Ovechkin at the frontier
Caps star has chance to go to the conference final for the first time in career
“If Alex had have put that one in on the breakaway, who knows?” — Bruce Boudreau, then-coach of the Washington Capitals, May 14, 2009.
“If I score first goal, maybe a different game. I didn’t score it.” — Ovechkin, same day . Before Game 7 between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals in the second round of the 2009 NHL playoffs, one of Sidney Crosby’s teammates walked up to Crosby and told him, “You were born for this.”
After Crosby had scored two goals in a 4-1 win, Mario Lemieux waited until the reporters were gone and said to Crosby, “Kid, tres bon.”
Ovechkin, Crosby’s foil and rival, scored Washington’s only goal, but he was stopped on an early breakaway when the game was still scoreless, and walked away with regrets.
Now Ovechkin is back on the brink of what is, to him, an undiscovered country — the conference final, which Washington could reach with a Game 7 victory over the New York Rangers tonight. He has become the league’s greatest puzzle since the duel in 2009, and his team has drifted: a seven-game loss to eighthseeded Montreal in 2010, a second-round sweep by Tampa Bay last season, the seventh seed this season.
And now, another chance, on Broadway.
“Sometimes memory is good, sometimes memory is bad,” Ovechkin says, strands of grey now woven through his thick black hair. “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.”
It is hard to say that Ovechkin is the best he can be, but it’s a complex question. His production has plummeted — an average of 54 goals and 105 points in his first five seasons, an average of 35 goals and 75 points this season and last — and while he has a teamleading five goals and nine points in 13 playoff games this year, his ice time under new coach Dale Hunter has dropped nearly four minutes from his career playoff average.
But he’s tried to be more responsible defensively, even if it doesn’t always work out that way. And he hasn’t complained.
“There’s nobody in this entire league — well, there may be a couple guys — but there’s not many guys that can go out there and change the exact look (of an NHL game),” Capitals defenceman Karl Alzner, a Calgary Hitmen grad, says. “It’s just too hard, the players are too good, and so you have to use everybody out there. Everybody has to be on, and working the exact same way, pulling the same rope, and you can’t stray from that. We’ve proven that the last few years.
“It’s hard to take a step back when you want to go-go-go, and he knows he’s the guy who makes us go, and when he’s on, we’re on. But it’s needing to know the right time, and how far to go. He’s really learning. When he needs to pick it up he picks it up, but he doesn’t do it all by himself. He does it with other guys. And it’s not just offensively, it’s defensively now, too, blocking shots. He’s playing the game much smarter, I think. He’s just maturing as a player, I think, as he’s getting older, being a captain longer, he’s really figuring out what he has to do to help the team. I think that’s what elevates you to the next level.”
Whether he really is better is not a settled issue, though, and the state of the transformation remains fluid. When asked what he had to do to play more after a career-low 13:36 in Game 2 against New York — where he scored the winning goal — Ovechkin said: “Just score the goals and play safety. When you play safety, the team and the coaches have trust in you,” before adding, “I mean, if we play in our zone, we have to play safety. In neutral zone and especially in offensive zone, you have to be creative. You can’t be like play safe out there.”
After a failed charge through two defencemen in Game 1, Ovechkin said: “Sometimes I make that kinds of decisions and after that I just think, ‘Why I do that?’ ’’
And then there was Game 6, where he scored the game’s critical first goal on a power play. He hit the post while fighting through a check and still lifted the puck, like a golfer hitting a flop shot. In a vintage moment, he was knocked to the ice on a rush, gloved the puck to his stick as he spun around on his posterior and got off a dangerous low shot on Henrik Lundqvist. There is still a inimitable engine in there, able to roar. Game 7 will be tight, but there will be tiny windows to score. Ovechkin remains the bestequipped man to smash through.
“(Those moments) are going to happen, because he’s good enough, and he’s going to play hard enough,” Capitals veteran Mike Knuble says. “I guess you don’t mind when a guy wants more and more and more, and wants to take the team on his back . . . 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 (Stanley) Cup in Russia, and he wants to win.”
Tonight, Ovechkin will have another chance to make the difference. Another chance to win.
“Over the years, we’ll disappear, and we’ll be left alone, you know?” Knuble says. “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.”
He’s (Ovechkin) playing the game much smarter. CAPS D-MAN KARL ALZNER