Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin: A Contrast in Style

This has been a blast "transcendent" as Capitals' owner Ted Le-on-sis (on the off chance Don Cherry is reading this).

After three tightly-contested games in the Caps-Penguins series, Alex Ovechkin has five goals.

Sidney Crosby has four and two assists.

Each game has been decided by one goal, with Sid or Alex figuring in all but one of the decisive markers.

Were I a savant of the game—Stan Fischler or Frank Orr, perhaps—I might have an easier time likening the Crosby-Ovechkin matchup to another famous pair.

Who would it be? Howe-Richard? Too much in common—both could score and both could sock you into next week if you crossed them.

Gretzky-Lemieux? Both were paragons of finesse; one was just bigger than the other. It would be like comparing two impressionist painters; the battle was not one of style, but of quality and subtlety. Gretzky racked up more points, but Lemieux had better highlights. Ho hum.

In the '90s and early-aughts there was Brodeur versus...hmm, Yzerman? