Brad and Mike Herson are brothers, DC-area natives, and lifelong Washington Capitals fans. Now, they can also count themselves as certified Alex Ovechkin groupies.
About five years ago, the brothers started to suspect that Ovechkin might someday break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time career goal record. It was back then that they decided: Should Ovi ever really come close to out-scoring Gretzky, they “would be at the game no matter what,” Mike says. That’s how they found themselves in the right place at the right time on Sunday: Long Island, or more specifically, UBS Arena, where Ovechkin officially one-upped Gretzky.
In some ways, Mike says, Ovechkin feels almost like a third brother. “I’m 39, Brad’s 36, and Ovi’s 39, so basically, we’ve all kind of grown up together—like, [Ovi] is literally two months older than me.” Watching him break Gretzsky’s record was not so much about the goal itself. “When it happens, you think about the culmination of your entire career watching him. You kind of feel like you’re a part of it. That’s the cool thing. It’s a really rewarding thing as a fan.”
So when that 895th puck slid its way into the goal at UBS Arena on Sunday, Brad says he “just started screaming” as loud as he possibly could. “I jumped into my brother’s arms, and I couldn’t stop jumping up and down, screaming.” He looked at Mike’s face, which was streaked with tears. “I started to think about everything that led to that point, including us planning the trip. And it all was just perfect, you know?”
Here’s something only a true groupie could tell us: The real energy was at Friday’s game, when Ovechkin tied Gretzky’s record with his 894th goal. “You could cut the intensity with a knife, and just the anticipation, the excitement,” Brad says. “I went to one of the Stanley Cup games in 2018 and in my opinion, Friday was felt more intense and exciting.” By Sunday, everyone knew that the record-breaking shot was coming—including Islanders fans, who Brad describes as “super kind, super gracious,” probably because they wound up whooping the Caps 4-1 anyway.
Thanks to Ovechkin’s successful chase, the brothers suspect that DC has locked down more than a decade of hometown-pride fodder. “For the next 15 years at minimum, this is going to be our record,” Mike says. It’s good timing, too, since DC sports have had a rather triumphant last few years. “Any accolade that a DC sports team has is amazing, and we spent a long time not having any. So when the Nationals won [the World Series] in 2019, the Capitals won [the Stanley Cup] in 2018, the Commanders being good now—it’s really nice any time that DC has something cemented to them, and this is something that will be cemented for a very long time.”
Brad adds, “Being general sports fans, you think about the Michael Jordans, the Tom Bradys, even the Lebron Jameses. To have an ‘all-time’ in something for your hometown athlete is the coolest thing.”
What do the Herson brothers think is next for Ovechkin? They do, on some level, take him at his word—i.e., he’ll finish out the last year of his NHL contract and then head back to Russia, where he’ll end his career. “My head is saying he’ll retire next year,” Mike says. But “my heart is saying, ‘You’re still good at this. If your team’s going to be good, why not sign for another two years?'”
But if Mike’s heart proves too optimistic, as hearts so often do, the brothers do believe that the Caps will remain a strong, DC-superiority-complex-inducing team. (And they’ll get a chance to test that theory: They still have tickets to games in Columbus and Pittsburgh in the coming days.) “I think that the Capitals have always been known to be very competitive organization. I think, even before Ovi started, they made the playoffs a consistent number of years. I don’t see that changing,” Mike says. It’s just the buzz will be different. It’s not going to be this insane high. It’s just going to be a consistent, good thing.”
The question is whether it can get better than this. Traveling back from New York on Sunday, the brothers ran into a nine-year-old Caps fan. “I said to him, ‘I want you to know that when you’re 100 years old, you’re still never going to see a hockey player in DC as good as what you’ve experienced, because you’re nine right now. You’re never, ever going to see this again,'” Mike says. “We should be really, really grateful for what we’ve all been able to experience over the last 20 years.”
