SI:AM | 800 for the Great 8

Plus, Carlos Correa’s bet on himself paid off.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I knew I’d be writing about Alex Ovechkin’s milestone goal soon, but I didn’t expect him to net a hat trick last night.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏒 Ovechkin makes history

⚾ Correa’s giant contract

🏈 The art of the intentional safety

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He did it with a hat trick, of course

Capitals legend Alex Ovechkin joined an elite group of players last night in scoring the 800th goal of his NHL career.

Ovechkin entered the night with 797 career goals and scored two in the first period to pull within one of the milestone. He joined the 800 club with another goal in the third period, joining Gordie Howe (801) and Wayne Gretzky (894) as the only players in NHL history with at least 800 goals. (ESPN had him wearing a microphone during the game. Here’s his reaction to No. 800.)

“It’s a big number. It’s the best company anyone can imagine since you start playing hockey to be that category—800,” Ovechkin said later. “I’m the third person who ever scored that many goals. Without my teammates, without organization, fans, my family, I would never get that number.”

Ovechkin should pass Howe any day now (the Caps play again tomorrow night and have a nationally televised game against the Maple Leafs on Saturday on NHL Network), and after that the attention will turn to his pursuit of Gretzky’s all-time record. Ovechkin turned 37 in September, but Gretzky’s record seems to be within reach. His scoring pace has not slowed down as he’s aged. He scored 50 goals last season and has 20 already this season in 31 games.

As I wrote when Ovechkin passed Jaromír Jágr for third on the all-time scoring list in March, Ovi has scored goals at a faster pace than Gretzky during his career. (Thanks to his hot start this season, he’s now averaging 50.3 goals per 82 games, compared to 49.3 for Gretzky.) But even though Ovechkin has been remarkably durable during his career (he’s never missed more than 11 games in a season), circumstances outside of his control have kept him off the ice for almost two full seasons worth of games. His rookie season was canceled because of the 2004–05 lockout. The ’12–13 lockout and the pandemic caused the Caps to play 73 fewer games than usual.

If those games had been played, Ovi would be a lot closer to breaking Gretzky’s record. But even still, he’s in good position to pass the Great One. Ovechkin is on pace for 53 goals this season, on par with his career scoring pace. If he’s able to keep up that level of production and remain on the ice, he’d pass Gretzky during the 2024–25 season, when he’s 39. Given how he’s been playing, is there any doubt he can play two more seasons?

The best of Sports Illustrated

In today’s Daily Cover, Alex Prewitt looks at the strange phenomenon of the intentional safety:

​​Indeed, intentional safeties are both a parody and a paradox. They are relatively rare, with just nine cropping up over the past nine-plus NFL seasons, yet rarely meaningful. (Least of all to sports bettors—per researchers at Caesars Sportsbook, none of those nine affected a cover or an over-under.) And while their intention is to help clarify the on-field outcome, they can also produce confusion in the stands: How many budding American football fans left London’s Wembley Stadium on Oct. 26, 2008, scratching their noggins after seeing then Saints quarterback Drew Brees flick the ball out of the back of his own end zone with all the casualness of a parent tossing a dirty diaper into the trash?

• Kyler Murray’s torn ACL places a spotlight on the Cardinals’ inability to build a winning roster around him, Conor Orr writes.
• Brian Straus recaps Argentina’s win over Croatia to reach the World Cup final, powered by Lionel Messi and a group eager to win for him.
• Even though the Lakers are struggling, Chris Mannix writes that Russell Westbrook has revived his NBA career as their sixth man.
• Tom Verducci paid tribute to his friend and mentor, the longtime Newsday baseball writer Joe Donnelly, who died Sunday.
• The Giants are signing Carlos Correa to an enormous contract.

Marcus Mariota left the Falcons after the team named Desmond Ridder the starting quarterback.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Mitch Marner’s assist to extend his Maple Leafs record point streak.

4. Monty Williams’s embrace with Stephen Silas following Silas’s first game coaching the Rockets since the death of his father, Paul Silas.

3. Julián Álvarez’s solo effort on Argentina’s second goal against Croatia.

2. Charles Barkley’s take on the Lakers.

1. This video from the stands of Lionel Messi’s run to set up Argentina’s third goal. (It reminds me of this video of a goal he scored in 2015.)

SIQ

Joe Burrow won the Heisman Trophy on this day in 2019, receiving a record-setting 90.7% of first-place votes. Who held the record before him?

• Cam Newton
• Lamar Jackson
• Marcus Mariota
• Troy Smith

Yesterday’s SIQ: Though he would never play a game in a different uniform, which team did the Dodgers trade Jackie Robinson to on this day in 1956?

• Cardinals
• Reds
• Cubs
• Giants

Answer: Giants. The story goes that Robinson, upon learning he’d been traded to the Dodgers’ biggest rival, decided that he’d rather retire than play across town. In reality, Robinson had already decided to retire before the deal was made.

Robinson, who was about to turn 38, had struck a deal two years earlier with Look magazine, granting the publication the right to break the news of his retirement. (He was reportedly paid $50,000 for the exclusive, or about $540,000 today.) After the 1956 season, Robinson decided it was time. But he didn’t want word getting out before the magazine hit newsstands on Jan. 8, so he didn’t inform the Dodgers of his plans. So when Brooklyn traded him to the Giants in exchange for a well-traveled pitcher named Dick Littlefield (who played for nine teams in nine years), neither team knew that it was a moot point. The trade was voided.

“There shouldn’t be any mystery about my reasons [for retiring],” Robinson wrote in the Look article. “I’m 38 years old, with a family to support, I’ve got to think of my future and our security. At my age, a man doesn’t have much future in baseball—and very little security. It’s as simple as that.”

Robinson wasn’t about to kick his feet up and play golf all day, though. Upon retiring, he joined the coffee maker Chock Full O’Nuts as vice president of personnel.

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