Ovechkin carries an asterisk no more
It was S.L. Price of Sports Illustrated who put it like this: The game breaks you open. He was talking about tennis, and how the posh luxury of the sport disguised what it did to the competitors when they reached the greatest heights of the sport and either won or lost. It wasn’t just tennis, of course. It can be anything. The game breaks you open.
When Alexander Ovechkin used to lose the biggest games he would retreat into himself, stand wide-chested and speak so softly, and often he simply wouldn’t know what to say. He lost so many big games, and because he never got past the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, he never got to play the biggest ones. He seemed to get quieter after the losses, every year.
And for 13 years the questions were asked, and statements were delivered with a buffoonish confidence by some of hockey’s staid establishment: The Capitals can’t win with Ovechkin. He is too selfish, too flamboyant, too Russian. He’s a one-trick pony; he can’t win the big game.
That Sidney Crosby, his chief and only real rival, did so again and again … well, that just made it worse. I remember asking fellow Cup-chaser Joe Thornton once if he valued being on Team Canada, just to prove to critics that he’s a great player. “I know I’m a great player,” he said.
But every year Ovechkin started the year answering the question of how it would be different, and before every big game he had to answer that question again, of how it would be different. It was such a long road.
He had lost the world junior final to Canada, 6-1. He lost his first Game 7 to the Flyers in 2008. In 2009, after losing Game 7 to Crosby in Pittsburgh he said, “We were so close, but close not good enough … God just didn’t want to push us forward. It was all about us. I think I was mentally ready for the game, but I understand what can cost losing.”
Maybe he thought he understood. He lost with Russia at the Olympics in 2010, humiliated. He lost Game 7 to Montreal in 2010. In 2012 the grey was beginning to thread through his black hair, and before Game 7 against the Rangers he said, “Sometimes memory is good, sometimes memory is bad. We played against Montreal, against Pittsburgh in a seventh game, and we lost against them.
“Most important thing, you have to take the best thing that you have, and go out there and show what you have — block the shots, make the hits, it doesn’t matter what’s going to happen. You just need to keep playing, keep focusing, be out there, and do the best you can.” Washington lost 2-1. Ovechkin kept trying. He got past his sagging rock star years and got back to being great. He lost the 2014 Olympics at home, and Crosby won a second gold medal, and then a second Cup, and then a third.
People would whisper that Ovechkin was headed back to the KHL, and some of them were NHL players, his teammates. He kept trying.
He lost another Game 7 in 2015.
Every time, he said, it was a terrible feeling.
And each time — every year, every game — Alexander Ovechkin and the other Capitals had to try again, and find a way not to fear the same fail- ure.
Last year, after falling apart in Game 7 against Pittsburgh, longtime Capitals centre Nicklas Backstrom said, “I expect the same questions over and over again when you lose.” He was spotted leaving the arena in the arms of his father, in tears.
But they kept trying. Ovi kept trying.
And this year, with a team that was by most measures worse than previous ones, watching the 32-year-old Ovechkin in the playoffs was like watching his whole heart. His desire was palpable; he crackled, he thrummed.
He scored three goals and five points in five games in the final, and 15 goals and 27 points for the playoffs, and every reaction shot was such pure joy. And when he won in Las Vegas he cracked wide open and everything came howling out: all the years, all the failures, all the things he wanted but could never have.
Washington coach Barry Trotz told reporters about how he told Ovechkin last summer he would have to train harder to be the athlete he has always been, in a league that gets faster every year. He said they would have to lean on him more than they used to.
The grey is thick in Ovechkin’s hair now and he howled like a wolf, and he hoisted the Cup alone, and then with Backstrom, his old friend.
I’ve written this before, but in 2012 veteran winger Mike Knuble summed Ovechkin up for me:
“(Those big moments) are gonna happen, because he’s good enough, and he’s gonna play hard enough. I guess you don’t mind when a guy wants more and more and more, and wants to take the team on his back. ’Cause where’s the line? You want your best players to be like (Michael Jordan), give me the ball. I’ll do it. You can try all you want, but it’s not going to work.
“Every superstar comes in with that, in every sport that there is, when you’re identified as one of the top guys, once you’ve bagged the individual hardware, it’s ‘Where’s the team stuff?’
You know, you’ve got to believe he’s older and wiser a little bit, and sees his buddies coming home with the Cup in Russia, and he wants to win.
“Over the years we’ll disappear, and we’ll be left alone, you know? But superstar guys, it follows them. In conversations in bars and sitting around talking to guys, they always bring that up and touch on it, the asterisk.
“Whether it’s fair or not, that’s the way it is.”
Ovechkin did it. They all did, Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov and Braden Holtby and Lars Eller and Devante SmithPelly, the journeyman who caught fire. T.J. Oshie, with his father Tim in the stands, clouded with Alzheimer’s, and his son hoping his dad would remember. All of them.
Trying is hard. You know what’s harder? Trying again, after your heart gets broken, and again.
And after 13 years, Alexander Ovechkin has three Hart Trophies, three Ted Lindsays, seven Maurice Richards, one Art Ross, one Calder, a Conn Smythe, and a Stanley Cup. He has just about everything.
There is no asterisk anymore, and those arguments are over. Alexander Ovechkin finally, after everything, won.