Gretzky's Goals Record Is Gone — Everything Else Is His Forever

When Alex Ovechkin belly-flopped across the blue line at UBS Arena on April 6, 2025, the hockey world collectively exhaled a breath it had been holding for thirty years. Goal number 895. The goals record — gone. The Great One’s most famous number, finally eclipsed by the greatest goal scorer the game has ever seen.

And yet Wayne Gretzky still holds 54 NHL records.

Let that land for a second. The singular thing most people associate with Gretzky — 894 career goals — is the least remarkable thing on his ledger. It’s the record he himself said was most likely to fall. The records that will never fall are the ones that make statisticians look at the numbers twice and assume there’s a typo.

What Ovechkin Actually Broke

The goals record fell in spectacular fashion. Ovechkin scored from his “office” — that spot in the left circle where he’s lived his entire career — on a power play in the second period of a 4-1 loss to the Islanders. The game stopped for over ten minutes. Both benches emptied to shake his hand. Wayne Gretzky himself stepped onto the ice to fulfill a promise he’d made five years earlier: he was going to be there when it happened.

The moment was earned. Ovechkin played through a broken fibula he’d suffered the previous November and came back firing. He finished that season with 42 goals — his 14th season with 40 or more, two more than Gretzky ever managed. He now sits north of 900 career goals. The record he broke is already becoming a footnote behind the new one he’s setting.

But here’s the thing: Gretzky always knew that record would fall eventually. His points records are a different matter entirely.

The Real Fortress: 2,857 Career Points

Gretzky retired with 2,857 career points. That number is so absurd that the most useful comparison isn’t to other scorers — it’s to the gap between first place and second place. Jaromir Jagr, who played 24 NHL seasons across four decades, finished second all-time with 1,921 points. That’s a 936-point gap between first and second place. You could take a Hall of Fame career — six or seven seasons of elite offensive production — and it wouldn’t close the distance.

The most optimistic active candidate is Connor McDavid, and I say that knowing he’s the greatest offensive player since Gretzky himself. He hit 100 points in his 60th game this season, is on pace for 130-plus, and has six consecutive 100-point seasons — second all-time only to Gretzky’s 13. He is, by any measure, historically elite.

He also entered this season with roughly 900 career points. He needs nearly 2,000 more to reach 2,857. At his current pace, assuming no serious injuries and no dropoff as he ages, he’d need 15 more seasons of 130-point hockey. He’s 25 years old. Even under the most perfect scenario you can construct, he doesn’t get there.

Sidney Crosby sits at 1,682 career points heading into the twilight of his career. He’s the second-highest active scorer. He’s not catching Gretzky. Nobody who is playing today is catching Gretzky.

The Assists Record Makes Even Less Sense

The goals record gets the headlines, but the assists record is the one that should break your brain: 1,963 career assists.

Gretzky’s career assists total, by itself, would rank as the second-highest points total in NHL history. Not assists — total points. If you deleted every single goal he ever scored, he’d still be the second-greatest scorer of all time purely on the strength of his passes. No one else in the history of professional hockey has had more points than Gretzky had assists.

Jagr, second all-time in assists, finished with 1,155. Nathan MacKinnon is one of the elite playmakers of the current era. Nobody alive is within 800 assists of Gretzky. That gap will not close in any of our lifetimes.

The Single-Season Records Live in a Different Universe

Then there’s the single-season stuff, which belongs to a completely different sport.

Gretzky scored 92 goals in the 1981-82 season. The modern NHL single-season record — set by Auston Matthews when he scored 69 goals in 2023-24 — is a stunning, jaw-dropping achievement. It’s also 23 goals short of Gretzky’s mark. Matthews scored 69 goals in a season and it’s not even in the same conversation.

In 1985-86, Gretzky recorded 215 points in 80 games. Two hundred and fifteen. That’s 2.69 points per game for an entire season. McDavid’s best season was 153 points in 2022-23, which obliterated the salary-cap era record and had everyone comparing him to — who else — Gretzky. It was 62 points short of the mark he was supposedly chasing.

MacKinnon is currently one of the most productive scorers in the game and is on pace for somewhere around 115-120 points this season. That’s a 95-point gap to Gretzky’s single-season high. In the same season.

The same year Gretzky scored 92 goals, he also became the fastest player in NHL history to reach 50 goals in a season — getting there in just 39 games. Nobody in the modern era has reached 50 goals before 49 games. That record is as safe as any number in professional sports.

Why This Era Can’t Produce a Gretzky

There’s a version of this argument that chalks everything up to era differences — looser defense, weaker goaltending, a wider game, all of that. That argument has some merit. But it misses the bigger point.

Gretzky didn’t just beat his contemporaries. He lapped them. In 1981-82, the second-leading scorer in the NHL was Mike Bossy with 147 points — a mark that would be the best offensive season in the modern NHL era, ahead of McDavid’s 153. Gretzky had 212 that year. The gap between first and second was 65 points. In a single season.

Modern hockey’s salary cap and the league-wide focus on defensive systems and goalie development compresses scoring across the board. The sport is more competitive now, which is genuinely good for the game. It is also the reason no one will ever score 215 points in a season again.

Where This Leaves Us

Ovechkin’s achievement was real and it was earned. He is the all-time goals leader. He may be the greatest goal scorer in the history of the sport. That matters enormously, and his record — now well past 900 and still growing — will stand for a very long time.

But removing the goals record from Gretzky’s ledger is like taking one trophy out of a room that holds 54 of them. The rest of the room is still his.

The career points record, the assists record, the single-season totals — these aren’t records on the verge of falling. They’re not even on the horizon for anyone in the game today. McDavid is the greatest player alive, the most compelling candidate to chase them over the next decade, and even he needs everything to go perfectly just to make the conversation interesting by the time he’s in his late 30s.

Gretzky’s records weren’t just impressive. They were the product of a player so far beyond his contemporaries that even decades of rule changes, analytics revolutions, and the modern game’s evolution haven’t produced anyone who can close the gap. The goals record is gone. The rest of it? That’s his forever.

Which of Gretzky’s remaining records do you think has the best shot at falling — the career points, the single-season goals, or something else entirely? Drop your take on X or in the comments.