All the hype surrounding the Washington Capitals this season has been about how close Alex Ovechkin is right now to pushing his way to the top of the NHL’s All-Time Goals list. However, with the Caps star set to be on a week-to-week status for the coming games, this just says a lot about how the pace for the team will also be hampered moving forward.

Ovechkin has ben on a spectacular pace this season. At the age of 39, he is leading the NHL in goals with 15 – being the first player of his age or older in the history of the league to be the first to notch 15 goals in a season as per NHL stats. Consider him to be the LeBron James equivalent in the NHL at this point thanks to his rate of play.

So far, the last oldest player to reach the 15 goal mark in a season was Frank Maholvich – who was 33 years and 304 days old at the time when he drilled his 15th goal in 1971. At this point, Ovechkin will be set for an additional evaluation with the team’s physicians in Washington before moving along with the plan.

A Hampered Chase for Goals

Ovechkin was playing at a high level to lead the Washington Capitals in their game against the Utah Hockey Club before he collided with forward Jack McBain just 5:30 into the third and final frame. He was slow to get up and had to be helped to the bench – even trying to skate off the injury and limped his way to the locker room.

Later in the same day, Ovechkin was said to be out for at least a week and will have to be re-evaluated due to his lower leg injury. He scored twice in that win on Monday against the UHC and was definitely inching closer with the way he is playing right now.

So far, Ovechkin now has a total of 868 career goals as of the time of writing, just 27 shy from breaking the legendary Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 goals. At this point, it is expected that he can find his way into the top of the list, but it will take him some time to get back on his groove with the injury in perspective now more than ever.

A Rare Injury For Ovechkin

For those who know, Ovechkin has been one of the prolific goal-scorers in the game, and he has also been really durable for most of his career, being able to come up with 20 seasons and only missing a total of 35 games due to injury. The longest stretch of all those missed games was in 2009, when the Capitals star missed a total of six games after sustaining an upper-body injury in a fight against Jason Chimera of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Ovechkin has been one of the elite performers in the game so far, and it cannot be denied that the Capitals are now riding on his back as they have gone 13-4-1 as of the time of writing and 7-2-1 in their last 10 games while sitting at the top of the season. That just says a lot about the massive impact that Ovechkin has to offer for the team at this point in time.

For now, it seems that they will have to make do without the presence of Ovechkin to lead the way, and that says a lot about how the odds of him to beat the All-Time Goals record now on the sidelines for the meantime.