Before a game against Toronto earlier this month, Alex Ovechkin was asked if he would eventually break through on the power play, as the star Capitals left winger had yet to score there.
“Probably not this year,” Ovechkin quipped at the time.
The response drew laughs because it was a ludicrous notion. Ovechkin scored 25 power play goals last season, so of course he’d score there at some point this season. Sure enough, that night, he got his first power-play goal, 12 games in.
But game after game, that remained his only power-play goal, a surprisingly slow pace through 20 games.