We don’t know whether this will be Alex Ovechkin’s final season as a Washington Capital or not, but there’s never a bad time to reflect back on two decades of being treated to this amazing talent. So each game day throughout the 2025-26 season, we’re going to be picking an Ovechkin moment to remember against that day’s opponent as we look back at an incredible career.
Ovechkin Passes Bondra – April 8, 2014
Throughout his career, Alex Ovechkin has been absolutely money on the power play (…until recently but let’s not really talk about that, okay? Happy thoughts only…) – and by the 2013-14 season, Ovechkin was one of just three players in franchise history to have scored at least 20 power-play goals in a single season. The others? Dennis Maruk, who scored exactly 20 in 1981-82, and Peter Bondra, who set the new franchise record in 2000-01 with 22. Ovechkin tied that record shortly after, hitting 22 in 2007-08 (after passing Maruk with 21 in his rookie season).
He’d been stuck at that number for several years, though, until that 2013-14 campaign. By the end of the season, with just four games remaining, he was once again locked in a tie with Bondra at 22.
But not for long.
Late in the first period of a scoreless game in St. Louis, the Blues’ Derek Roy was called for hooking and the Caps went to work with the extra man. Nothing doing for the first 90ish seconds, but then a pass from John Carlson to the big man in his office gave the Caps the lead – and gave Ovechkin the new franchise record in PPGs:
Not only did it establish a new franchise record for power-play goals in a single season, but it also gave Ovechkin his 50th of the year – the fifth time in his first nine seasons that he hit that mark, which made him the 11th player in NHL history to score 50 or more goals in a season five times.
Interestingly enough, while Ovechkin does hold the franchise PPG record – eventually finishing 2013-14 with 24 and then topping it by one the following season – and has even been “accused” of padding his stats with power-play goals (insert eyeroll here), this is one area where the Caps’ captain is not in NHL history-making mode. In fact, his best power-play season of 25 goals does not even crack the top 20 in NHL history.