When Washington Capitals forward Alexander Ovechkin broke the record for the most career regular-season goals scored in National Hockey League history, he plunged down the ice and was mobbed by his teammates. Amid a euphoric sea of red celebrating history live on Long Island, longtime Monumental Sports Network play-by-play announcer Joe Beninati delivered a memorable call of the moment delineating the accomplishment and underscoring Ovechkin’s legacy. Although Beninati does not usually script his calls, he had thought about this particular one extensively and pondered the subject as the game progressed before chronicling this distinctive occurrence.
“You know the rush of adrenaline is going to be enormous when he scores, and again, going back to past practices and professionalism, I want that call to be entertaining, and I want it to be something that’s just right in that instance, but I don’t want it to be too much,” Beninati said. “It’s got to be succinct, it’s got to detail him as what he is: the greatest goal scorer in NHL history.”
Ovechkin’s journey to 895 career goals was dubbed the GR8 Chase, and it captured the hearts and attention of sports fans around the world. Concurrent with the branding surrounding this inimitable expedition, he thought about the instance as a conclusion of a chase and surmised the specific diction with which he would express the sentiment.
“Day after day as he gets closer and closer to the record, my senses are heightened,” Beninati explained. “Every shift he’s on the ice, my eyes are mostly glued to the puck, but I’m trying to find where he is in anticipation of him getting it and getting a shot off. As a play-by-play man, you want to be in the front side of everything. You don’t want to be back-selling, so again, timing is so important to me. I was just laser-focused in the last couple of weeks, especially as his climb continued, to make sure that I’d be there at the right time.”
Leaning on Greats to Assist Crafting Greatness
Wayne Gretzky held the NHL goals record for the last 31 years, surpassing Gordie Howe as a member of the Los Angeles Kings in 1994. Drawing parallels between both events, Beninati reached out to retiring Kings play-by-play announcer Nick Nickson and longtime NBC Sports commentator Mike “Doc” Emrick as part of his preparation during the GR8 Chase. On top of that, Beninati leaned on his own experience having called a preponderance of Ovechkin’s career goals starting from the very beginning when the forward made his NHL debut in 2005.
As Ovechkin reached the goal-scoring apex and received plaudits from those gathered inside UBS Arena and around the world, Beninati was closely watching the video monitors to determine if the Capitals had engaged in a legal zone entry. Despite realizing that the instance nearly merited an offside call, Patrick Roy and the New York Islanders did not end up challenging the play. The league subsequently held a ceremony for Ovechkin at center ice featuring NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Gretzky himself, during which they commended this illustrious achievement and allowed Ovechkin to address the fans.
“You never know what you’re going to ultimately say because, ‘What does the goal look like? Is it a game-winning goal, is it an overtime goal? Is it a goal that there’s some doubt there?,’ so that’s why you’re hoping that everything falls properly in the way it did, but I got scared that that was awfully close to the [blue] line,” Beninati said. “That’s why I’m looking. I’m going, ‘Is somebody going to hold their hand up here?,’ but at that moment, you’ve got to commit to it.”
Two nights earlier, Ovechkin and the Capitals played a home game in front of a sold-out crowd at Capital One Arena, creating an environment that Beninati felt resembled the Stanley Cup Final sans trepidation towards victory or defeat. Entering the contest two goals behind tying the record, Ovechkin scored less than four minutes into the game, augmenting the palpable buzz inside of the venue.
Later in the game, he tied the record with goal No. 894, and the ostensible sentiment was that he would break the record with a hat-trick. Although this did not occur, the Monumental Sports Network broadcast attained three times the viewership of an average Capitals game, contributing to a 39% proliferation in the average audience of that thereof.
“It was such a happy, joyous kind of situation,” Beninati said. “People weren’t biting their fingernails. They were like, ‘Okay, this is going to happen, and this is something incredibly great for a favorite son of our franchise, and the greatest player of Capitals franchise history is about to surpass a mark held by the absolute greatest player in NHL history.’”
Team Efforts Capture Memorable Moments
The production team at Monumental Sports Network sought to create a viable on-air product to document the GR8 Chase, and there were several elements on the regional sports network in recent weeks surrounding Ovechkin’s odyssey to the proverbial summit. For example, the outlet released multiplatform content related to the development and also announced a special original program reliving all of his 895 goals needed to break the record. Utilizing new studios that opened last year, the network also presented live pregame and postgame studio shows for all broadcasts, adding regional elements amid a plethora of exclusive national games.
