Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin made history on Sunday when he surpassed Wayne Gretzky in career goals with his 895th, becoming the league’s leader.

The game was then paused for a lengthy celebration, where Ovechkin’s family, Gretzky himself, and others came onto the ice to celebrate the incredible achievement. During that time, players from around the league, past and present, sent their congratulations to Ovechkin via the New York Islanders’ video board.

It got us thinking: what role did the Toronto Maple Leafs play in Ovechkin’s historic achievement? In short, quite a bit.

Ovechkin has played against the Leafs 61 times and has scored 45 goals in that span. Among all of the teams he has faced since entering the league in 2025-06, Toronto is tied with the Florida Panthers and New York Islanders for the sixth-most goals Ovechkin has scored against one team.

The first goal he scored against the Leafs came on November 6, 2006, when they were squaring off at the then-named MCI Center. Ovechkin got a power play goal late in the second period that beat Mikael Tellqvist before adding another early in the third period that ended up being the game-winner. His most recent goal against the Leafs was an empty netter on December 28th, which got him within 26 goals of surpassing Gretzky at the time.

Of those 45 goals against Toronto, six of them were game-winners which is tied for eight most among all the teams he has faced. There have only been three seasons (2011-12, 2021-22, and 2022-23) where Ovechkin failed to score at least one goal against the Leafs while the most in a season was five which happened twice (2005-06 and 2010-11).

The Leafs and Capitals also faced off in the first round of the 2017 playoffs where Ovechkin scored three goals in the series all bunched together between Games 2 and 4.

Of the 13 Leafs goalies that Ovechkin has scored on, Vesa Toskala allowed the most of the bunch with eight. There have been five other goalies aside from Toskala who have seen three or more shots from Ovechkin get past him which are Ed Belfour, Andrew Raycroft, James Reimer, Frederik Andersen, and Joseph Woll.

Ovechkin only has one hat trick against the Leafs which came on January 22, 2011, and Jean-Sebastian Giguere allowed two of the goals with the third coming via an empty net. The other netminders to have allowed him to have a multi-goal night were Tellqvist, Belfour, Toskala, and Andersen.

Among the Leafs goalies who did not allow an Ovechkin goal include Ilya Samsonov and Anthony Stolarz. The former did let one get by him this season but that was after he had joined the Vegas Golden Knights, while the latter is not among the 183 goalies that allowed an Ovechkin goal in their career.