No. 255: ALEXANDER OVECHKIN / When the greatest goal-scorer in hockey history made his North American debut, an unknown playing in front of a couple of hundred folks getting out of the Prairie cold.

There's an inexplicable satisfaction in seeing a star before they're tagged as the Next Big Thing.

As of this writing Alexander Ovechkin is just 22 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s career goal-scoring record. His 20^th of the season, a last-minute empty-net job in a Washington win over Nashville, might not have been aesthetically pleasing but in its own way remarkable—he’s already scored 20 goals despite missing more than a month with a fractured left fibula. When he scored at a career-low rate last year (31 in 79 games), it seemed to suggest that he might struggle to get 99’s record, that he couldn’t do it in a single season, that he might be fading. Well, he might not get there this year, but that would be down to those games lost to injury—he thoroughly erased any doubt that he’ll get there

The NHL powers will find it awkward when Ovechkin does take down the record, what with Russia being a pariah state because of its invasion of Ukraine and Ovie’s history of cozying up to Vladimir Putin, but that’s a subject for down the line.