With Wayne Gretzky’s goal mark gone, how many NHL records are truly unbreakable?

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And just like that, Wayne Gretzky’s unbreakable record has been broken.

Well, one of them. Gretzky had more than his share. But for hockey fans of my generation, it really is hard to believe that Alexander Ovechkin actually did it. He broke Gretzky’s career goals record. That wasn’t supposed to be possible.

For decades, old-timers like me figured there was just no way anyone could get to 894. Not in the Dead Puck Era, which eventually gave way to the Only Comatose Puck Era. Not when it meant scoring at a 45-goal pace for 20 consecutive seasons. Not in an era where players were bigger and stronger, meaning just staying healthy was a challenge. Not in a league where forwards were supposed to peak in their mid-20s and then give way to the next generation.

But here we are. So now we have to ask: What other “unbreakable” records could we be wrong about?

We’ve had some fun in the past with unbreakable records, as well as a few breakable ones. But today, let’s look at some of the sport’s marks that have at some point seemed unreachable, and try to figure out if they could actually be in play.

Jesse already took a look at Gretzky’s other records, and I’m mostly on the same page. I’d argue the nine Hart Trophies is probably unbreakable, given how much modern sportswriters seem to value the novelty of getting new names on their ballots. But I’d agree that the career points and assists records are untouchable, and I like Jesse stopping just short of taking the 92-goal regular-season record off the table.

What about the records that aren’t Gretzky’s? Let’s have a look at 15 of the most imposing and determine if we think they can be broken one day.

Consecutive starts

The record: From 1955 through 1962, goaltender Glenn Hall started 502 consecutive games in the regular season (and 50 more in the playoffs).

I figured we’d start with an easy one, just to set the baseline. In an era where even workhorse goalies get 15 or 20 nights off, we’ll probably never see anyone start 50 straight games again, let alone 500. This one is right up there with the most unbreakable records in all of pro sports.

Verdict: Unbreakable.

Sticking with the goalies …

Martin Brodeur holds the record for most career shutouts with 125. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)

Career shutouts

The record: Martin Brodeur’s 125 career shutouts is the all-time mark, well ahead of Terry Sawchuk’s 103.

This one’s a tougher call. I’m old enough to remember when Sawchuk’s record was considered unbreakable. But the combination of Brodeur’s magnificence, his durability and the Dead Puck Era added up to the record being shattered.

Could it happen again? It feels unlikely. Brodeur lasted 22 years and hit double-digits in shutouts on four occasions, while nobody in the NHL has had 10 in a year since Marc-Andre Fleury a decade ago. Maybe more daunting, Brodeur often played 70 games in a season, a mark nobody in the NHL has touched since 2016-17. It all adds up to a massive hill to climb — remember, Dominik Hasek had “only” 81 shutouts, and Patrick Roy just barely hit half of Brodeur’s total with 66.

All that said, is it possible the next Hasek or Brodeur could arrive someday and challenge the mark, especially if scoring rates plunge again? All we’re looking for today is a sliver of possibility, and I think we can find it here. Barely.

Verdict: Breakable.

That said, let’s circle back to that games played record …

Career games played (goalie)

The record: Brodeur’s 1,266 stands well above the field, with Fleury, Roy and Roberto Luongo the only other goalies to even hit 1,000.

Brodeur played 20 full seasons, which is almost unheard of for a modern goalie. He had years in which he appeared in 78 games (once) and 77 games (twice) and hit the 70-game mark a dozen times. Fleury is the closest modern equivalent, and he’s going to finish 200 games behind Brodeur. This one’s an easy call.

Verdict: Unbreakable. And for the same reasons, we can lump Brodeur’s 691 wins in here, too.

OK, enough of those low-life goalies, let’s move on to the guys who are fun …

Points in a single game

The record: Darryl Sittler set the mark with 10 points in a 1976 game.

Sittler’s mark will turn 50 next year. And not only did it manage to survive through the scoring explosion of the 1980s, but nobody has even come within a point of it. There have been 13 regular-season games in which a player has had eight points, plus two more in the playoffs. But nobody else has even managed nine points, let alone Sittler’s 10.

That said … I mean, one of those eight-point games came from Sam Gagner. Two defensemen have done it. Patrik Sundstrom did it in a playoff game. Two brothers did it in the same game when they were rookies.

I’m just saying, if Gagner’s best night can get 80 percent of the way there, surely Connor McDavid or Nikita Kucherov are in the realm of possibility.

Verdict: Certainly matchable, and probably even breakable, although it would take one of those weird nights where everything broke just right.

Single-season plus-minus

The record: Bobby Orr was a plus-124 for the 1970-71 Bruins.

Yes, we all know that plus-minus is a flawed stat. But it can still tell us something at the extremes, and there’s never been a season more extreme than Orr’s plus-124. This one was actually nearly broken by Larry Robinson, who was plus-120 for the 1976-77 Canadiens. Meanwhile, the record for forwards is Gretzky’s plus-100 in 1984-85.

But wait, those numbers only tell half of the plus-minus story. We can’t celebrate the “plus” part of the equation without also mentioning the minus record. That would be Capitals’ defenseman Bill Mikkelson, who was minus-82 for the expansion Capitals in 1974-75.

That’s a horrifying number. (The worst mark of the cap era is a relatively mild minus-47.) But it actually looks sort of reasonable if you remember the context. Those Caps had a team goals differential of minus-265, so Mikkelson was only on the hook for less than a third of that. Similarly, Orr’s Bruins routinely outscored their opponents by well over 100 goals, including a plus-192 mark in that 1970-71 season. You just don’t see those sorts of extremes in today’s parity-stricken league, which means …

Verdict: Unbreakable.

