Boldy scored his 26th goal Sunday, improbably swatting in a puck with a baseball swing. He leads the Wild in goals and has been a strong offensive player for the past three years.
Boldy has 101 career goals. If he averaged 30 goals a year for the next 12 years, he would have about half as many goals as Ovechkin has today.
“I haven’t seen his goal yet, but that’s pretty sweet,” Boldy said. “It’s pretty cool playing against him, someone that you looked up to growing up — how talented he was, how much he scored. I mean, he’s scored 40-some goals and he missed about five weeks — that’s pretty special. Hey, he’s the greatest goal-scorer of all time.”
Wild coach John Hynes seemed thrilled by his team’s effort Sunday in beating a superior team without Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Jake Middleton.
Did he take time to watch Ovechkin’s goal?
“Unbelievable,” Hynes said. “It’s history — history before our eyes. I had the opportunity to coach against him basically for 10 years. When you really think about breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record and the ability to score at that rate … but it also takes years of that, years of consistent scoring and staying healthy, of being able to play at such a high level. It was just amazing to see.”
