Top Secret

Let Sidney Crosby be hockey's savior. Caps stealth star Alexander Ovechkin will settle for Rookie of the Year honors

Wish you were back in Russia?

Alex Ovechkin sits alone on a wooden bench inside the MCI Center locker room,fullbody black Lycra underwear clinging to his powerful 6'2'' frame, beads of sweat dripping from his darkbrown, disheveled mop. His wide-set swimming pool eyes are blank, his crooked nose pointed toward the floor, the way eyes and noses tend to be when you've just come out on the short end of a 4-0 whitewashing. The debacle du jour-it's not the first and won't be the last for a Caps team that could easily be mistaken for an AHL squad-came at the hands of the Hurricanes before an announced Saturday night crowd of 13,000-plus that by game's end looked like 3,000-minus. The question from a reporter buzzes in Ovechkin's ear like a mosquito:

Wish you were back in Russia?

Russia is where the 20-year-old phenom spent the past four years playing pro hockey: three seasons before the lockout, one during. He was the NHL's 2004—a.k.a. 1 B.C. (Before Crosby)—first overall draft pick. One of the most complete power forwards to come along in the past 20 years, scouts said. That rare European who does more than just pass and score, they said. Plays defense and even hits. Oh, does he hit.

"My dream is to play in NHL, and NHL is physical league," Ovechkin says on the morning of the Carolina massacre. Speaking in broken English over scrambled eggs, he uses the present tense to describe the past. "So I make my game more physical." How physical? Last season, while helping his hometown Dynamo Moscow team in its march toward a Superleague title, the 212-pound left wing laid out four-time All-Star Sergei Gonchar. The Metallurg Magnitogorsk defenseman left the game with a concussion and didn't return-for a month. "Alex relishes contact," says Caps coach Glen Hanlon. No hyperbole there: forty ticks into his NHL debut, Ovechkin went into the corner and checked unsuspecting Blue Jacket Radoslav Suchy so hard one of the Plexiglas support beams came crashing down to the ice. The game had to be stopped for three minutes.

After play resumed, the righthander, whose release fellow forward and nineyear vet F Dainius Zubrus calls "the quickest I've ever seen," found the back of the net twice. No other No. 1 had scored two goals in his debut. Not Mario Lemieux. Not Eric Lindros. Not even The Savior.

Ah, Sir Sidney. Lord Crosby. The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh and the Entire Sport of Hockey. The top pick of 2005 didn't light the lamp until his third game, which led to a national sports weekly putting the words "Sidney Crosby's First NHL Goal" on its cover. That's what happens when you're a North American who's got beautiful brown eyes, perfectly coiffed sideburns and a sports-marketing machine (IMG) behind you. Meanwhile, the Caps' scraggly haired, unibrowed rook-who's repped by the powerful but quiet Canadian firm Newport Sports Management-toils away in the hockey hinterland of Washington, which is like playing in the WPL (Witness Protection League).

Thing is, it didn't have to be that way. This summer, after four years with Dynamo and with the lockout still unsettled, Ovechkin signed a free agent deal with Siberia's Avangard Omsk. The 2004 Superleague champs were set to pay him nearly $2M taxfree (Russian teams take care of their players' 13% tariff)-throwing in a free car and condo-to play before sellout crowds in a blustery outpost where the only thing more important than hockey is heat. Instead, he followed his dream, taking a 50% pay cut (his base contract with Washington nets him $984,200) to play for a star-crossed franchise in a half-empty arena (the Caps rank last in NHL attendance) where fans know so little about hockey, the scoreboard flashes penalty definitions every time a player goes to the box. One thing DC fans do know? No. 8 is pretty darned good. After his debut, Ovechkin went on to record at least one point in each of his next seven games. The eight-game string (six goals, four assists) was the NHL's longest career-starting streak in 13 years. "We knew he was special," says Hanlon, "but his ability to finish is even better than we thought." Three weeks into the season, his physical play and flare for the dramatic-he scored in Washington's first shootout to help lift the Caps over the Lightning-are a huge reason the team has won six games. And Crosby? Despite four goals and 14 assists, which leads all rookies, his Pens have three wins in 14 tries. Still, Sid gets all the ink-guess who won the league's Rookie of the Month honors for October? "He is from here," says Ovechkin. "If we both play in Russia instead of United States, then I am the one everyone talks about."

So … Wish you were back in Russia?

"Never," he says, as he sits in the locker room after the Carolina loss, eyes still blank, crooked nose still pointing down. "NHL is my dream."

Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine