How Alex Ovechkin got his 1,000th point in 35 seconds

It was hardly any surprise Alex Ovechkin made it to 1,000 points on Wednesday. It was a home game at the Verizon Center against the Penguins, billed under NBCSN’s Wednesday Night Rivalry banner. Both the Capitals and the Penguins were coming into the game on win streaks with second place in the Metropolitan Division on the line.

Toss in a bit of playoff history, too, and there was no chance Ovechkin wasn’t going to bring his A-game.

What was a surprise, however, was how woefully unprepared the Penguins seemed to be on Ovechkin’s first shift of the night. It took 35 seconds into his 880th game for Ovechkin to score point No. 1,000. The Penguins deserve an assist on getting the play started with a defensive zone mistake. However, the rest was pure, 100 percent Alexander Ovechkin magic.

The opening shift started out so well for Daley, too. The Capitals dumped off the opening face-off into the Penguins zone, hoping to get their forecheckers working early, but were interrupted by Marc-Andre Fleury’s awareness to breakup the play behind the net.

Daley played his part perfectly as he pressured T.J. Oshie along the far wall, which caused the Capitals forward to cough up the puck to the defenseman, who then moved it on to the waiting stick of Sidney Crosby.

Almost a perfect execution of a breakup in the defensive zone.

Unfortunately, the Penguins’ structure fell apart mere seconds later.

After getting set up in the offensive zone, Daley hesitated a bit too much on his shot, either waiting for Braden Holtby to open up or looking for a passing lane that wasn’t there.

Holtby’s rebound popped right to Conor Sheary, but the bounce made it difficult to control. The puck slid to Daley once more, who made his most fatal decision of the evening: a no-look pass.

Pressured by eventual goalscorer Ovechkin, Daley attempted to shuffle a pass around the boards ... and it ended up right on the stick of the player he fooled just seconds prior.

The rest is a combination of good awareness by the Capitals and Ovechkin making the Penguins defense look foolish.

Oshie recognized the odd-man break potential for Washington and fed the puck across the ice to an open Nicklas Backstrom in the slot. Then, just like so many times before through their careers together in Washington, Backstrom fed Ovechkin the puck and let him do his thing.

It’s not often Kris Letang gets beat, but there’s not much the Penguins defenseman can do when Ovechkin has the puck on his stick. If he steps up on Ovechkin, the puck will go right back to Backstrom on a breakaway with Daley trailing behind. If he plays the pass, Ovechkin surely burns past him right to Fleury.

In a lose-lose situation, all Letang can do is attempt to wait for Daley to arrive to cover Backstrom and stick-check the hell out of Ovechkin. Which, of course, fails spectacularly as Ovechkin goes right around Letang and splits the Penguins defense.

Letang too hesitates in his decision making on the break, which is all Ovechkin and Backstrom needed to team up for a historic goal.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight just exactly what Ovechkin did to burn Letang and the Penguins defense so badly.

Without missing a single step, Ovechkin used his momentum and silky smooth stick-handling ability to pivot around Letang and find the hole in the Penguins defense. From there, it was top cheese over Fleury on a shot no one was going to be able to stop.

It’s a goal that doesn’t happen without the Penguins’ defensive breakdown, but there are only a handful of current NHL players that could make the moves Ovechkin did there to separate himself from Letang. It’s yet another moment on an ever-growing list of defining highlights in Ovechkin’s career that will be seen for years to come.