Ovechkin Leads the Comeback With His 60th Goal (3/21/2008)

March 21, 2008 - Coming off a 5-0 loss to Chicago two nights earlier, the Capitals needed as many wins as they could to keep their playoff hopes alive after ranking 28th overall at the halfway point of the season. Ovechkin came into the game with 58 goals - two shy of tying the Capitals' all-time single-season goals record held by Dennis Maruk (1981-82) and becoming the first player since Mario Lemieux (69) and Jaromir Jagr (62) in 1995-96 to score 60 goals in a season. After opening the scoring with his 59th, the Thrashers scored 3 straight to take a 3-1 lead in the third period. Ovechkin, along with linemates Nicklas Backstrom and Viktor Kozlov single-handedly willed the Caps to victory with 3 goals in 5:02 - Ovechkin's 60th and two in 32 seconds by Backstrom. The Caps top line was dominant at 5v5, with each player finishing the night with at least an 89.5% shot-attempts-for percentage. Ovechkin led the entire team with an insane 90.2% and a +33 differential.
According to the Game Score metric (details here - https://wp.me/p4bCjg-2u2), Ovechkin's performance this Friday night is one of the best since 2007-08 when analytics were first tracked, ranking higher than several 4-goal, 6-point, 50-save-shut-out performances due to his complete dominance at 5v5. The win was the Caps' first when losing after 2 periods in 50 (0-45-5) tries and was the catapult to a 7-game winning streak to close out the season, securing the Southeast Division championship and the franchise's first playoff birth of the Ovechkin era.

- Period 1 -
0:00 - Shot attempt
0:30 - Huge hit on Popovic
0:45 - Hit on Valabik
0:55 - Goal #1
1:58 - Ovechkin starts 3-way passing play, Kozlov barely misses
2:32 - Hits post
2:56 - Just misses big hit on Armstrong

- Period 2 -
3:43 - Craig Laughlin telestrator break-down of goal
5:42 - End-to-end rush sets up great forechecking shift

- Period 3 -
6:56 - Hit on Havelid
7:06 - Huge hit on Holik
7:28 - Ovechkin sets up great shift for the top line
8:05 - Goal #2, 60th of season and ties Dennis Maruk for Capitals' all-time single-season record
9:47 - Yet another dominant shift from the Ovechkin-Backstrom-Kozlov line
10:28 - Ovechkin almost completes hat-trick
11:42 - Bonus: Backstrom game-tying goal
13:31 - Assist #1, Backstrom go-ahead goal
16:31 - Assist #2

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