The knee and hamstring injuries through which Alex Ovechkin soldiered on for the final nine games of the playoffs may, to a degree, muddle the Capitals’ postmortem, but this fact is not complicated at all:
In three playoff series against Sidney Crosby and the Penguins, Ovechkin and the Caps are 0-3 — losing all three times as the higher seed and in each of the past two years as the Presidents’ Trophy winner. In four international tournament confrontations against Crosby and Canada, Ovechkin and Russia are 0-4, with No. 8 outscored seven points to none.
This is not Wilt Chamberlain against Bill Russell, when Russell won every time surrounded by better personnel and Chamberlain won the one time his team undoubtedly was superior.
This instead is Popeye against Bluto.
And that is the cartoonish reality with which Washington’s entire power structure must grapple in attempt to plot a path forward after the team’s seventh loss in its last nine playoffs to a lower seed, fifth in a home Game 7, plus another pair of Game 7 defeats at Madison Square Garden to the higher-seeded Rangers, once after holding a 3-1 series lead.
You can strengthen the support system until all the spinach in the world has been consumed, but it is difficult to imagine management doing much more than signing Justin Williams and Matt Niskanen as free agents and trading for T.J. Oshie and Kevin Shattenkirk over the past two years to accomplish that objective.
You can pick apart Karl Alzner and Tom Wilson all you want. You can run through the pluses and minuses of another coach or even run through another coach if you think there is a better one out there than Barry Trotz.
But what do you do when your signature player, your franchise player, is never the best player on the ice when it counts the most?
Ovechkin remains one of the most compelling athletes in the NHL. But he will turn 32 before next season starts. His recklessly physical style of play has taken a toll. He is coming off a year in which he took the second-fewest shots of his career. He scored 16 even-strength goals, by far the lowest full-season total of his 12-year career (25 in both 2010-11 and 2011-12), that tied for 67th in the NHL.
And he has four years remaining on a contract that carries a $9,538,462 million cap hit through 2020-21. That makes him tradeable only for a player or combination of players carrying a similar obligation, and only to a team for which Ovechkin would waive his no-move clause.
Could the Kings, under new management after winning one playoff game over the past three years while missing the tournament twice, go for something like that if the rehabbing Marian Gaborik is part of the package that goes the other way? Maybe. But the Kings might prefer to take another run at getting Ilya Kovalchuk from the Devils seven years after finishing second to New Jersey in the prodigal’s free-agent sweepstakes.
The Capitals fans likely would buy into an Ovechkin deal at this point. But there is surely no guarantee that owner Ted Leonsis would be amenable to moving on from the individual who almost singularly transformed the Caps into a power brand in the league and a vibrant product in D.C. and for whom he always demonstrated the utmost support. If Ovechkin is traded, it will be an ownership decision.
Twelve years of Ovechkin. Seven division titles. Four first-seeds without a conference title. Never once more than seven playoff wins in any year to show for it.
The Caps am what they am.
Perhaps as much to the point, so is Crosby.
Seriously, the Penguins surviving the Columbus-Washington Metro Division gauntlet without Kris Letang and 2016 Cup-winning goaltender Matt Murray is representative of as good a coaching job in the playoffs from Mike Sullivan as we’ve seen.
It is safe to say that the separation of Sullivan from John Tortorella, a partnership at the end under which each other’s deficiencies were reinforced by the other, has benefited both men.
And perhaps the best trade deadline decision was Pittsburgh general manager Gentleman Jim Rutherford not engaging in talks to deal Marc-Andre Fleury.
If the Chicago-Los Angeles Western power axis shifts to Edmonton-Nashville, as seems quite possible, what exactly does that mean on a national scale to and for an NHL that has a soft spot for its small markets, but thrives when big-market powers dominate?
Ben Bishop for six years? Good luck to Dallas on that.
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The Winter Classic will be played at Citi Field
Enter a new contestant into the running for worst timing…
The 2018 Winter Classic between the Rangers and Sabres at Citi Field is the most vanilla and least enticing in terms of the matchup and site since the event was hatched as an annual event in 2008.
I love the outdoor-game concept (and Citi has a nice, enclosed press box), but Rangers-Sabres on the national stage? Why? Who cares?
Well, the commissioner does.
Rangers-Sabres in Queens is representative of Gary Bettman’s operation in which the commissioner is able to marshal support from the Board of Governors for even his worst ideas — e.g., the playoff format and the offside coach’s challenge — through use of political patronage.
This game is partially a thank you to the Wilpons for their participation in the effort to land the Islanders a new arena and partially another thank you to Terry Pegula for rescuing the Sabres from Tom Golisano’s ownership. Plus, Buffalo is always a great television market for the league, so there is that.
But it sure isn’t the grand-scale event that was once imagined by the league.