Sports — Noozify Original — October 8, 2026

NHL 2026-27 Preview: A Goalie Scores, a Legend Leaves

By Dan Chafetz

Watch the story in half a minute

Two events from the opening week of the NHL season, the first played under a new 84-game schedule, seem to have little in common. On October 1st, a goaltender scored a goal. Four days later, the man who holds the NHL record for regular-season goals announced that this season will be his last in the league.

The goaltender was Igor Shesterkin of the New York Rangers. Teams that are trailing late in a game often pull their goalie for an extra attacker, and once in a long while the goalie at the other end gets the puck and fires it the length of the rink into the unguarded net. With 2:34 left in the Rangers' home opener at Madison Square Garden, Shesterkin lofted the puck the length of the ice into Tampa Bay's empty net to cap a 5-1 win, the Associated Press reported. He stopped 24 of 25 shots that night and became the first goalie in Rangers history to score, and the 18th in NHL history.

"This one counts," he said afterward. It was a jab at his good friend Ilya Sorokin, the New York Islanders' goalie, who beat him to an NHL goal in March 2025 and whose goal Shesterkin had joked should not have counted. Shesterkin's only other goal had come at 19, in a junior league.

Across the league's entire history there have been only 21 goalie goals, 19 in the regular season and two in the playoffs. For a position built around prevention, scoring is a statistical oddity, which makes it a fitting emblem for a sport that keeps showing how little can be predicted. The oddity is worth holding onto, though, because it points at something more useful than trivia.

Alex Ovechkin's news was less of a surprise, and heavier. The 41-year-old Washington Capitals captain announced on Monday, October 5th, that the 2026-27 season will be his last in the NHL, 21 years to the day after his debut. "I love this game so much, but I know in my heart it's the right decision," he wrote. He told his teammates first, in a speech to the whole locker room that morning, and his coach, Spencer Carbery, said there were "a lot of mixed emotions" in the room.

His final regular-season home game is set for April 4th against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the regular season ends April 10th in Philadelphia. Resale prices for both games nearly doubled within an hour of the announcement, and the cheapest seat for the home finale reached $775.

He leaves with one record already in hand. Ovechkin's 929 regular-season goals are 35 more than Wayne Gretzky's 894, a mark he passed in April 2025. Counting the playoffs, Gretzky still leads, 1,016 to 1,006, which leaves Ovechkin 10 goals from tying the combined record and 11 from breaking it. He has not scored in Washington's first three games.

Whether April proves to be the end depends on whether Washington plays into May, which is not a given. The Capitals missed the playoffs last season, finishing fourth in the Metropolitan Division, one of the league's four divisions, and spent the summer adding forwards Alex Tuch, Jordan Kyrou, and Boone Jenner and defenseman Vincent Desharnais. Those moves are part of why Ovechkin chose one more year. "I saw the moves the organization did, and it (gave me) motivation to come back and play one more year," he said, and he has promised that "we will do everything we can to make this year special."

Outside observers are cautiously encouraged. CBS Sports ranked Washington ninth in its preseason power rankings, saying it was not sure any team was more loaded on the wings, though it added that a bit more help at center could help Ovechkin win his second Cup. One of the site's two prediction panelists picked the Capitals to win the Metropolitan Division outright. A long playoff run would also give Ovechkin more chances at Gretzky, since playoff goals count toward the combined total.

Elsewhere, the summer reshuffled familiar faces. Ottawa's captain, Brady Tkachuk, was traded to Florida on June 21st to join his brother Matthew, and Sergei Bobrovsky, who won two Stanley Cups in goal for the Panthers, signed with Toronto, where Gavin McKenna, the first overall pick in June's draft, scored his first NHL goal on October 6th. In a crowded Stanley Cup picture, CBS ranks Colorado first and Florida second, with Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov healthy again after tearing two ligaments in his right knee on the first day of last year's training camp, and both of its panelists picked Florida to win the Cup. The defending champion Carolina Hurricanes, Dallas, Vegas, and Tampa Bay round out its top six.

Read those capsule summaries closely, though, and a pattern emerges. CBS's doubts about Carolina begin with its goaltending tandem, the pair of goalies who split its starts, and it counts goaltending among the two biggest problems facing Vegas. Winnipeg, ranked 26th, is shadowed by its star goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, who is holding out while he waits for a trade. The position that produced the week's most absurd highlight is also the one most likely to decide which contenders are real.

Which brings the story back to Washington. The Capitals' forwards draw most of the attention, but their quieter strength may be their goalie, Logan Thompson, whom one CBS panelist picked to win the Vezina Trophy, the award for the league's best goaltender. Shesterkin's goal is a reminder of why that matters beyond stopping shots. Rangers defenseman Sean Durzi said Shesterkin's skill with the puck lets the defense hold the blue line more aggressively, standing up opponents at the edge of the Rangers' zone, because when opponents simply fire the puck deep into the Rangers' end, as teams often do instead of carrying it in, Shesterkin can collect it and start a quick rush the other way. A modern goalie is as much a part of the attack as a last line of defense.

The two halves of the week meet tomorrow, Friday, October 9th, when Shesterkin's Rangers visit Ovechkin's Capitals in Washington. April 4th is circled on a lot of calendars, but it marks only the last regular-season game at home. Ovechkin has spent two decades answering the question of how a team scores. The larger one left for him is whether he can add a second Stanley Cup to the one he won as Washington's captain in 2018, and end his NHL career with another parade.