‘Hope and pray’: Flyers goalies past and present discuss trying to stop Alex Ovechkin as he nears Wayne Gretzky’s goal record

This story needs to start with an apology.

Sitting in the press conference room at the Flyers Training Center this past weekend, Ivan Fedotov spoke to The Inquirer about facing Alex Ovechkin and the two goals he allowed to his countryman — or so was thought.

“He scored only one,” Fedotov said, correcting this reporter. “I remember that. [We played] in October but no. Second time I played against [him was] not that long time ago, and he scored. I remember.”

Oops. Fedotov did face Ovechkin twice, once in October and again in February, when the Washington star scored off the rush. The one in October, when Fedotov was the goalie of record for Philly? It was an empty-netter.

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“I promise you, he will never again score on me. You score once and that will be enough. Nothing more,” said a smiling Fedotov, who could be in net on Thursday when the Flyers visit the Capitals (7 p.m., NBCSP).

That’s a lofty, er, goal considering Ovechkin is about to break a sports record many thought was untouchable.

Almost 26 years ago, Wayne Gretzky notched his final NHL goal when he knocked in his own rebound against New York Islanders. It was the 894th tally of his Hall of Fame career and came a little over five years after he broke Gordie Howe’s thought-to-impassible record with his 802nd; Howe broke Maurice Richard’s record with his 545th in 1963.

And now, ”The Great 8″ is just eight away from breaking Gretzky’s mark.

“It’s always a pleasure to go and play against players like Alex. It’s a big honor,” Flyers rookie Matvei Michkov said on Friday. “Especially to be in the league when he is so close to that amazing level and point. ... Everybody’s waiting for it, and it’s a big honor for all the players in the league to be in the presence of that happening.”

Along the way to his 887 regular-season goals, Ovechkin has scored 51 against the Orange and Black, tied for the second-most against any franchise. But while he has scored 51 against the Carolina Hurricanes in 91 games and 51 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in 83, he has victimized the Flyers with the same amount in 77. He has scored the most (56) against the Winnipeg Jets, who relocated from Atlanta.

“Yeah, I got to do it a couple of times,” said Ersson who has faced Ovechkin four times. “Obviously, he finds a way to score like no one else. ... He finds a way to shoot through a lot of goalies that you see. I don’t know really what it is, it’s just like more than any other player, I would say. You would see him finding ways to shoot through the arms and stuff like that. So it’s obviously a very tough challenge, but an exciting one at that.”

Sitting in his stall after practice on Friday, Ersson looked up and to his left, the natural reflex when recalling a memory. Like all goalies, Ersson has the innate ability to recall specific goals. “What does he have? Two goals?” he asked. Yes. “One off a faceoff, they won it back, he shot it low glove,” he said. Correct. “The last game, a point shot was going 10 feet wide and hit [him] in the pants and goes in.

“He finds a way to score.”

Out of the 182 goaltenders that the Russian machine (who, famously, never breaks) has put a puck past in the regular season, 14 have worn orange and black. Antero Niittymäki, Steve Mason, and Carter Hart have each given up the most (six) with Robert Esche and Ray Emery right behind them. Even Petr Mrázek, who tended the twine for just 17 games with the Flyers, allowed a goal to Ovechkin. Alex Lyon, who had 22 games in Philly, allowed two power-play goals on April 17, 2021.

“It’s scary,” laughed ex-NHLer Martin Biron, who allowed three goals as a Flyer and four total to Ovechkin. “I mean, that’s part of the job, right? You’re a goalie, and you’re going to face the top guys and the top shooters. But with Ovi, it was always different, because I felt like other players, you could get a little bit of a read on what they were going to do and how they shoot the puck. And with Ovechkin, it was like, hope and pray basically, most of the time.”

Biron equated Ovechin’s shot to “a jackhammer trying to [go] through you.” Well, according to NHL Edge, in 2021-22, the first year the stats are available, Ovechkin’s shot topped out at 101.52 miles per hour. This season, the 39-year-old’s fastest shot was clocked at 98.11

Reminder, that puck is a hard piece of rubber.

“You lose sleep the night before knowing that you’re facing a guy like that because he’s not shy to shoot it and his shot is heavy,” former Flyers goalie and current TV analyst Brian Boucher told The Inquirer. “He has a knack for getting it by defenders and using defenders as screens. So, very dangerous, then obviously on the power play. You know where he is ... and he could use his lethal one-timer on you.”

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Ah, yes, the power play.

Of his 887 regular season goals, 321 have come on the power play — the most in NHL history. (For the record, he does have five career short-handed goals). And 18 of his 51 against the Flyers have come with the man advantage.

But it’s a funny story how Ovechkin ended up in his famous office, the left faceoff circle, and it has ties to one of the Flyers goalies. Biron’s brother Mathieu, a big right-handed defenseman, played with Ovechkin in 2005-06, and “somehow they thought he should be a power-play specialist.”

“Three games in a row right around Christmas in ‘05, my brother scored a power-play goal, left flank one-timer,” Biron said of Mathieu, who only scored 12 goals in 253 NHL games.

“Then he showed up at practice one morning, after scoring in three consecutive games, and the power play is all reworked and Ovechkin is in that spot. ... He’s like, ‘What the heck.’ Glen Hanlon was the coach, and he said, ‘Well, I want to try Ovi there. I think it would be a really good spot for him. You’ve had some good looks so let’s see what happens with Ovi. And then Ovi scored in consecutive games on the power play after that and my brother never saw that spot again.

“So it’s not just the goalies that were victimized. There’s some players that he victimized too.”

But goalies have always been the No. 1 target. Boucher, who didn’t allow a goal to Ovechkin while wearing the Flyers crest did allow two during his career— and one is about to be supplanted as the most famous Ovechkin goal.

That 2006 goal was even tabbed as the greatest goal of the 21st century by Sportsnet. Looking back, Boucher, then of the Phoenix Coyotes, calls it “a bit of a badge of honor” when describing Ovechkin scoring from his back past against him.

“Now that I look back on it, I’m glad it was a guy like him that scored it on me, and not like some guy who scored 15 career goals because that would be sort of embarrassing to have that happen,” he said of the nine-time Rocket Richard Trophy winner as the NHL’s top goal scorer. “Yeah, a great play by a great player.”

In the Glendale Arena that night was Auston Matthews, who has topped the NHL goal-scoring charts in three of the last four years with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Matthews said it was “pretty incredible to watch” and told the NHL it was the most skilled goal he’s ever seen. “I inspired a generation of goal scorers in this country, and I’ll take credit for all of it,” Boucher said tongue-in-cheek.

Not many goalies would want to be the guy to give up the record-breaker. As Ersson said, it’ll be shown on TV forever — much like what Biron experienced with Tomáš Hertl’s famous between-the-legs goal to cap off a four-goal game for the San Jose Sharks in 2013. Ersson and Fedotov will hope Ovechkin breaks the record this season, so they won’t have to worry about being on the wrong end of history next year.

The Capitals have 14 games remaining on the schedule, beginning with Thursday’s final matchup of the year with the Flyers. Ovechkin does see Winnipeg on Tuesday and Carolina twice more, but the last game of the season is one to circle — a meeting with Sidney Crosby. The Pittsburgh Penguins star, who has more points than Ovechkin, is chasing his own records and both have befuddled goalies for almost 20 years.

“It made me mad when Crosby would score, because that was a different type of goal,” Biron said. “When Ovechkin scored, it was, like, ‘Good goal, man. OK. Like, do you want me to sign the puck?’”

He just may. According to NHL.com, along with the sticks he is scoring with, Ovechkin’s basement is filled with signed sticks for a museum he is building in Russia. He has sticks from numerous netminders, including Marc-André Fleury and Henrik Lundqvist, who rank No. 1 and 2 for Ovechkin goals allowed at 28 and 24, respectively.

Fedotov would give him a stick, but only if he could get one back. Biron is also up for a swap — but with a heads-up. After that game against the Sharks all but ended his career, a few weeks later when Biron was doing TV work he was asked to sign a stick. He didn’t know it was for Hertl.

And what about Boucher?

“Obviously, guys like Gretzky and [Mario] Lemieux, and [Bobby] Orr, and these guys, and Sid, they’re going to go down as the game’s greatest, he’s right there,” Boucher said. “He’s right in the top five of the greatest players, and it was an honor to play against him and if I was in his basement, it would be an honor as well.”

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