Kirk Muller spent three seasons as an assistant coach with the Washington Capitals, running the forwards and the power play while Alex Ovechkin closed in on the most famous record in hockey. Every so often, his phone would ring with suggestions from an unexpected source.
“Wayne would call me up and say, ‘Hey, you know what? I got some ideas that might work to help him get scoring again,'” Muller said on Spittin’ Chiclets.
Wayne Gretzky wasn’t offering vague encouragement either. He had watched enough to have specifics.
“Like, what happens if you put him with this guy, or what happens if he plays a little bit more in front of the net on a power play, or whatever he observed,” Muller said.
The absurdity of it wasn’t lost on him.
“You imagine he’s chasing Wayne, and Wayne’s calling me going, ‘Hey, I wonder if this would work for him,'” Muller said. “So I think that’s pretty cool, that something like Wayne would do that.”
Alex Ovechkin’s last three seasons:
| Season | Games | Goals | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 79 | 31 | 65 |
| 2024-25 | 65 | 44 | 73 |
| 2025-26 | 82 | 32 | 64 |
How bad was Ovechkin’s slump?
Eight goals in 43 games. That was where Ovechkin stood in the middle of the 2023-24 season, at an age where people had started wondering aloud whether the chase was finished and whether anyone should keep feeding him the puck. He answered with 23 in his next 36, and the record fell on April 6, 2025 at UBS Arena, goal number 895 against the Islanders.
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Gretzky had been working the phones throughout. He texted Ovechkin during dry spells, called him when he stalled at 800 to tell him to relax out there, and sent a message before the record-tying game that read simply, “score three.” Ovechkin got two.
“Thanks to Wayne for how he support me, how he always give me advice to be patient, don’t put yourself in a stress position,” Ovechkin said that night.
There’s a reason he behaved that way, and it traces back a generation. When Gretzky broke Gordie Howe‘s record in 1994, his father told him his own would fall one day too, and that he should hope to handle it with the same class Howe had shown him.
Gretzky followed the Capitals on the road for the closing stretch, exactly as Howe had done for him, and was in the building when it happened.
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