One of Wayne Gretzky's so-called untouchable records may be within reach after all, and The Great One is ready for it.
Alex Ovechkin's remarkable durability and prodigious scoring ability have put Gretzky's all-time goals record of 894 within striking distance. Ovechkin, who has 658 tallies to his name, would need to average 34 goals over the next seven seasons to catch Gretzky.
Gretzky thinks it can be done.
"Absolutely," he said on the Hockey Night in Canadapodcast to be released Thursday, according to the CBC's Cole Shelton. "First and foremost, you got to be injury-free and Alex has been injury-free throughout his career.
"You have to play in a good organization and Alex is playing in a good organization. And you have to play with good players, and Alex is playing on a good team with good players. I just have nothing but respect for the young man. He plays the game hard, he plays physical and he wants to win."
The 33-year-old Russian is coming off his eighth 50-goal campaign and recently admitted he's eyeing Gretzky's record.
When Gretzky broke Gordie Howe's goals record in 1994, Howe was the first to congratulate him. Gretzky says he'll do the same if Ovechkin can make history.
"My dad said when I broke Gordie Howe's record, and I was a little bit embarrassed, he said, 'You know, one day someone is going to come along and maybe break your record and you just make sure you handle it yourself the same way Gordie Howe did,'" Gretzky said. "And that is what I am trying to do.
"Listen, I have nothing but respect and time for Alex, and good for him. If he does get close and does break it, I'll be there at the game, hopefully. And, hopefully, I can be the first guy to shake his hand."
Reaves also addressed Kane's assertions that Reaves "sure does a lot of talking," and that "he thinks it's the WWE."
"If Vince McMahon wants to call me when I retire I could always use a few extra bucks," the Golden Knights agitator told reporters, according to The Athletic's Jesse Granger.
Reaves joked that he'd use his new nickname in the ring and walk out to the nursery rhyme, "The Muffin Man," which the Vegas DJ played when Kane was ejected from Game 4 on Tuesday night.
Before Tuesday's contest, Kane took a shot at Reaves' effort in their Game 3 fight.
"For the so-called toughest guy in the league, I don't know if he landed a punch," Kane said. "At times I thought I was fighting the Muffin Man. Didn't expect that, I expected more of a battle."
The two players finally fought with about two minutes left in Game 3 after jawing at each other for much of the contest.
Vegas shut out San Jose 5-0 on Tuesday to take a 3-1 series lead.
However, the source said Pittsburgh is very unlikely to part with forward Jake Guentzel and goaltender Matt Murray, too, and that signing the netminder to a contract extension is "the No. 1 thing to get done" in the offseason.
Following a 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders that swept the Penguins out of the playoffs Tuesday night, Phil Kessel was asked if he expects to be dealt.
"That's a tough question to start, but I don't know at this point," the forward said, according to Rossi. "We'll see how it goes this summer. I've never worried about it. Obviously, two years in a row it didn't go the way we wanted it to. We'll see."
The Penguins explored trading Kessel last summer, and he was agreeable to playing for the Arizona Coyotes, multiple sources told Rossi.
Crosby and Malkin both have full no-trade clauses and are signed through 2024-25 and 2021-22, respectively. Guentzel inked a five-year, $30-million extension with the club in December and Murray is under contract through 2019-20.
That was a dismantling, not a playoff series. A whooping, not a battle.
An epic collapse.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, quite literally one of the greatest regular-season teams in NHL history, were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Columbus Blue Jackets. A 7-3 loss on Tuesday sealed Tampa’s fate.
Jamie Sabau / Getty Images
The Lightning looked like a shell of themselves from the second period of Game 1 until the final buzzer in Game 4, which sent Nationwide Arena into a tizzy. Tampa is the first-ever Presidents' Trophy winner to be swept in the opening round, and it lost to a team that needed 81 games to earn a playoff spot.
Let’s pour one out for the juggernaut and tip our cap to Columbus, the worthy underdog. Here are four takeaways from the upset:
Will can overpower skill
If the first week of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs has taught us one thing, it’s this: The postseason is an entirely different animal than the regular season.
Yes, the go-time switch is flipped every spring, but this year feels different. The phenomenon is more pronounced than in previous playoffs, or so it seems.
The Blue Jackets sweeping the Lightning, and the Islanders sweeping the Penguins, both count as surprises. One, of course, is infinitely more surprising than the other, but in both instances the hungrier team dominated.
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
On paper, Tampa is a powerhouse blessed with a tantalizing mix of high-end skill and talent, as well as depth and changeability. Columbus, on paper, is a pretty damn good hockey team too but, like 30 other teams, not quite comparable to peak Tampa.
Now, as the likes of power forward Josh Anderson, burgeoning sniper Oliver Bjorkstrand, and versatile defenseman David Savard proved, hockey isn’t won on paper. All three were tremendous against the Lightning, winning puck battles, scoring goals, and shutting down some of the opposition’s best players. They outplayed Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, and Steven Stamkos.
The Blue Jackets' main bus drivers - forwards Matt Duchene, Artemi Panarin, and Cam Atkinson, defensemen Zach Werenski and Seth Jones, as well as goalie Sergei Bobrovsky - most certainly did their parts too.
Together, the John Tortorella-led group out-willed a more talented Tampa squad. Once the team gained an edge, they never let it go.
Bobrovsky’s choke job is over
Cancel the classic narrative, because Bobrovsky’s playoff demons have officially been slain.
Bobrovsky turned aside 108 of 115 shots to earn a sterling .940 save percentage in four games. In 24 previous playoff appearances, he had accrued an .891 save percentage, countless boos, and a reputation as the two-time Vezina Trophy winner with no big-game clout.
