Alex Ovechkin with the assist! That's a phrase hockey fans have heard 750 times throughout Ovi's 21-year career with the Washington Capitals. On Friday night, the NHL's all-time leading goal scorer added one more assist as he saved Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Doncic from falling out of bounds against the Washington Wizards.
At the end of the third quarter, in what would turn out to be a 142-111 win, Wizards Kyshawn George and Jamir Watkins nudged Doncic out of bounds and into the courtside seats. Luckily, the 6-foot-3, 238-pound hockey star was sitting there and easily kept the 6-foot-8, 230-pound hooper from tumbling into the crowd.
NHL star Alex Ovechkin had Luka Dončić's back when he was going out of bounds 😅
37p, 11r, and 13a for Luka in LAL's road W! pic.twitter.com/ZJji8eEdYg
— NBA (@NBA) January 31, 2026
While the moment was a bit of good luck for Doncic and the first-row fans, it was also a meeting between two of the best non-North American-born players to ever play their sports.
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Alex Ovechkin, who hails from Moscow, Russia, has scored more goals (919) than any NHL player in history. And with those 750 assists, his 1,669 points rank 10th in league history. The only non-North American player ahead of him on that list is Jaromir Jagr from Czechoslovakia.
In his sport, Luka Doncic is quickly ascending the ranks of the best foreign-born players of all time as well. Through eight seasons, Doncic has 14,193 points. At this pace, if he were to play into his early 30s, the Ljubljana, Slovenia native would easily jump into the top-20 scorers in league history. At that point, only Hakeem Olajuwon (Lagos, Nigeria) and Dirk Nowitzki (Wurzburg, Germany) would be ahead of him among non-American-born players.
Doncic got a little closer to Olajuwon and Nowitzki on Friday night with Ovechkin watching on, too, as he added 37 points, 13 assists, and 11 rebounds in the Lakers' win over the Wizards.