The Kings will be gunning to match their season-best win streak Monday, but to keep their engines humming they will have to contend with a Russian machine that never breaks.
They’ll welcome Alex Ovechkin, who remains in hot pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s career record for goals, and the Washington Capitals on Monday, when the Kings will have designs on their fourth four-game surge of this campaign.
Ovechkin has 35 goals in 59 games this season, bringing his total to 815, 79 shy of Gretzky’s record.
As Ovechkin approached another milestone, his 700th goal, the man who was perhaps Gretzky’s closest on-ice confidant assessed the Great Eight’s chances of surpassing the Great One. Initially skeptical, as he worked through various possibilities in his mind, he reached a conclusion that seemed even more sound 116 goals later.
“If there’s a player who can do it, he’s the guy,” said Hall of Fame winger Jari Kurri, who was once also the leading goal-scorer among NHL players born in Europe, as Ovechkin became when he surpassed Jaromir Jagr’s mark of 766.
Kurri said that stylistically, Ovechkin and Gretzky, with whom Kurri played for both the Kings and Edmonton Oilers, were impossible to compare. Where Gretzky, a center, could have led the NHL in career points without having scored a single goal because of his preternatural playmaking, Ovechkin, a winger, has been more in the mold of snipers like the late Mike Bossy or the father/son duo Bobby and Brett Hull.
“He’s just one of those natural goal-scorers. His game is about shooting. No one can take that shot away from him. He finds a way to get open and he doesn’t miss the net that often,” Kurri said.
Ovechkin didn’t miss the net often in San Jose on Saturday either, where his two goals and three points powered Washington past the Sharks in an 8-3 beatdown. Since 2008, the Caps have missed the playoffs just once, but they currently trail rival Pittsburgh for the final Eastern Conference wild-card…
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