Jamie Sabau / Getty Images
Bobrovsky's five-on-five netminding was so outstanding in this series that it makes you wonder how long he can sustain such a high level of play. With Columbus' penalty kill conceding four goals, the pending UFA actually allowed on average just one even-strength marker per game despite facing 25 five-on-five shots.
At the other end of the rink, Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy wasn’t sharp (.856 save percentage) or supported well enough (faced 83 scoring chances). This early playoff exit is only partially his fault.
Jon Cooper never loses his cool
Lightning coach Jon Cooper is by nature a calm individual. He always appears to be in control of his emotions and prefers to take a glass-half-full approach to life. It’s what makes him who he is.
So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the first sign of life from Cooper - at least publicly - came Tuesday after he won an offside challenge and was caught by TV cameras trying to charge up the bench?
Jamie Sabau / Getty Images
Still, it was a little odd that Cooper didn’t go off on a tirade behind the bench or deliver a soundbite through the media in the five days between the club’s worrisome series-opening loss and that series-closing challenge. It was low-hanging fruit.
Perhaps, though, Cooper didn’t want to break the mold, no matter what transpired.
These Lightning were so incredibly steady all year. They made winning 62 games, and never losing more than two in a row, look surgical. Cooper was a gigantic part of their season-long success and is in contention for coach of the year honors. Why change now, right?
Clearly, the guy knows what he’s doing. And he did encounter a number of injuries and a suspension to Kucherov, his best player. He had built-in excuses.
Yet, in a weird, lingering way, Cooper’s calmness projected a strange vibe.
These Blue Jackets might do more damage
Looking ahead, what’s the ceiling for the Blue Jackets?
It’s fair to recalibrate our expectations for this Eastern Conference wild-card team, seeing as it just walked all over everybody’s unanimous Stanley Cup pick and should have plenty of time to rest. Its second-round opponent will be the winner of the Maple Leafs-Bruins series, which may go seven games.
What's more, the Blue Jackets' previously woeful power play - somehow, with that personnel, it ranked 28th in the NHL during the regular season - is really clicking. Relying on five different scorers, Columbus rectified the situation against Tampa, bagging five tallies on just 10 opportunities.
Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
Duchene, picked up from the Ottawa Senators in late February, collected four goals and three assists in the opening round and looks every bit the player Columbus hoped it had acquired. His presence adds another dynamic up front.
The stock of this group, as a whole, is sky-high right now. The Blue Jackets just won the first playoff round in franchise history against an all-time squad. They are dialed in and playing a brand of hockey that can upend just about any team in the East.
The best part? Whatever's next is gravy.
John Matisz is theScore's National Hockey Writer. You can find him on Twitter @matiszjohn.
It turns out the Tampa Bay Lightning's historic regular season was all for naught.
The Bolts were in first place for virtually the entire 2018-19 campaign, and cruised to the Presidents' Trophy thanks to a dominant 128-point output. Appropriately, Tampa was labeled favorite to roll over the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round and march to the Stanley Cup, but head coach Jon Cooper believes a lack of important games down the stretch did his club in through their stunning first-round sweep.
"When you have the amount of points we had, it's a blessing and a curse in away, because you don't play, really, any meaningful hockey for a long time and all of the sudden you have to amp it up," Cooper said postgame, according to Sportsnet. "It's not an excuse, it's reality."
Tuesday's defeat marks the latest playoff heartbreak for the Lightning, who had lost in the Stanley Cup Final and two Eastern Conference Finals since 2015 before this year's unfathomable exit.
"We just couldn't find our game, that was it," Cooper said. "It had been with us all year, and for six days in April, we couldn't find it. It's unfortunate because it puts a blemish on what was one hell of a regular season."
The Lightning didn't lose three consecutive games once during the regular season. Dating back to 2018's Eastern Conference Final, they have now lost six straight playoff contests.
The Columbus Blue Jackets completed a stunning four-game, first-round sweep over the historically dominant Tampa Bay Lightning in front of a raucous home crowd on Tuesday night.
While those inside Nationwide Arena reacted with hugs and cheers, many onlookers chimed in on social media to offer their takes on perhaps the biggest postseason upset in NHL history.
Many simply expressed their disbelief:
STUNNED!!! Get the brooms out. RIP up your brackets!!! Congrats to the @BlueJacketsNHL on a MAJOR UPSET and earning the first ever playoff series win in franchise history. #Round2
The tampa bay lightning, a team who posted one of the absolute best regular season records in the modern era, got swept in a bo7 versus a team who has never won a playoff series IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE FRANCHISE (nearly two decades)
I was dead wrong about the Blue Jackets. I am stunned right now. I thought this Tampa Bay team would win the whole damn thing honestly. Good for Columbus. This is awesome.
And after Columbus went all-in at the trade deadline, many were just happy to see the Blue Jackets' efforts pay off with the franchise's first-ever playoff series win:
So the team that faced no adversity in the regular season just got SWEPT by a team who’s season was defined by it. I’m so here for it. #CBJ
Tired: trading away your first round pick to go deep in the playoffs Wired: trading away every draft pick for the next five years to upset the best team in the last decade in the playoffs
So pumped for the Blue Jackets and especially Kekalainen. Everyone thought they’d trade Panarin and/or Bobrovsky and rebuild. Instead, the dude goes all in and gets Duchene and Dzingel and just swept one of the best regular season teams of all time. Good to see that rewarded!!!
The best part about the Blue Jackets’ sweep is that maybe, just maybe, it will inspire other GMs to pull a Kekalainen and go wild at future trade deadlines.
