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The Ovechkin Calendar: October

October heralds the return of hockey after a long, lazy summer. It is when every team and every fan hold the hope that this is the year they will know Stanley Cup glory. Getting off to a hot start – both individual and as a team – helps fuel that hope. Over the course of his career, Alex Ovechkin has done his best to spark and sustain that hope by filling the nets with pucks.  Let us take a look at how he had done that.

October by the Numbers

Even with an 82-game regular season spread out over more than six months, there is no easing into the schedule. Alex Ovechkin has rarely been a victim of slow starts over his career.  Here are some of the most noteworthy facts and numbers with respect to Alex Ovechkin’s goal-scoring performance in October:

The Highlight Game

It would be the rare player who forgot his first NHL goal, and it would be the rare fan who forgot seeing one of the most anticipated debuts in NHL history feature not one, but two goals. When Alex Ovechkin took the ice for the first time in the NHL on October 5, 2005, against the Columbus Blue Jackets, it took him just 40 seconds to announce his presence, loudly. Columbus defenseman Radoslav Suchy was chasing the puck down in his own end with Ovechkin jumping past Adam Foote to give chase. As Suchy arrived at the puck along the end boards, so did Ovechkin, planting Suchy into the glass with a shoulder check that popped a support and loosened a pane of the glass out of its channel. 

The physical part of Ovechkin’s game established, he got to work on applying the skills for which he was drafted in the second period. With Columbus clinging to a 1-0 lead in the eighth minute of the period, Dainius Zubrus hounded Rick Nash off the puck just inside the Columbus blue line, and Jeff Halpern picked it up for the Caps. Circling behind the Blue Jackets’ net, Halpern fed the puck to Zubrus, who circled out of the right win corner. As he was making his way out of the corner, Zubrus found Ovechkin alone between the tops of the circles. Ovechkin’s one-timer beat goalie Pascal Leclaire past the right pad, and Ovechkin had his first NHL goal, tying the game at the 7:21 mark of the period.

Later in the period, with the Blue Jackets back in front, 2-1, the Caps went to a power play. Working the puck around the perimeter, the puck found its way to Mathieu Biron at the right point. His shot was blocked by Leclaire, but he could not control the loose puck. Defenseman Adam Foote failed to clear the puck away, and Ovechkin darted in from the left wing circle to bury it past Leclaire 11:51 into the period to tie the game a second time. The Caps went on to win, 3-2, in a game of several firsts for Ovechkin – first NHL goal, first power play goal, first multi-goal game. They were by no means the last.

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