Alex Ovechkin Notches 22nd Career Hat Trick

Once Alex Ovechkin scored his second goal of the night against Carolina, we were all thinking it: “...back-to-back Ovi hat tricks?” Followed closely by, “No, that would be asking too much...right?” Watching him on the ice every game is privilege enough, plus he tallied his 21st career hat trick just three days ago. But because Ovi is Ovi, he recorded his second hat trick in as many games. He reached several notable milestones with this hatty, and looking at them separately is impressive enough. When you put them all in a list, though, it’s almost overwhelming. Let’s take a look at just how good Ovi’s 22nd career hat trick was:

• His second goal of the night tied him with Mike Bossy and Jaromir Jagr for ninth-most multi-goal games in NHL history.
• 22 career hat tricks ties Teemu Selanne for 11th-most all-time.
• Ovechkin is just the 13th player in NHL history to record a hat trick against 14+ opponents:

• He is only the 14th player in the NHL to record back-to-back hat tricks more than once in his career, and he is the first player to do so since Alex Kovalev (Feb. 7 and 10, 2001 and Nov. 13 and 14, 2001). Ovechkin’s other set of back-to-back hat tricks came in the first two games of the 2017-18 season, which hadn’t happened in 100 years.
• His third goal, his first PPG since November 19, passed Mario Lemieux (236) for the most power play goals with a single franchise.
• He is also now tied with Brendan Shanahan for sixth-most power play goals all-time with 237.
• Ovi is the 18th different player since 1943-44 to score 28+ goals in his team’s first 31 games, and just the third to do so since 1993-94. The other two guys on that list? Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux.

Ovechkin keeps adding to his milestone list left and right, so often in fact that we might forget how impressive each one is. We shouldn’t. We frequently talk about just how lucky we are to watch The Great 8 play hockey, and last night was a special reminder as to why.