SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020 | THEGLOBEANDMAIL O S11
A
s you read this, Alex Ovech-
kin is on the cusp of scoring
his 700th NHL goal.
That puts him in the same ca-
reer postal code as Brett Hull and
Phil Esposito.
If he lasts another couple of
years – which he will because, as
Ovechkin has told us, “Russian
machine never breaks” – he’ll be
up there with Gordie Howe and
Wayne Gretzky.
But Ovechkin is already the
greatest goal scorer in hockey his-
tory.
When Gretzky was netting 70,
80, 90 goals a season, about eight
goals were scored in the average
NHL game. That rate had fallen to
fewer than six when Ovechkin be-
gan his run.
In retrospect, it feels as though
about half of Gretzky’s goals were
scored on some skinny, flailing id-
iot who’d come 10 feet out of his
net trying to cut down the angle
and then fell over. And as you may
recall, he had a fair bit of help as
well.
Ovechkin has spent large
chunks of his career cutting his
own trail through the NHL. He
came in during the tail end of the
Dead Puck Era. He’s faced bigger,
faster goalies, all of whom are
now equipped like they work as
tackling dummies for attack dogs.
The defenders have been super-
sized as well.
Most tellingly, none of Ovech-
kin’s brightest contemporaries
are anywhere near him. Sidney
Crosby is closest – and he’s 250
goals behind.
Had he played in Gretzky’s era,
on a team such as the mid-eight-
ies’ Oilers, just imagine the num-
bers Ovechkin might’ve put up. A
thousand goals, easy. Maybe a lot
more.
Ovechkin hasn’t been misun-
derstood or underappreciated,
but he has been overanalyzed. As
observers, we’ve spent a great
deal of his career trying to figure
out what he represents.
At first, he was portrayed as
Crosby’s id. He was unfocused
and wild. The sort of toothless
maniac who ought to be trapped
in a Don Cherry Betamax box-set
for everyone else’s protection.
The stories about him were so
gripping, they obscured the play-
er. This was the guy who, at 10
years old, skipped his brother’s
funeral to attend a hockey tour-
nament. It’s a bit more memora-
ble than an iconic clothes dryer.
Whereas Crosby was gifted and
driven in a way we’d seen before,
Ovechkin fell right into our Cold
War fantasies of Soviet players
being built in a lab. He was the
Frankenstein’s monster of
Communist hockey.
“He does not look like the Sovi-et hockey-school player,” Vladis-
lav Tretiak once said. “From a
side, it seems that he is half-Cana-
dian.”
That was the half purists loved.
At his best, Ovechkin did every-
thing as well as or better than any-
one had. He was an artist and an
intimidator.
He was loud and vain, but also
light and fun. He’s the sort of guy
who can tell you he is better than
everyone else, but in such a way
that it doesn’t leave you with the
impression that he’s a braggart.
He’s got that magic.
Hockey people didn’t like the
other half much. The hot dogger.
The one-shift-for-you and one-
shift-for-me player. The one who
turned it on and off depending on
his mood. That was the European
part.
But somewhere in there,
Ovechkin changed. He got older
and ... well, maybe not wiser.
There is altogether too much wis-
dom in the NHL. It’s the reason
everyone sounds so tedious
whenever their lips are moving.
Ovechkin didn’t change all thatmuch, but our perception of him
did.
For one, we realized we were
never taking the Russia out of
him. Ovechkin would occasional-
ly remind people how much he
likes Vladimir Putin or go on very
public benders. While his Cana-
dian and American colleagues
were singing from the NHLPA’s
greedy hymnal, he’d rage about
being denied the chance to go to
the Olympics.
He was and remains his own
man with his own ideas. That
makes him nearly unique in
hockey. His talent provided him
with the armour to stay that way.
That’s what those goals mean
in the end. They prove that you
don’t have to be an automaton to
make it in the modern NHL. You
don’t have to do it for the boys.
You can do it for yourself.
If the point of the game is to
score goals, and if Ovechkin is the
greatest goal scorer, it stands to
reason he should get considera-
tion as the best of all time.
But no one talks about him
that way. The beginning and endof his candidacy is standing him
up beside Crosby and saying,
“Nope.”
It is Ovechkin’s blessing and
curse that he is twinned in every
mind with the hockiest hockey
player there has ever been. Crosby- a graduate of the Miss Manners
School of Canadian Darlings –
might’ve made Bobby Orr look
like a hippie. He’s that whole-
some.
It gave Ovechkin permission to
embrace the oddball side of his
personality. Marketers liked the
contrast and fans liked the drama.
But it also prevented people from
taking Ovechkin entirely serious-
ly.
Even after he’d won a Cup, no-
body was willing to include him in
‘best ever’ bar arguments. Every-
one likes him, but no one is will-
ing to go to bat for him. In a very
different way, he’s got a little Mike
Bossy v. Gretzky in him. He does
one thing really well and has the
misfortune to do it at the same
time as a Canadian cult figure.
But if Ovechkin can get up on
top of the goals leaderboard, that
will have to change.
As of this writing, he stands on
699 career tallies. Gretzky’s way-
out-in-front number is 894.
Gretzky did it over 21 seasons.
Ovechkin is in year 15. Let’s say he
lasts as long as the man he’s chas-
ing. That would make Ovechkin
40 at retirement.
He’d have to average a little
more than 30 goals a year for the
remainder of his run, which
would be low by his standards.
It’s more than doable. It may
even be likely. One of the few un-
deranalyzed things about Ovech-
kin as a player is how resilient he
is despite the physicality of his
game. He may actually be un-
breakable. As such, few players
have ever provided more return
on investment.
If he gets there, we will need to
undertake a reconsideration of
Ovechkin’s place in history. There
will be no getting past it then.
That a Russian has broken into
the last corner of hockey Cana-
dians still had to themselves – the
‘No. 1 of all time’ discussion.
Ovechkinisoneofthegreats.Heshouldbetreatedasone
AfteraStanleyCupwin
andalmost700goals,
somestillaren’ttaking
theRussianseriously
CATHAL
KELLY
OPINIONTORONTO
CapitalscaptainAlexOvechkin,seeninagameagainsttheMontrealCanadiensinWashingtononThursday,
hasspentmuchofhiscareercuttinghisowntrailthroughtheNHL.GEOFFBURKE/USATODAYSPORTSHOCKEY