Alex Ovechkin has played 21 seasons in the NHL and recently suited up in his 1,500th game, becoming only the 24th player in league history to reach the milestone.
To put Ovechkin’s longevity into perspective, ESPN shared a mind-blowing statistic during their telecast of the Capitals-Stars game.
Ovechkin has played against 32 percent of all NHL players… ever. Meanwhile, fellow sports legends LeBron James (22 NBA seasons) and Tom Brady (23 NFL seasons) have played against 35 percent and 21 percent of their league’s total players.
NHL Stats helped further put the statistic into perspective.
- Ovechkin has appeared alongside 2,736 of 8,687 total players in the regular season in NHL history.
- Ovechkin has dressed alongside a total of 242 different players with the Capitals (skaters and goaltenders).
The wide swath of players Ovechkin has battled against is most evident when looking through the 184 different goaltenders Ovechkin has scored on during his career. Ovi’s lit the lamp against both young — Igor Shesterkin, Jake Oettinger, and Ilya Sorokin — and old — like Hockey Hall of Famers Martin Brodeur, Dominik Hasek, and Ed Belfour. He even once scored on a father/son combo, though across his time in the NHL and Russian Super League: Daniil Tarasov (December 2021) and Vadim Tarasov (December 2004).
Ovechkin’s first game against his longtime rival, Sidney Crosby, on November 22, 2005, is another example of his longevity. Hockey Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux also suited up in the game — one of only 26 games Super Mario would play in during his final NHL season. Retired defenseman Brooks Orpik was then a member of the Penguins at that time, too, suiting up in his third NHL season. He’d go on to win a Stanley Cup with Ovechkin 13 years later and is now a development coach for the Capitals.
Part of the reason Ovechkin’s percentage of NHL players played against is so high is that there were relatively few players from 1917 through 1967, when there were no more than six teams in the league, and rosters were not nearly as big as the 23-man squads now. The league eventually swelled to 32 franchises over the next 57 years, including the Washington Capitals’ founding in 1974.
With the Caps, Ovechkin has suited up with a staggering 39.1 percent of all Capitals players ever since the team’s first game on October 9, 1974, against the New York Rangers. Via Elite Prospects, there have been 618 players (562 skaters and 56 goalies) who have suited up in a game in Washington Capitals history (including 11 more goalies that dressed or were under contract but never played a minute).
One hundred and twenty-two of those 618 Capitals players, including goalies, assisted on Ovechkin goals through his record-breaking 895th tally on April 6, 2025. Players who have earned apples on Ovechkin goals include past teammates like Nicklas Backstrom, Alexander Semin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Mike Green, Brooks Laich, Richard Zednik, and Jason Arnott.
During his career in DC, Ovechkin has also suited up with legendary names including Olie Kolzig, Ilya Kovalchuk, Sergei Fedorov, Viktor Kozlov, Zdeno Chara, Donald Brashear, Martin Erat (not Filip Forsberg), Brendan Morrison, Michael Nylander, Max Pacioretty, Mike Richards, Justin Williams, Jaroslav Halak, Cristobal Huet, Tomas Vokoun, and Jose Theodore.
Now, Ovi is skating with burgeoning stars like Dylan Strome (age 28), Connor McMichael (24), and Aliaksei Protas (24). Tuesday against the Dallas Stars, Ovechkin was assigned on the same line as the Capitals’ 2023 first-round pick, Ryan Leonard, who is just 20 years old and playing in his first full season in the NHL. Leonard was born eight months (1/21/2005) before Ovi’s NHL debut on October 5, 2005.
