The Great One is about to become the Second-Best One.
Well, in the record books at least. Because with nine more goals, Alex Ovechkin will break Wayne Gretzky’s total of 894, a mark once considered untouchable.
But for Kings TV analyst Jim Fox, who played with Gretzky and has watched Ovechkin since his rookie season with the Washington Capitals, that record is nothing but a number.
“Ovi will wind up with more goals,” he said. “Wayne’s still the Great One.”
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Ovechkin’s run at the record will pass through Southern California this week, with the Eastern Conference-leading Capitals facing the Ducks on Tuesday at the Honda Center before meeting the Kings on Thursday at Crypto.com Arena. If Ovechkin, who ranks in the top five in the NHL with 33 goals, continues scoring at his current pace of two goals every three games, he will break the record in the final week of the regular season.
And while that will make Ovechkin hockey’s all-time leading scorer, Fox says Gretzky will remain the better overall player.
“He’s got more assists than anyone else,” Fox said of Gretzky’s 1,963 career assists, more than 700 better than second-best mark. “If he hadn’t scored a goal, he would still lead [in points]. That’s where it overwhelms for me.
“Wayne will end up with the second-most goals ever and he’s not a shooter.”
Comparing the two is a little like comparing apples to oranges — or comparing Babe Ruth with Barry Bonds. Although Gretzky retired just six years before Ovechkin’s debut, the eras in which they played were markedly different, which makes drawing equivalencies difficult.
In Gretzky’s best season, 1981-82, teams averaged more than four goals a game for the only time since World War II. In fact, the league averaged more goals per game in 15 of Gretzky’s 20 NHL seasons than it did in 2022-23, the most offensive season of Ovechkin’s two decades in the league. So while 15 players scored at least 69 goals in a season during Gretzky’s career, it has happened just once since.
And while Ovechkin topped 60 goals in a season once, Gretzky did it five times.
“Ovi, for most of his career, has played against better goaltenders, no question,” said Fox, who played his final NHL season alongside Gretzky.
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Yet the two players’ career scoring averages are identical at 0.6 goals per game.
Gretzky, speaking through an NHL spokesman, declined to talk about the record, saying he preferred the focus remain on Ovechkin. But Kings goalie Darcy Kuemper, who has played both with and against Ovechkin, said there’s no secret what makes his former teammate so good.
“His shot is next level,” he said. “It’s just kind of in a league of its own.”
Ovechkin puts a spin on the puck that alters its trajectory. His stick also has a massive open-spoon curve that allows him to flip the puck so that it catches air rather than slicing it through it. When the puck is traveling at 85 mph, it will react unpredictably.
“But it’s more than that,” Kuemper continued. “He’s so smart at knowing where to get to to score goals and how to get a shot off. You watch teams play against him and they try to sit a guy on him and he still manages to score all these goals.
“It’s pretty impressive, his intelligence.”
If Ovechkin is a unicorn on the ice, however, he makes a point of blending in off it.
“In the locker room, he’s just one of the guys,” Kuemper said. “He’s just one of the guys on the plane wanting to play cards.”
He’s also been able to stay healthy, becoming the oldest player to score 50 goals in a season three years ago when he was 36. After missing 16 games while recovering from a fractured fibula this winter, he’ll play fewer than 70 games in a full season for the first time in his career.
That durability is another trait Ovechkin shares with Gretzky, who played fewer than 65 games in a full season just twice.
But their differences may be more numerous than their similarities, Fox said. Ovechkin, especially when he was younger, was aggressive and physical. He’s still strong and, of course, he has “that shot,” Fox said, while Gretzky, who was three inches shorter and 53 pounds lighter at 6-feet, 185 pounds, “could think the game better than anyone.”
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“Wayne could make a one-on-three [situation] more dangerous than a one-on-one because all of a sudden he gets one guy thinking about where he should be and then they’re bumping into each other,” Fox said. “One year you have 92 goals and then the next 163 assists.
“So one year he said, ‘I’m going to score’ and the next year he said, ‘I’m going to pass.’ He could make that decision and then go on the ice and execute it where other guys are trying to get by.”
Gretzky also brought hockey to a desert, popularizing it in Southern California, which paved the way for the NHL to expand to Miami, Tampa, Phoenix and Las Vegas, growing the league from 21 in his rookie season to 32 teams today.
“The sports fan became a hockey fan. And that’s the difference,” Fox said. “Wayne is very unique. He’s on an island in that way.”
So, records aside, does that make Gretzky the best ever?
“No,” Fox answered. “I still think Bobby Orr is the greatest to ever play.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
