win games.”
Ovechkin loves to score. Anyone who’s watched one of his near-900 emphatic goal celebrations knows that. But the one thing he loves more is watching his teammates score, and celebrating with them.
In the Capitals’ Friday night home game against the Chicago Blackhawks, in which Ovechkin scored twice in a 5–3 victory to tie Gretzky’s record, he sat on the bench when Chicago pulled Spencer Knight late in the third period. Ryan Leonard, who was playing in just his third NHL game, scored his first career goal on the empty net.
“Think about that situation for ‘O,’” said Carbery. “He just tied the record. He’s not going to go out and shoot an empty net. So he’s sitting, Leonard scores his first NHL goal, and ‘O’ is the happiest person in the building for Ryan Leonard.
“Think about what he’s going through internally. He’s not out there. Ryan Leonard’s playing right wing for him. It speaks to him, but also who he is as a captain and as a leader, of the happiness and joy that he has to win and to see others have success and others to score goals as well.”
*****
Part of Carbery’s job as coach of the Capitals has been figuring out the Capitals’ power play. With a generational player like Ovechkin at the helm, the club’s first unit runs through him.
When Carbery arrived in Washington following the 2022-23 season, the Capitals had the 16th-best power play in the league, converting on 21.2% of its opportunities. In his first season, the unit’s conversion rate dipped to 20.6%, 18th overall.
Ovechkin’s record is his, but it’s been heavily influenced by the Capitals’ systems, developed over two years of trial and error.
“As coaches, we go to the hundreds and hundreds of hours that we’ve been trying to figure out ways to get the next goal,” Carbery said. “That’s behind the scenes, that’s frustration, that’s happiness, that’s long hours of, ‘Oh my gosh. We’ve got to figure this power play out.’ There’s so much behind the scenes that goes into this game and trying to help set players and your team up for success.”
This season, amid the Capitals’ resurgence, the power play carries a 23.1% conversion rate and has ascended to 13th in the league. In 18 fewer games, Ovechkin has tied his power-play goal output, 13, from last year. He’s one away from matching his 2022–23 total.
*****
Ovechkin’s office is at the top of the left faceoff circle, where he fires pucks at opposing goalies with pinpoint accuracy. He’s scored countless times from here on the power play.
It was no different on Sunday. In one motion, Ovechkin caught the puck, stopped, and flung it past Islanders goalie Ilya Sorokin at the 7:26 mark of the second period. It was a goal he’d scored so many times, yet this one meant so much more because it immortalized him as the greatest of all time.
“If I look [at] the spot he took the shot from,” Islanders head coach Patrick Roy began, “I saw a lot of goals from there.”
“I will tell this story for the rest of my life,” Carbery said. “We had a perfect view because that puck comes lateral. O’s coming to the left side, and this is the true greatness of Alex Ovechkin. There was nothing. I couldn’t even see Sorokin, let alone netting, and he shoots that puck. I didn’t even know how it went in. I don’t know how it got through all the different bodies.”
Ilya Sorokin, the Islanders’ goaltender, didn’t see the puck. He said there were three players screening him.
“Usually, he shot on this side,” Sorokin said, gesturing to his left. “But I don’t know why today he shot short-hand side.”
Leaning against the wall next to Sorokin’s stall was the stick he used in Sunday’s game, complete with orange tape on the knob. It was, of course, going to Ovechkin’s stick collection. Sorokin didn’t ask for anything in return from his fellow countryman.
“You don’t need to give me back nothing,” he said. “Because I just give for him, and it’s my respect for him.”
*****
Gretzky stood at center ice with a microphone, between Ovechkin’s family, the Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis and league commissioner Gary Bettman.
“They say records are meant to be broken,” Gretzky told the crowd. “But I’m not sure who’s going to get more goals than that.”
A few minutes had passed since Ovechkin’s shot sailed into the Islanders net — minutes that would live on forever in hockey history.
The elated celebration by the Capitals, akin to winning a playoff series.
The UBS Arena crowd — a blend of blue Islanders and red Capitals jerseys — standing and cheering as one, for they had just witnessed history unfold.
