(Caps Outsider)
Caps captain Alex Ovechkin, who recently signed a five-year contract to remain with the Capitals, has played 1,197 career games. With five more seasons of Ovi to come, and several records to pursue, there’s one in particular that he can break that few are talking about: Nicklas Lidstrom’s 1,564 career games while only playing for one franchise, which he did in Detroit.
To break this record, Ovi must play 368 of the 410 regular season games in the next five years, assuming all returns to normal after the past two seasons, and that he doesn’t do something weird like sign another contract with a different team for one last hurrah.
In his 16-year career, Ovi has only missed 42 games – which happens to also be the maximum he can miss in the next five seasons and still break Lidstrom’s record. The intriguing news is, of his 42 missed games, only 24 were due to injury, while others came for relatively avoidable reasons, such as suspensions, All Star Game opt-outs, and that time he overslept. The bad news is, seven of those 24 games with an injury came late last season, and it feels almost impossible that he’ll never break in his late thirties. But if there’s anything Ovi has proven over the years is that no one should bet against him.
While Ovi has bigger records than Lidstrom’s on his mind – assuming he even knows about it – it would certainly be a bonus to see him break this one.
