Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Alex Ovechkin needs to learn how to pass up a hit.

Alex Ovechkin was ejected for his knee-on-knee hit on Hurricanes' Tim Gleason.

As a most bizarre weekend stretches into an amazingly newsy midweek, a two-game suspension to Alex Ovechkin raises — like Tiger Woods and the Roughriders’ 13th man — raises more questions than will ever be answered.

Would Ovechkin’s injured knee even have allowed him to play in the Washington Capitals games on Thursday and Saturday? Or, after being unable to practice on Tuesday, is Ovechkin being “suspended” for games he would have had missed anyhow?

Was the brutal, obvious knee he threw out at Carolina’s Tim Gleason — not the first time Ovechkin stuck out a knee and injured an opponent — commensurate with just two games? Or if it were Jordin Tootoo, Danny Carcillo or the recently suspended Georges Laraque, was that a four- or five-gamer?

Having been tossed out of his second game in a week, is Ovechkin going to forced to change his game?

And more important than any of those questions, how many girls does Tiger Woods have out there, anyhow?

“He's pretty reckless,” said Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau.

Ovechkin, he was talking about.

“It's hard telling a guy that scores 60 goals a year to change the way he plays,” Boudreau said Tuesday morning. “At the same time, I don't want to see him getting hurt. Maybe he has to pick his spots a little better.

“It's something that has to be addressed by us, I guess.”

Ovechkin said what every guy who doles out a wicked knee-to-knee hit says: “I didn’t mean to go knee to knee with him. But he turned so quick, and I have big speed. I don’t have time to react.”

Like last spring Ovechkin injured Pittsburgh’s Sergei Gonchar’s knee with an identical check. He has injured Jamie Heward with a dangerous hit from behind, stuck a knee into Dennis Wideman, injuring him, and his slew-foot on Rich Peverley was mighty cheap — the kind of play that is beneath a player of Ovechkin’s pedigree.

We like the fact that Ovechkin brings some physicality to the rink, and we have no problem with crossing the line now and again. If you don’t, you’re not trying hard enough.

But the knee-on-knee hits are piling up, and Ovechkin does tend to pick his spots, preferring to drill a player who is vulnerable than one who sees him coming.

“I love the way he plays,” said Penguins defenceman Brooks Orpik last spring, after the Gonchar hit eliminated the Penguins defenceman from the series. “But he could get a charging penalty every time he hits. He leaves his feet and takes countless strides.”

What we’re seeing now is Ovechkin beginning to cross the line from aggressive superstar to a kamikaze hitter who can’t handle the fact that he is going to miss sometimes. That was the story with Bryan Marchment, that old knee-capping defenceman who collected his share of opponents’ scalps over a long and dangerous career of open-ice hits.

People said Marchment was a knee hunter, which was totally untrue. Marchment was simply a defenceman who put himself dangerously out of position every time he stepped up into the neural zone to make a big hit.

When the opponent didn’t see Marchment coming, the hits were devastating, but usually clean. But when the puck carrier lifted his head and side-stepped Marchment, the defenceman always felt compelled to stick out a hip or knee — anything to slow the rush that he was now out of position to defend.

The older he got, the slower he got, the worse his timing became. Near the end of Marchment’s career, the knee-on-knee hits came too often.

If Ovechkin wants to run around and throw the big hit, fine. But if he can’t learn to pass up a hit — like on Gleason, who saw him coming and was about to side step the check — then NHL discipline czar Colin Campbell will be forced to step in again.

And perhaps next time, Ovechkin will miss a span of games he was healthy enough to play in.