With the 895th goal of his career, Alex Ovechkin has passed Wayne Gretzky in all-time goals. Ovechkin beat many goalies in many different ways with an unlimited bag of tricks, but his greatest trick was the one they all knew was coming but couldn’t stop. Fitting that goal No. 895 came that exact way: from Ovechkin’s spot.
Ovechkin’s place atop the goal leaderboard is due in large part to the territorial dominance he had over goalies for two decades from that one specific area of the ice, the Ovechkin Spot, often referred to as “Ovechkin’s Office”: the top of the left faceoff circle, just above the center hash marks. From that area of the ice, Ovechkin was nearly unstoppable.
Ovechkin scored a lot of goals from that specific spot, but part of what made Ovechkin so effective is how much ground he covered. How he found soft spots and seams within a larger territory off the left half-wall — enough for defenders to lose track of his exact location.
The Ovechkin Spot can be defined by that small area just inside the top of the circle and picturing one of his goals from that specific spot is extremely easy given its frequency. But he also scored the exact same goals from just above the circle, from the faceoff dot and below, from just inside the left hash mark and anywhere in between. The Ovechkin Spot is more of a zone, one that he absolutely terrorized goalies from.
There was a level of unpredictability in his predictability, which is part of what made it so hard to stop. Ovechkin scored 285 goals from his spot, a spot that defined his legacy and leaves a distinctive mark on a map of his 895 goals.
Finding the quintessential Ovechkin game is no small task, not after such an illustrious career. But when talking about his spot in particular, one comes to mind: Nov. 23, 2016 against the St. Louis Blues.
Why that game? It’s not just because Ovechkin scored a hat trick, it’s because it’s the only hat trick of his career where all three goals were scored from his office. Perhaps more interesting: All three goals from his spot were scored in a different way, highlighting his greatness.
When you think about a goal from the Ovechkin Spot, you usually think big, booming one-timer, right?
While that’s indeed Ovechkin’s signature goal, responsible for 155 of his 285 goals from the spot, he actually has two others.
One is a catch-and-shoot wrister, a necessary change-up from the usual one-timer. He’s had 86 of those from the spot during his career.
The third one is from a bygone era of Ovechkin’s greatness. It’s one for the old heads who remember Ovechkin immediately breaking into the league as one of the most ferociously dynamic players. Before the Ovechkin Spot became one-timer city, it was exactly where Ovechkin would stop up for a split-second after a blazingly powerful rush, unleashing a perfectly placed snipe between a defender’s legs. It was Ovechkin’s first seemingly unstoppable signature shot. Ovechkin has had 38 of these goals through his career, though through his first six seasons, they were just as prevalent as his one-timer. During his best goal-scoring season where he potted 65 goals, nine of them were off-the-rush snipes from the Ovechkin Spot. He had just six one-timers that year.
Those are the three ways Ovechkin beat goalies most frequently from his spot during his career. On that fateful day against the Blues, he had one of each.
Breaking them up is the key to understanding what has eluded so many over the last decade: After 20 seasons, how has no one stopped this?
Alex Ovechkin was nearly unstoppable when shooting from the top of the left faceoff circle, just above the center hash marks. (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)
We know how many goals Ovechkin has scored from the spot and we know the three ways he’s beaten goalies continuously from the same location. The question on everyone’s mind is why and how. Why does it work so well? How is it this effective?
For starters, part of it is opportunity — especially when it comes to his one-timers and catch-and-shoot goals, where 77 percent of them were scored with a man advantage.
Since 2012-13, Ovechkin has played 89.8 percent of Washington’s available power-play time. Sidney Crosby, who has played just 16 fewer games than Ovechkin during that span, is second in power-play minutes, yet has played 800 fewer minutes. At 3.1 goals-per-60, Ovechkin’s average during that span is the league’s fifth-best mark; that’s 41 extra goals. It’s a volume game and the extra opportunity afforded to Ovechkin has led to nearly 500 more power-play shots than the next highest player, Steven Stamkos.
For Ovechkin’s work from the spot, “efficient” may not be the right word. But that doesn’t mean the strategy isn’t incredibly effective. A lot of misses are worth it, given how many hits the strategy ultimately yields.
What makes those hits work? A smart player who knows how to pick his spot, both on the ice and in the net.
I mentioned earlier that the Ovechkin Spot is more of a zone, a large one that shows he’s capable of beating goalies and fooling defenses from a large area of ice. That’s half the battle. The other is where he picks his spot on the net and that’s where things get really interesting.
When it comes to Ovechkin’s one-timers from the spot, it’s not just his spot on the ice that makes it feel like déjà vu — it’s also where he places the puck on net: mid-to-high blocker. Of his 155 one-timer goals from the spot, 65 percent have been placed in that area, compared to 17 percent that went mid or high glove.
The Ovechkin Spot is predicated on puck movement, east-west passing that gets the goalie moving. Washington’s system has been built on that premise for much of his career and he’s made a lot of hay with it.
Generally speaking, a lot of cross-seam passing gets the goalie to move enough that there’s a lot of net to shoot at. Some goalies are acrobatic enough to save it anyway, while others anticipate it well enough to be in position. Ovechkin’s secret is that he shoots as if the net is not wide open from all the preceding puck movement.
After watching every goal Ovechkin has ever scored from his spot, what became clear is how often he made damn sure that the goalie had absolutely no shot at stopping what was coming. Even with a gaping net facing him, Ovechkin would very often put pucks as far out of reach from a goalie’s potential grasp. These were perfectly placed shots, as if Ovechkin was picking corners on an invisible goalie in front of him. The frequency that one of his goals was laser-focused on just inside the post-crossbar connection was astounding.
Gretzky’s mantra was to pass the puck to where the skater’s going to be, not where he is. Ovechkin’s philosophy from his spot is similar: Shoot at where the goalie can’t go, not where he already isn’t.
That may seem simple in theory, but in practice, it’s something that’s uniquely Ovechkin: A rare combination of raw power and pinpoint accuracy that few can match. A lot of one-timer threats depend on the puck movement, giving them an easier target, focusing primarily on getting a hard shot off quickly. Ovechkin’s accuracy while doing the same thing is what sets him apart. The best scorers can fire one-timers hard or precisely. Ovechkin did both.
That brings us to the change-up: Ovechkin’s catch-and-shoot that adds an air of wit to the equation. This is where Ovechkin would take a beat and flip the script. In a split-second, he analyzes how the goalie reacts to the pass, and puts it where he doesn’t expect — especially if the goalie is expecting the one-timer instead.
Usually, that meant going mid-to-high glove with the assumption being that the goalie slid over enough to cover the high blocker one-timer Ovechkin loves so much. It’s not to the same effect as his one-timer favoritism, but of Ovechkin’s 86 catch-and-shoot goals, 38 went mid-to-high glove while 26 went mid-to-high blocker.
For both one-timers and catch-and-shoots, Ovechkin has a lean — usually toward the side that’s most difficult for a goalie to cover, and usually cleanly in the corner. There are exceptions to the rule, but Ovechkin’s shot placement is telling.
Off the rush is a different story. Without pre-shot movement from a pass before the shot, beating a goalie clean came entirely via Ovechkin’s shot. His shot speed and power helped a lot and there was some deceptiveness involved too with defensemen screens, but the lack of east-west pre-shot movement meant a higher emphasis on dynamic shot selection. What made Ovechkin’s original spot-up rush so dangerous was that he didn’t really have a tell — he showed off his artistry by painting the corners.
Ovechkin may have had a slight tendency for a perfect high-glove snipe (32 percent), but he also kept goalies honest with a spatter of blocker-side shots (37 percent, roughly 10-to-15 percent each from low, mid and high). Mix in a five-hole snipe (18 percent) every once in a while and it made Ovechkin’s hard and fast wrister a nightmare to stop.
Power, accuracy and smarts — Ovechkin is unstoppable from the Ovechkin Spot not only because he knows where he needs to place a puck for every situation, but also because he can do it as hard and fast as possible.
It’s a one-of-a-kind gift that has allowed him to stay lethal from the same spot to this day. And he does it against the best goalies in the world. The four goalies most victimized by the Ovechkin Spot are Marc-André Fleury, Carey Price, Henrik Lundqvist and Kari Lehtonen.
Ovechkin’s first signature goal from the Ovechkin Spot came fairly early into his career: a power-play one-timer against the Toronto Maple Leafs in early November of his rookie season. But it wasn’t until much later that the spot defined him.
Over his first seven seasons, only 8 percent of Ovechkin’s goals came from a power-play one-timer from his spot and only one season, his first where 11.5 percent were scored that way, was above 10 percent.
And then came the spike in 2012-13, Adam Oates’ first of two years as Capitals head coach. That season, Ovechkin scored seven of his 32 goals via a power-play one-timer from his spot, or 21.9 percent. From that season onwards, 22.9 percent of Ovechkin’s goals were scored this way and there was a similar spike in catch-and-shoots.
In 2012-13, 12.5 percent of Ovechkin’s goals were catch-and-shoot wristers from his spot and he’s been at 12.2 percent since. Before that: 5 percent.
That spike in the exact type of goals that define his legacy during the 2012-13 season suggests that Oates deserves more credit than he’s given. He helped set Ovechkin on the path to ultimately beat Gretzky’s all-time goals record, a path that gave his goal-scoring ability significantly more longevity.
What’s sometimes forgotten about Ovechkin’s quest is how often it didn’t look remotely possible. Shortened seasons, lower scoring environments and likely age-based regression all looked like factors that would greatly impede Ovechkin’s chase. The 2012-13 season serves as a tipping point for that.
It was a lockout-shortened season when goals-per-game had dropped for the fifth straight season, and Ovechkin was a 27-year-old who had scored just 38 and 32 goals in the two seasons prior. Not old, but not young anymore and facing decline. Ovechkin’s game needed reinvention and Oates helped facilitate that.
What’s also telling about Ovechkin’s goal frequency from his spot in 2012-13 is the drop in goals off the rush. The rise in more stationary goals seems to go hand-in-hand with that and may be a clue toward his staying power.
It represented a shift in philosophy, one that simplified Ovechkin’s game, letting the puck come to him. It allowed Ovechkin to lurk in the shadows more, conserve energy and strike at the right moment. It marked Ovechkin’s next era, changing from a raging bull that plowed through teams with reckless abandon to the opportunistic jungle cat that pounced when necessary. Both were effective, but it was the latter that was harder to stop — and aged better.
Even if you expect it to happen, Ovechkin made it happen when opponents didn’t expect it. That’s part of his magic over the second part of his career, one that required a shift in how he played. Work smarter, not harder — and that meant putting more faith in Washington’s stellar supporting cast to get him the puck.
It’s no surprise that Nicklas Backstrom’s and John Carlson’s fingerprints are all over Ovechkin’s goals from his spot. Both have over 90 assists on such goals — no one else has more than 50.
All of that really started in 2013 when the Ovechkin Spot was truly born. That’s when it became Ovechkin’s signature trick and it’s what put him on the path to being the NHL’s all-time best scorer, a path he couldn’t get to without a little help from those around him.
Ovechkin is the league’s best goal scorer. That was already true before goal No. 895, considering the era he played through, but now it’s official.
He didn’t get there alone and had plenty of help along the way, but that doesn’t take away from his pure ability to put pucks into the net.
Ovechkin’s gift was his perfect combination of power, precision and perceptiveness, which made his shots feel impossible to stop. He knew how to shoot it, where to shoot it and when to shoot it. And that was perfectly facilitated from just one area of the ice.
Ovechkin scored 610 other goals in his career, but it’s those 285 from the left circle that fans will remember most.
Gretzky had his office behind the net, Ovechkin has his office at the top of the left circle — and it’s what made him the greatest goal scorer ever.
— Data via Evolving Hockey and Hockey-Reference
—The Athletic’s Shayna Goldman contributed to this report.
(Graphics: Drew Jordan / The Athletic | Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Randy Litzinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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