Alex Ovechkin will almost certainly break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal-scoring record. Ovechkin began this season with 853 goals — 41 shy of Gretzky’s 894 — and got off to a great start before missing time with an injury in December and slowing down a bit since his return. But it’s really not a matter of if Ovechkin becomes the goal-scoring king but when. Barring a serious injury, Ovechkin will set the record this season or early next season.
We’re tracking Ovechkin’s chase and trying to determine the game in which he’s most likely to break the record. Below you’ll find details — updated daily — on where he stands, his latest goal, his odds of breaking the record this season and in which game, and more.
Ovechkin’s last goal: No. 875 on Jan. 23 against the Kraken
Ovechkin scored an empty-net goal in a 3-0 Capitals victory. It was his 22nd goal of the season and fifth empty netter. He has 62 career empty-net goals.
Ovechkin needed 42 goals this season to surpass Gretzky for the all-time record of 895 goals.
The following histogram shows Ovechkin’s likely goals finish by the season’s end based on 1,000 simulations of the rest of the season. The simulation factors for Ovechkin’s expected scoring pace (36.8 goals per 82), who he plays with and where.
Based on those factors, Ovechkin currently has a 10 percent chance of finishing the 2024-25 season as the NHL’s all-time scoring leader. Ovechkin’s current most likely finish is 35 goals, leaving him at 888 career goals.
Ovechkin started the season with a 22 percent chance of breaking Gretzky’s goal record this season. After a tepid start, Ovechkin’s odds shot up quickly thanks to a hot stretch where he scored 13 goals in 11 games. With 15 goals in 18 games, Ovechkin’s odds peaked at 65 percent on Nov. 18.
Those odds dropped slowly with each game Ovechkin missed due to a knee injury until all progress from his hot streak was erased. Ovechkin’s odds dropped all the way down to 15 percent after missing 16 games and have sagged further since as he’s so far been unable to keep up the necessary pace.
What makes the possibility of Ovechkin breaking Gretzky’s goal record this season so special is that Ovechkin would be doing it at the same seasonal rate as Gretzky did. This is Ovechkin’s 20th season in the NHL — the same amount that Gretzky played to reach 894. The two stand alone not only in their goal total but also in the speed at which they’ve reached these heights.
Because it’s likely that Ovechkin will not become the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer this season, the most likely game Ovechkin breaks the record this season is the last game of the season.
Ovechkin has a 3.1 percent chance of scoring his 895th goal on April 17, an away game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. His odds increase as he gets closer to season’s end with the earliest possibility based on 1,000 simulations coming on March 15 against the San Jose Sharks.
Anything in between has a chance.
Methodology
The probability of Ovechkin breaking the goal record is based on a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season.
The simulator estimates the likelihood Ovechkin scores in a given game based on his projected output, his opponent’s defensive strength, and whether the game is at home or on the road. Ovechkin’s projected output is based on his last three seasons, weighted for recency and regressed to the mean of players that play a similar amount of minutes.
That projected output, adjusted for opponent and venue, is then used to calculate the odds of Ovechkin scoring a goal (or more) using the Poisson distribution.
Ryan Best and John Bradford contributed to this article.
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(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; John McCreary/NHLI / Getty Images)