A new wave of NHL superstars has arrived and Alexander Ovechkin is leading the charge.
The question -- and it will be answered tonight -- is not whether Alex Ovechkin wins the Hart Trophy as the Most Valuable Player for the 2007-08 regular season but whether or not the voting is unanimous.
It was that good a year for the Russian forward who almost single-handedly carried the Capitals to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time during his brief tenure in Washington.
Who says so? Well, the voting members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association have the official say in this. I'm a member and I cast my first-place vote for Ovechkin. I suspect strongly -- and NHL T-Shirts that went on sale long before the awards ceremony in Toronto this evening-would seem to confirm it.
But we are not alone. No less an authority than Jarome Iginla, in a battle with Evgeni Malkin for first runner-up has placed his bet on Ovechkin who is also likely to win the Lester Pearson Trophy as MVP as determined by the players.
The winger had that kind of year.
"I think it was kind of funny when I saw (the t-shirt) on the web page." Iginla told the Calgary Sun this week. "I pretty much already knew that anyway. He had an amazing season and I could totally see why."
That would start with the league-high 65 goals, most ever by a left winger, the solid 112 points and the amazing drive to wipe out a seven-point deficit en route to not only gaining a berth for the Capitals in the playoffs this spring, but also winning the division crown in stunning fashion.
It's not that Iginla or Malkin aren't deserving candidates. Iginla had 50 goals and 98 points and he earned them all pretty much on his own individual effort. Malkin had 106 points and carried the Penguins when Sidney Crosby was injured, racking up 46 points over the 28 games Crosby was out.
But Ovechkin topped everyone and much of it came when it mattered most, when every point in the Eastern Conference mattered for as many as 12 teams and, with a finish that read like a Hollywood script.
One gets the sense that it's a good thing Iginla and some of what is now the "old" guard in the NHL had their moments at the top of the award podium. Looking down the road this Hart Trophy thing could be an Ovechkin- Crosby-Malkin thing for a good many seasons to come.
And that is a good thing.
I buy into the argument that the Hart should go to the player adjudged most valuable too his team. If you want a flat-out best player in a single season award, call it the Wayne Gretzky and we'll move on, but whatever criteria you use to determine this thing the guard has clearly been changed. The new generation of NHL stars has arrived and, for now at least, Ovechkin and Crosby or Crosby and Ovechkin are likely to lead the way.
That doesn't augur well for stellar stay-at-home defencemen or 2.00 and lower Goals Against Average goalies, but so be it. Crosby, who won the Hart and Pearson last season and would likely have been a contender had he not missed more than a third of this season with an ankle injury, has most of his best years in front of him as does Ovechkin. Both play on teams that seem likely to get better and both have the type of overall game -- including the necessary drive and tenacity and yes, we dare say it, showmanship -- that draws the attention of voters.
In other words, they have what fans, voters and seemingly the league itself want, unbridled talent matched by unbridled star power and a certain showman's sense of how to use it.
You could see it in Crosby almost the moment he first set foot to NHL ice and you could see it developing in Ovechkin both in the early years (like when he outpolled Crosby for the Calder Trophy) and in the most recent outing when he did everything that was asked of him and still found a way to get his personality (albeit somewhat hampered by language issues) out in front of both the voting and the general public. Malkin too could get to that level if he works at it (especially the language and showmanship part), but for now it does appear to be a two-man race. Coming back from injury Crosby used the Stanley Cup playoff stage to offer up his "wait until next season" refrain.
Now into this race could come a Detroit Red Wings player or two, but I don't see it. Detroit plays too much of a team game (which is by no means a bad thing), but more importantly, its players seem to shun the star roles that both Crosby and Ovechkin have embraced.
That could change when some of the other kids, notably Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews and some others come to maturity, but it's not likely, at least not in the immediate future.
Expect to see a lot of these two players both on the ice and on the postseason stage for many more years to come.