Funny how some hockey records work; you can be a nobody one day and a record holder the next, simply owing to the person ahead of you stepping out of the game. It happens often, especially with most active player records; players aren’t active forever, and then what happens? Someone is suddenly holding a record. And though the phenomenon isn’t rare, what is rare is when that someone just happens to be a current holder of many such records, so many that he often gets compared to Wayne Gretzky himself, so it’s no wonder that that someone in this case, yet again, is Alex Ovechkin.

The Captain of the Washington Capitals, who recently made history by beating Wayne Gretzky’s record for most career goals with 895 career goals earlier in the year, has just come into the title of an entirely new record, i.e., most hits amongst all active players with 3,742. Matt Martin, who up until now was serving as the main hitman for the New York Islanders, just announced his retirement at 36 and with that takes his record of the most hits for an active player—3,931—off the ice.

It’s now back onto Ovechkin, who is known as a sort of Russian wall on the ice, to raise that number so that he won’t pass it on to the next guy. And just how does he do that? 287 more hits so that he beats Cal Clutterbuck’s record for the most all-time hits. Not too tough for a guy who knows how to countercheck someone like it’s child’s play!

All the records held by Alex Ovechkin

It may be hard to fit all the records that Alex Ovechkin holds in just a few paragraphs, the list is substantially long. Though he hasn’t yet surpassed The Great One in terms of the total number of records he holds, Alex Ovechkin is certainly up their with multiple records in the fields of goal scoring, points, shots and other. Gretzky has a total 61 NHL records, while Ovechkin, counting both his individual records and the ones he made for the Washington Capitals, holds around 45, as per the Capitals Outsider.

Amongst Alexander Ovechkin’s notable records are 13 seasons with 40 or more goals, the most of any player in NHL history, of course the all time goal record that he broke with 895 goals in 1487 games. Ovechkin additionally holds records for the most empty net goals scored, most goals for a Russian player and most on the road goals. And there’s some other pretty interesting records on the list too, Ovechkin was named as the First player to win the Art Ross Trophy, Maurice Richard Trophy, Lester B. Pearson Award, and Hart Memorial Trophy in a single season, as well as the only player to be named to the NHL first All-Star team in each of his first five seasons.

Alex Ovechkin’s latest record that comes to him as a sort of default after the retirement of Matt Martin, begins a whole new category for Ovechkin in terms of record holding: Aggressor tactics! We always knew Ovechkin was a man of steel, but now he’s holding records for it!