Graybeard Ovechkin hasn’t lost his edge
Caps star an early MVP candidate
Alex Ovechkin is 36 years old, and somehow the news comes when he doesn’t score a goal, not when he does. More than a quarter of the NHL season has passed, and a quarter of a season doesn’t determine lasting legacies, not for an individual or a team.
What we do know about Ovechkin, who was to play the 25th game of his 17th Washington Capitals season Saturday night against Columbus: Even as his hair grays, he is refining and improving his game. Even as his skills should be diminishing, he is flourishing. He must be considered the leading candidate for the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player.
That’s a remarkable sentence to type, and readers in Edmonton and beyond could point to Oilers teammates Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, the past two Hart winners, as excellent candidates, because they are. Heading into the weekend, Draisaitl, with 20 goals, is the only player with more than Ovechkin’s 19. Draisaitl and McDavid, with 41 and 40 points respectively, are the only players with more than Ovechkin’s 38.
Good thing we have 50-something games to sort this out.
“There’s always points throughout the year where Ovi just plays at a different level that a lot of us can’t get to,” said T.J. Oshie, a teammate for seven years, an offand-on linemate that whole time.
That’s where he is now, even as he’s closer to 40 than to 30, on a different level, keeping an injured and, in spots, inexperienced team together. He’s not doing it by chilling at the left circle and unleashing meteors on the power play. Rather, he is a candidate for what would be his fourth Hart Trophy because he has diversified his game and pushed the beleaguered Capitals near the top of the league standings by playing his most complete hockey since — ever?
“This is the smartest I’ve seen him play in the offensive zone, getting pucks to the right area, making plays, rebound goals,” said Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan. “He’s making a lot more plays in the offensive zone. It’s been gradual, but this year looks different. It looks like he’s a smarter player, reading the whole game.”
Pondering Ovechkin can be difficult, because what aspect of his game hasn’t been placed under a microscope over these last 17 years? And yet here we are, in December 2021, trying to figure out not just how he’s sustaining his play, but how he’s improving it.
“It’s hard to talk about Ovi,” said Tom Wilson, typically the right wing on Ovechkin’s line when the Caps are fully healthy. “Until you get to see him on a day-to-day basis, you can’t really explain it. He’s just a machine.”
A machine that is now performing some new functions. Over a five-season span from 2012-13 to 2016-17, Ovechkin led the NHL in power-play goals. That final year, he had more goals with the man advantage than he did at even strength. It was easy to think, as he headed toward his mid-30s, that he would have to prop up his future goal totals by firing in those one-timers on the power play. I’m certainly guilty of believing that.
And yet beginning with the 2017-18 season, the season that happened to conclude with the Capitals’ lone Stanley Cup, Ovechkin is tied with Toronto’s Auston Matthews for the most even-strength goals in the league. He led the NHL in that category two years ago. Headed into the weekend, 14 of his 19 goals were at even strength, again, most in the league. And they’re coming in all manner of ways: 11 by wrist shot, three by snapshot, just two slap shots, a backhand, a tip-in and a deflection.
“He commands the puck,” Oshie said. “He wants to be on the ice, and when he is, he’s trying to make a difference. We’ve even seen it’s not just waiting in a certain area waiting for people to get him the puck. It’s constantly him getting it and wanting to take it and create offense.”
There’s a word that hasn’t often been associated with Ovechkin, and one that indicates his growth at this late stage in his career: create. A significant part of his early-season surge has been due to the extraordinary play of center Evgeny Kuznetsov, the key to the Capitals’ being the best they can be. That’s particularly true because Nicklas Backstrom, the forever Robin to Ovechkin’s Batman, hasn’t played a shift this season as he tries to work his way back from a hip injury.
So keeping the Capitals together as they endure injuries to Backstrom, Oshie, Anthony Mantha and others and therefore work in a slew of rookies, including 20-year-old Aliaksei Protas on Ovechkin’s line, has required not only Ovechkin’s goals. It’s required his generosity.
“He’s been making great offensive plays, not just scoring goals,” Coach Peter Laviolette said.
“When it’s time to pass to somebody, when everybody gravitates to him, he makes the right pass.”
To the point where, heading into the Columbus game, he is averaging 0.79 assists per game, an average he has exceeded just once in his career, 2009-10, the season after he won the second of his three Harts.
Oh, right, the trophy. Draisaitl, 26, is averaging a remarkable 0.95 goals per game. If he keeps up that unlikely pace, Ovechkin may just have to tip his helmet to him on NHL awards night. But think about Ovechkin’s pace, and its place in history, too.
Through Thursday’s shootout loss to Chicago, Ovechkin’s average goals per game matches the best mark of his career, 2007-08, when he was 22, and would equal Matthews’ pace in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season as the best mark this century. Indeed, only nine players since 2000 have averaged as many as two-thirds of a goal per game. Matthews and Steven Stamkos have done it twice each. Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Cheechoo, Evgeni Malkin, David Pastrnak, Ilya Kovalchuk and Mike Zibanejad once apiece, according to hockey-reference. com.
In those productive seasons, those players ranged in age from 21 to 26. Ovechkin has averaged two-thirds of a goal per game five times, including once when he was 34. Keep up this pace, which has actually fallen off, considering Ovechkin didn’t score in the Caps’ past two games, and it would be six, at age 36. He never stops.
“He’s just hungry to score,” Wilson said. “He’s hungry to keep bettering himself. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The ways to be astounded are almost limitless. Only five players age 36 or older have produced a 40-goal season, and they’re all Hall of Famers: Teemu Selanne, Gordie Howe, Phil Esposito, John Bucyk and Brendan Shanahan. Selanne owns the most goals for a player that age at 48. Ovechkin is on pace for nearly 65.
Close then, with this: The oldest players to win the Hart Trophy were Herb Gardiner in 1926-27 and Eddie Shore in 1937-38. They were both 35. Alex Ovechkin is a candidate — a strong candidate — to replace them. Bet against him at your own peril.