Players

Alex Ovechkin Is Caps’ Hat-Trick King

(Caps Outsider)

With three goals in a 4-2 victory against Toronto on Saturday, Alex Ovechkin scored his 20th hat-trick of his career, passing Peter Bondra as the team’s all-time leader in that category. Ovi also has one playoff hat-trick.

Ovechkin did while hanging out with a very special guest – cancer survivor Alex Luey. Ovi’s 16th, 17th, and 18th goals Saturday also gave him the NHL goal-scoring lead over Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov.

It was the third hat-trick of the season for Ovi, the first two coming in the first two games of the season, back in early October. Ovechkin also has seven of the team’s last nine hat-tricks. T.J. Oshie had the other two.

This is the final team record that Ovechkin will take from Bondra, assuming Ovi doesn’t suddenly start scoring short-handed goals. Bondra has 32. Ovi has 4, and hasn’t scored one since 2008-09.

Despite Ovi getting the team record, there was a long stretch of time when he didn’t score any hat-tricks. He had one on 12/10/2013, but didn’t score another until 2/11/2016, his longest hat-trick drought.

Ovechkin has another milestone coming: He will soon pass Bondra and then Calle Johansson for the team’s lead in all-times game played, when Ovi hits 984.

There’s one other team record that Ovi doesn’t own but could get: Penalty shot goals. Ovi has two, while Mike Gartner has three, though Gartner was 3-for-3 while Ovi is 2-for-12.

Check out our Capitals hat-trick database:

Washington Capitals Hat Trick Tracker

Ben Sumner

Ben Sumner is the editor of Capitals Outsider. He also works for The Washington Post and contributes there when he gets a scoop.

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