At the same time, the company reached a cooperation agreement with the National Hockey League that permitted the creation of its own broadcasts for archival purposes amid national presentations. Four out of the final six Capitals regular-season games were scheduled to air on national platforms, which would have risked depriving fans of Beninati’s call and other elements of the local product.
“It’s never been about me – it’s not about me,” Beninati said. “It’s about Alex, it’s about the sport, it’s about the fans and the historical reference points that he’s been surpassing from Day 1 through all of the hundreds of goals that we’ve been lucky enough to call.”
While Beninati admits that he has called most of his goals outside of No. 800, he understands the business having called NHL on Versus matchups for six years in addition to Capitals games. Nonetheless, he was appreciative of the network being granted the chance to record the action and provide their outlooks for the audience.
“The hockey gods looked down and let Alex do this during live games that were on Monumental Sports Network where the national broadcast could fill in around us, which is exactly what happened on Sunday afternoon,” Beninati said. “I thought it was the right thing to do, and thankfully, a lot of people took a lot of steps to making that accommodation. As it turned out, we didn’t need it, but I was very grateful for the thought and for the opportunity should it have arisen like that.”
Under the direction of producer Ryan Billie and director Kevin Santos, the regional telecast composed a sequence that lended to storytelling pertaining to the magnitude of this accomplishment. There was a gap before the on-ice ceremony commenced, granting Beninati time to parse through the reactions, replays and residual action to adequately portray the tableau. Furthermore, he and his colleagues were able to reflect on how Ovechkin had added to his remit and cemented himself nonpareil among goal scorers in the NHL regular season.
“Yeah, we’re the ones whose faces you see, we’re the ones whose voices you hear, but it’s a team,” Beninati emphasized. “These people are not only my teammates [and] colleagues, many of them are my best friends, and this is what we wanted desperately to be a part of, and we got it, and I hope and pray, I think by the reception of others and by the commentary that I’ve been hearing, we nailed it.”
Over the years, Beninati has had conversations with NHL goaltenders who have faced Ovechkin, several of whom avowed that his shot emits a ripple effect where the puck changes direction in its flight path to the net. Ovechkin uses a hockey stick containing a unique curve and displays explosive velocity and pinpoint accuracy on his shots, thus rendering the puck deceptive for net-minders to curtail.
“It’s just overwhelming to NHL goalies, and goalies nowadays are better than they’ve ever been,” Beninati said. “They’re better athletes, they’re bigger, they’re better trained, their system, their schematics to playing the goal position are so much better than what they were 20 and 30 years ago. It’s harder to score goals now than ever, and this guy’s breaking all-time records. That tells you just how good he is.”
The Journey Ahead Past the GR8 Chase
The Capitals organization is looking to attain its second Stanley Cup championship in seven seasons, something Beninati believes may be even more important to Ovechkin than the record-breaking goal. Ovechkin led the franchise to a championship victory in the 2017-18 season, but the team has yet to win a Stanley Cup Final series since that time. The Capitals are heading into the playoffs with momentum and a chance to win the President’s Trophy, but much of the conversation around the team in recent weeks has been related to the GR8 Chase.
“It was everywhere the team went and anybody from the media, whether it be print, radio, TV, it was always a line of questioning about Alex,” Beninati said. “It was, ‘Beat the drum for that Gr8 Chase,’ and I’m sure now that he’s achieved it and reached that pinnacle that the guys are going to settle down and refocus on what matters the most as a team, and that’s winning it all, and I think they should be a favorite coming out of the East.”
Aside from the stellar on-ice performance of the Capitals and the potential to hoist the Stanley Cup victorious in June, the team has also been celebrating its 50th anniversary season over the last seven months. Beninati does not know how much he believes in good karma, but he does acknowledge how remarkable it is that these pillars have simultaneously coalesced.
With this fortuitous unfolding of seminal moments in franchise history, Beninati does not take his role for granted and aspires to continue broadcasting games when Ovechkin’s sons are playing. For now though, Beninati will keep enjoying the ride with the Capitals team as the playoffs near and Ovechkin looks to become the first NHL player in history to score 900 regular-season goals.
“I know these calls and this video is going to be looked upon and savored and put in halls of fame and it’s going to play back, hopefully forever, at least I know for my lifetime, sure,” Beninati said. “I am pleased with the way it turned out, but more than anything, I’m pleased by the way we got to – we, underline ‘we,’ Monumental Sports Network, all of us – got a chance to do what we do best around this player. That’s what it was all about.”
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Derek Futterman is a former associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. Find him on X @derekfutterman.
