Alex Ovechkin scores no. 878, now 17 goals away from record

Washington-Alex Ovechkin scored his 878. Career dimensions into an empty net with 0.1 seconds left on the clock to get closer to Wayne Gretzky’s NHL record, and the Washington capitals defeated defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers 6-3 Tuesday night .

According to ESPN Research, Ovechkin registered a goal at. 19:59 of the third period for the fourth time in his career, and three of them came with an empty net. However, it has been a while when his last time was back on December 9, 2014 against Tampa Bay Lightning.

Ovechkin is only 17 goals away from breaking Gretzky’s brand on 894, a feat that once seemed unavailable. The capitals have 29 games left to him to get to 895 or beyond this season, although he has another year left on his contract.

“It’s good that he scored,” said teammate Aliaksei Protas about the capit on the captain of the monumental sports network’s postgame show. “It’s great for everyone.”

According to ESPN Research, Ovechkin, NHL’s leading leader in empty-net tallies, reached 25 goals for the 19th time in his career and broke a tie with Jaromir Jagr for the second most in history. He only tracks Gordie Howe at. 20.

“In real (ovechkin) way, right, 0.01,” Washington coach Spencer Carbery said in his availability after media. “We’ll take it.”

Tuesday’s goal put an exclamation point on a busy win in a match between two of the Eastern Conference’s top team. Andrew Mangiapane, Tom Wilson, Lars or and Nic Dowd also scored for the capitals, who had their way with two-time Vezina Trophy-winning goalkeeper Sergei Bobrovsky, and Protas also had an empty net.

“They’re a quick team, so I think we knew it was going into it,” Mangiapan said of Panthers. “I felt we were doing a decent job of wearing out their (defense).”

Logan Thompson, among the current challengers of the Vezina Award, stopped 31 of the 34 shots he was facing to help Washington avoid losing three in a row.

“They capitalized on their appearance,” said Florida tip Sam Bennett about the capitals. “I think we pushed a little too hard for a goal and came up with a few too many Odd-Man (Rushes), gave them too many scoring chances. And the capitalized.”

A day after visiting the White House and the meeting President Donald Trump to celebrate the first title of the franchise, Florida saw his winning strip on three despite goals from Bennett, Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk and 21 savings from Bobrovsky.

“The margin for mistakes, against two good teams, is pretty tight,” said Florida coach Paul Maurice. “We had two or three guys who had some of the evenings, but apart from that it was a reasonably good game.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.