Most Cup rings

The record: If you’re only counting rings earned as a player, it’s Henri Richard’s 11. But Jean Beliveau has a total of 17 — 10 as a player and seven more in the front office.

These days, we argue about whether a team is a dynasty if they win two Cups in a row. Next.

Verdict: Completely unbreakable.

Shots on goal in a game

The record: Believe it or not, this one belongs to a defenseman. Ray Bourque had 19 shots on goal in a 1991 overtime game against the Nordiques.

That easily broke the previous record of 16, held by Rod Gilbert. And nobody else has passed Gilbert since, although he’s been tied once. Even Ovechkin, the most prolific shooter of his era by far, never got past 15 in a single game.

That said, the one other player to get to 16 was Marian Hossa in 2006, so we’re at least talking about the cap era, if only barely. And seeing players get well into the double-digits isn’t all that rare; Jack Hughes had 13 in a game in December, and Brady Tkachuk had 12 in a game three times in 2024. That’s not all that close to the record, and there aren’t any teams in today’s league that are as bad as those awful Nordiques were. Still, this feels like Sittler’s single-game mark: It would take a night where everything went right, but it doesn’t feel impossible.

Verdict: Breakable

Goals scored by a rookie

The record: Teemu Selanne debuted with 76 goals in 1992-93.

That shattered the previous mark, which was Mike Bossy’s 53. That’s still the second-highest total ever, by the way. Ovechkin’s 52 and Joe Nieuwendyk’s 51 are the only other 50-goal seasons by a rookie. Meanwhile, only three players have ever scored more than Selanne’s 76 goals in a season — Gretzky (twice), Mario Lemieux and Brett Hull.

Ovechkin’s 52 in a high-scoring 2005-06 season feels like a reasonable benchmark for modern snipers, and even that’s tough. (Auston Matthews has come closest since, and he “only” had 40.) Getting to the Ovechkin level, and then adding 25 more goals on top of that, seems … difficult.

Verdict: Completely unbreakable.

Goals and points by a defenseman

The records: Paul Coffey’s 48 goals in 1985-86 and Bobby Orr’s 139 points in 1970-71.

Yikes. At first glance, both of these seem out of reach. Orr and Coffey dominate the top of the leaderboard; take them out, and the highest goal total is Doug Wilson’s 39, and the points leader is Al MacInnis way back at 103.

It’s tempting to look at what Cale Makar is doing this year and wonder if he could have yet another level he could get to, especially if the league ever starts handing out power plays again. Then you wonder what happens if the next McDavid/Lemieux-level megastar is a defenseman instead of a forward and scoring inched up a bit, and maybe expansion diluted the talent pool … I mean, maybe, right?

A more likely scenario might be that someday we see a star who spends time at both forward and defense depending on the situation. This wouldn’t just be a guy who changes position over the course of his career, like Red Kelly or Brent Burns, but someone who can actually be deployed differently shift-to-shift as a matchup nightmare. Sort of like how the Red Wings briefly used Sergei Fedorov, but all the time. Would that count as a defenseman scoring record, though? I’m not sure it would.

Verdict: At least theoretically breakable.

Most consecutive point-per-game seasons

The record: It was set by some guy named Sidney Crosby, way back in the bygone era of, uh, March. By scoring his 80th point of the year, he became a point-per-game player for the 20th straight season (and counting).

It’s a genuinely impressive record, but it also feels like the mark should be higher. Granted, not many forwards last 20 years in this league, and far fewer are productive for that entire stretch. But because this is a rate-based stat, it at least doesn’t insist on players staying healthy. The fact that guys like Gretzky and Gordie Howe couldn’t do it should tell us how difficult the mark is to reach. But especially in an era where scoring is on the rise, it certainly doesn’t feel impossible.

Verdict: Breakable, and not just by Crosby next year.

Undefeated streak

The record: The Flyers set the mark to start the 1979-80 season, going 35 games before finally losing.

We’ve seen the records for both consecutive wins and losses set or challenged in recent years, so they’re clearly in play. But the Flyers’ mark is different territory.

There are two reasons for that. The first is parity, or the lack thereof when the Flyers were rolling over the league. That year had seen four teams enter the league in the WHA absorption, to go along with the 11 expansion teams from the 1970s. Many of those teams were very bad, easy pickings for a legitimate contender like the Flyers.

But more importantly, you’ll notice that this is an “undefeated” streak, not a winning streak. That’s because we still had ties back then. The Flyers won 25 games and had 10 ties during their streak. Nobody beat them, but then again, there was no overtime that season, let alone three-on-three or shootouts.

That means some of this gets into semantics, and what exactly we mean by “undefeated.” Are we counting an overtime loss as a loss? In today’s NHL, a team that gets a loser point has still lost, a fact on which everyone agrees except for society’s worst monsters. But if you want to change the phrasing a bit and call the Flyers’ stretch a points streak, then OTLs wouldn’t end it. The 2012-13 Hawks started the season 21-0-3, which didn’t quite have those old Flyers sweating but was at least within range.

Verdict: If we mean games without a loss, it’s unbreakable. If we mean games with at least one point, I think it’s in play.

And finally, since we just mentioned the 1970s Flyers …

Penalty minutes

The records: Let’s end this on a two-for-one. Dave Schultz holds the single-season record with 472 for the 1974-75 Broad Street Bullies, while Tiger Williams has the career mark at 3,971.

By comparison, the career leader among active players is Tom Wilson’s 1,520, and Micheal Haley’s 212 minutes in 2017-18 was the last time anyone even got to a third of Schultz’s single-season mark.

Verdict: Quite possibly more unbreakable than Hall’s games streak.

(Top photo of Sidney Crosby: Charles LeClaire / Imagn Images)

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