Toronto Maple Leafs’ captain John Tavares records 1,000th point against New York Islanders

In front of his father and the fans of the team that drafted him, John Tavares recorded his 1,000th career NHL regular season point.

With six seconds left in the third period of a 3-2 game, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ captain assisted on a Morgan Rielly goal to send it to overtime against the New York Islanders.

Tavares becomes the 98th player in NHL history to reach the four-digit milestone.

Going into the game, Tavares was sitting at 998 total points. The 33-year-old center scored midway through the second period, his eighth of the season, pushing him within one of 1,000.

Then late in the third period with the Maple Leafs’ net empty, a William Nylander point shot hit Tavares in front of the Islanders’ goal, and Rielly pounced on the loose puck to tie the game, as well as clinch the milestone.

His father Joe was in attendance and watched the moment with the rest of the team’s fathers as part of the Maple Leafs’ dads trip. He was visibly emotional throughout the game, capped it off with pure jubilation when he realized his son made history.

Islanders’ forward Bo Horvat would score in overtime to give New York a 4-3 win.

Tavares now has 435 goals and 565 assists in 1054 career NHL regular season games. Taken first-overall in the 2009 NHL Entry Draft by the Islanders, Tavares would become one of the league’s most consistently dominant players, averaging a point-per-game in five of his nine seasons in Long Island, and twice finishing as a Hart Trophy-finalist (2012-13 and 2014-15).

The product of Mississauga, Ont. signed a seven-year, $77 million contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs as a free agent on July 1, 2018. He would hit career highs in goals (47) and points (88) in 2018-19.

The team would name him captain ahead of the 2019-20 season. He would hit the 80-point mark again in 2022-23, the fifth time of his career.