THAT OVIE-CROSBY RIVALRY IS BACK IN FULL FORCE
Playoff series will be another showcase of star against star, Barry Svrluga writes.
On that night all those years ago, their roles were sketched out clearly. Alex Ovechkin was a hero in Washington, where he salvaged a sport, but simultaneously could be cast as an evil, masked villain in Pittsburgh. Sidney Crosby was a symbol of the no-nonsense, hardworking people in the Steel City, but nothing more than a whiny crybaby in the U.S. capital.
This was May 2009, Game 2 of the NHL Eastern Conference semifinals at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. When Ovechkin poured in his third goal of the game, giving his Capitals a 4-2 lead over Crosby’s Penguins, the hats rained down from the stands. Workers scooped up the first wave, filling trash cans. And when still more floated to the ice, Crosby skated over to the referee.
“I was just asking if he could make an announcement to ask them to stop,” Crosby said that night.
Introducing Crosby, in the eyes of Caps fans always complaining about something. Ah, memories.
That night, both Crosby and Ovechkin ended up with hat tricks. That month, the Penguins came back in the series to beat the Capitals, taking the seventh game in Washington. That June, Crosby lifted the first of his two Stanley Cups, the first of two treks through the playoffs that have gone through Ovechkin and the Caps.
There we were then, and here we are again. It is both unfair and inevitable that these two players — a soft-spoken Nova Scotian and a hard-driving Muscovite — will be forever linked. Back in that initial playoff meeting, it seemed as if this would be an annual spring rite: Ovechkin versus Crosby, Capitals versus Penguins. That hasn’t happened. The second-round playoff series between the pair that begins Thursday at the Verizon Center is just their second post-season meeting since that series that outlined their roles so long ago.
But even as other themes will emerge over the course of the next two weeks, history almost certainly will define this series as Sid versus Ovie — again.
They were compared back then. They were compared last spring, when the Penguins ousted the Capitals in six games in this very same round. They will be compared this month. And they will be compared decades from now, when their careers are over and they’re enshrined — perhaps next to each other — in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
“We respect each other,” Ovechkin said this week, and now, as he is in his 30s, you believe him. That might not have been the case that night eight years ago. There were times, over the course of this relationship, when they seemed to have notso-thinly veiled disdain for each other. That fit the storyline, too. Other than hockey, what did they really have in common? What are the similarities?
“Not many,” said Caps defenceman Brooks Orpik, a former Penguin and therefore one of a handful of people who have played with both.
Crosby is a centre. Ovechkin plays the wing. Crosby passes first, with 645 assists to his 382 goals. Ovechkin is and always will be a sniper first, as his 558 goals (alongside 477 assists) attest — trailing only the ageless Jaromir Jagr and Jarome Iginla among active players. Crosby missed significant time over the course of several seasons battling injuries, most notably concussions. Ovechkin has been darn near indestructible, never playing fewer than 72 games in a season not interrupted by labour strife, 10 times playing at least 78 games. Crosby scored the overtime game-winner to lift Canada to gold in an Olympics on home soil. Ovechkin was part of a Russian implosion at his own home Olympics. Ovechkin has a 3-2 edge in Hart Trophies as the NHL’s MVP. Crosby has, of course, the more important edge: 2-0 in Stanley Cups.
Look at those numbers. We have a treasure trove of information to evaluate each player, exactly what we didn’t have back on that night of the duelling hat tricks.
We know, too, that they’re different players and people at 31 and 29 than they were at 23 and 21. “We’re not buddies,” Ovechkin said. “We’re not friends.” And yet, as evidenced by hanging out at the all-star game or sharing jokes at awards ceremonies over the years, they don’t quite despise each other anymore, either.
“That battle between me and him, it’s great,” Ovechkin said. “I think me and him enjoy it, you guys enjoy it, fans enjoy it. But right now, it’s not about me and him. It’s about Caps and Penguins.”
What’s the difference?
That battle between me and him, it’s great … I think me and him enjoy it.