When Will Alex Ovechkin Break Wayne Gretzky's NHL Goals Record?

Our new Ovi Tracker projects his path to 894+ career goals.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Note: On April 6, 2025, Alex Ovechkin scored his 895th career goal and broke Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL career record. This page will be frozen as of that game.

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Wayne Gretzky’s 894 career goals is a record that was once thought unbreakable. When Alexander Ovechkin made his NHL debut on October 5, 2005, no active player was even within 150 goals of the Great One. The 1980s were such an alien time in hockey — and were immediately followed by the Dead Puck Era — that most fans and observers just assumed nobody would ever come along and seriously challenge Gretzky.

But Alex Ovechkin had different ideas. The Great Eight broke the 50-goal barrier in his rookie season at age 20, and was off to the record races. In recent years, it became clear that his ageless production would at least give him a shot at the record, and another outstanding season in 2024-25 has officially put the hockey world on record watch.

So I thought it would be useful to keep a running projection (in the sprit of this Caitlin Clark record tracker) of how likely Ovi is to tie/break Gretzky’s record, and when the day might be if it does happen. For more about how it works, click here. But read on if all you want are the results!

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How many goals does Ovechkin need?

Alex Ovechkin needs 0 more goals to tie Wayne Gretzky's record, and 0 to break it, with 5 games remaining in the 2024-25 regular season. The next Capitals game is versus the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday, April 10.

Will Ovechkin break the record?

Alex Ovechkin has a 100.0% chance to tie Wayne Gretzky's record, and a 100.0% chance to break it by season's end.

When will Ovechkin break the record?

The median date on which Ovechkin ties the record is on April 4, 2025, and he breaks it on April 6, 2025 in his successful simulations.

Last update: Monday, April 7, 2025, 6:14 AM

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Here’s a plot of Ovechkin’s total career goals through each remaining Capitals game on average across all of the simulations, along with his odds of tying and/or breaking the record through a given date:

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We’ll be updating this throughout the 2024-25 NHL regular season, so keep checking back after each Capitals game.

And for those curious, here’s how it works:

Warning! Gory Mathematical Details Ahead!

Ovechkin’s chance of scoring a given number of goals in each game are driven by a modified Poisson distribution. The base distribution is generated by a weighted average of Ovechkin’s goals per game over the previous three seasons, with this year receiving a weight of 3, last year getting a 2 and two years ago receiving a weight of 1.

The resulting distribution is then regressed toward Ovechkin’s real-life distribution of observed goals in each game from the past three seasons (also weighted). Adjustments are made to reflect home-ice advantage and how many more/less goals per game the opponent tends to allow than the league average.

Single-game goal totals are drawn from this distribution at random 1,000 times to create the projections above. In each simulation, it is tracked whether Ovechkin tied/broke Gretzky’s record and when that happened.

The target dates may not match the chart because the listed targets are conditional on simulations when Ovi ties and/or breaks the record, while the chart includes all simulations (regardless of whether he reaches the record or not).

These simulations also assume Ovechkin will play each of Washington’s remaining games.

Earlier versions of the “When will Ovechkin break the record?” section looked at the average, not the median — but the average could be on days when the Capitals didn’t play games. For this reason, the median date was a more appropriate measure to use.

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Filed under: NHL, Updating Models, Hockey