PITTSBURGH — It was No. 87 vs. No. 8, Part, uh, Part … well, here the Roman numerals don’t really work with the defining players of their era, 13 seasons into their respective NHL careers. This latest instalment of Sid vs. Ovie is by now beyond the realm of I’s and V’s and X’s and somewhere up in the C’s and M’s.
The Crosbys beat the Ovechkins Thursday night. Final score: the Formers 7 the Latters 6 in 61 minutes and 20 seconds of autumnal NHL action between two teams that have won the last three Stanley Cups. The margin of victory was Kris Letang’s second goal of the game, a shot from the point on a power play in overtime.
As the scoreline would suggest, the game didn’t lack for action, but it was the farthest thing from aesthetic beauty. If this were a youth-league game, it would be indecent to name the two goalies, but as they are pros and Stanley Cup winners it seems only fair: Matt Murray stopped 31 of 36 for the victory while Braden Holtby got a piece of 34 shots in the loss.
Yeah, there were some highlight-reel saves and how’d-that-stay-outs along the way, but neither netminder will have much of a night’s sleep in the wake of the game.
The affair was rife with painful turnovers and slapstick whiffs and missed assignments. “We talked about becoming a team that’s hard to play against, becoming a team that doesn’t beat itself,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said.
In their first game of the season, Pittsburgh was, for stretches, a team that would be delightful to play against and, in the end, a team that gifted a point to the Capitals who were down 6-4 and looking thoroughly beaten with seven minutes remaining in regulation.
But at that point Evgeni Malkin made a horrendous giveaway deep in his own zone to give T.J. Oshie the puck in the slot, which he wired high, glove-side past Murray. Seconds later, Oshie deflected a shot by John Carlson past the Penguins goaltender, sucking all the oxygen out of PPG Paint Arena.
Though his team awaits a laugh-filled video session, Crosby sounded an optimistic note in the aftermath. “[The Penguins’] mistakes are easy to clean up for the most part,” he said. “We were playing a team that feeds on those turnovers.”
If literally true, the Caps would have left the post-game buffet table untouched.
Look, it was really ugly. Through eight minutes, the two goalies combined to stop two of seven shots. The worst was a batting-practice fastball from the point by Brooks Orpik, who hadn’t scored a regular-season since Feb 26, 2016.
Matters tightened up somewhat thereafter. Through the first 35 minutes, the home team was down a goal, but goals by Jake Guentzel and Derrick Brassard before the second intermission gave the Penguins a lead — one that looked like it would stand up after a Malkin goal early in the third period. That looked like a backbreaker and the Caps seemed weary, to be given that they had skated miles in their home opener the previous night, a seven-zip laugher over the Bruins.
Among the umpteen head-to-head tilts between Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, the Penguins’ home opener of the 2018-19 season will not be one that gets a display in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Neither made a big dent in the scoresheet. Ovechkin picked up a goal in the first period, Crosby a couple of assists.
It was a night that saw the supporting cast members played bigger roles — Oshie picked up an assist along with his pair, likewise Letang. Crosby’s winger, Guentzel, picked up two goals as well.
“He could have scored two more,” Crosby said, not as a criticism, just as a fact.
It was Crosby, though, who made the key play of the game in overtime. Just a few breaths into three-on-three, he bore down on Holtby, towing Evgeny Kuznetsov with him and drawing a penalty. Kuznetsov had been a revelation in last spring’s playoffs and a nightmare for the Penguins, so it wasn’t a big surprise that he was out to start the overtime frame.
Some would say that there is no real rivalry between Crosby and Ovechkin. Some would say that it’s merely a media confection, the stuff of a great promotional commercial or two, the ritual storyline of a broadcast, but nothing more than that. If you are in that number, run with it. It’s pointless to search for testimony sworn or casually offered attesting to the existence of a rivalry.
The principals themselves aren’t much inclined to waste words or oxygen on the subject. This is what you’d expect of the circumspect and diplomatic Crosby. Of the loquacious and frequently outrageous Ovechkin, well, he might have addressed it more directly were it not for the fact that his Capitals had virtually no success against Pittsburgh in the post-season.
Still, the game seemed to signify a certain turn in the dynamic. The template had been fairly well-established through a decade of play, dating back to the first time that Crosby and the Penguins made the Cup Final in ’08. Ovechkin could post tremendous numbers in the regular season, get his requisite berth on the First All-Star Team, or even on both the First and Second All-Star Teams simultaneously, but never get as far as an Eastern Conference Final.
The Penguins had the Caps’ number, and when Crosby was hale and clear of mind, you’d bank on him prevailing. At least until last spring, when Washington knocked off Pittsburgh in the second round, when the Penguins seemed too tired and worn for a third consecutive Stanley Cup, no matter how much magic Crosby might conjure.
Somehow, Ovechkin, in the back half of his career, found another level of his game — it’s fair to say he willed the Capitals past Tampa Bay in Game 7 of the Conference Final and would have skated through walls if that’s what it was going to take in the Final against Vegas.
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This, then, was the first time that Crosby looked across the ice at Ovechkin covetously.
When I spoke to Pittsburgh’s sports-science director Andy O’Brien during the summer, he made it sound like the Penguins’ season did not sit well with the captain. In fact, Crosby was looking for ways to amp up his speed — that he had seen the success that Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon were having and wanted that same velocity. O’Brien said that there’d have to be a trade-off if that was the direction he wanted to go — that Crosby would have to sacrifice some of his strength on the puck below the dots if he were pushing for break-out speed.
As it turned out in the Penguins’ season opener, Crosby was right in his usual kitchen when drew the penalty on Kuznetsov — utterly unmovable, controlling the puck. Go with what you know.
It’s still the first week of the season. There’s no real reading of any team’s form. The conventional wisdom has ever been that players only kick their games into fourth gear in December or so.
It’s hard to imagine that Murray will remain so porous through the meat of the schedule, or that defencemen who own Stanley Cup rings will stumble so often and so painfully as the Penguins blueliners did in their home opener.