Ovechkin still playing two-way game he perfected in Cup run

The last time Alex Ovechkin was in Las Vegas’s T-Mobile Arena, he was on the ice so long his feet started to ache. As the Washington Capitals celebrated their first Stanley Cup there, Ovechkin quickly traded his skates for something more comfortable, Evgeny Kuznetsov’s slippers, and then took his time waddling around the ice with the trophy. He was the last player back to the locker-room.

That capped the longest season of Ovechkin’s career with 106 games, and just six months later, he and the Capitals are 26 games into a new year and back in Las Vegas for the first time. After all that hockey and an off-season that was a month shorter, Ovechkin is still taking his time on the ice. Skating 21:10 per game, he’s playing his most since the 2010-11 season, when he was 25, and his ice time is up a full minute from last season.

“I think it’s good for my body,” Ovechkin said. “Sometimes you play 16 minutes, sometimes you play 15 minutes, and you’re just like, ‘am I in the game or not?’ But if you play a 20-21-minute game, you’re into the game, you’re in a rhythm and you feel better.”

His 19 goals and 13 assists, both more than what he had at this time last season, indicate he’s still got plenty of energy. But is it possible to play Ovechkin too much? It’s something Capitals coach Todd Reirden has to consider as his 33-year-old superstar winger is the oldest forward in the league averaging more than 21 minutes per game.

“It’s definitely a thing that’s possible,” Reirden said about playing his star too much, adding that he monitors his ice time every period. Against the New Jersey Devils on Friday, Reirden saw Ovechkin had played fewer than five minutes in the first period.

Ovechkin ultimately skated 21:29 in the 6-3 Capitals win, and 9:16 of that came in the third period, when Reirden had Ovechkin on the ice to help protect the lead at the end of the game. As opposing teams have pulled their goaltender for an extra attacker in the final minutes, Reirden has often deployed Ovechkin, reliable enough to not only put the game out of reach with an empty-net goal but also defend well against six opposing skaters.

“I like it obviously,” Ovechkin said. “You want to be out there. It’s all about trust.”

Rather than suffer from a Stanley Cup hangover, Ovechkin has instead carried over some of his good habits from last post-season, when he played the best two-way hockey of his career. The Capitals were impressed with Ovechkin’s conditioning after a short summer, appearing even trimmer than he did a year ago.

That helps in carrying a heavy workload, but beyond his physical ability to play that many minutes 13 years into his career, Reirden believes Ovechkin has earned his time on ice.

“This for me is the best I’ve seen him play two-way hockey in the regular season,” Reirden said.

“You can tell he’s aware, trying to do the right things without the puck and be in the right positions,” defenceman Matt Niskanen said.

In the days after the Capitals won the Stanley Cup, Ovechkin watched one of the team’s games from the first round of the post-season and was baffled by how out of position he was defensively at times. There’s a significant drop in commitment and attention to detail for all players from the playoffs to the regular season, but now that Ovechkin knows how responsibly he can play, he’s largely maintained it.

This has been especially true as he and centre Nicklas Backstrom have been matched against other teams’ best forwards. He’s done so while averaging 1.23 points per game, on pace for his best season since the 2009-10 campaign in which he scored 50 goals with 59 assists.

“When you get success as a team and as an individual, you don’t want to change anything,” Ovechkin said. “How we played last year, I think that gave us what we want, you know? Why would you change it? I’m just trying to do the same thing.”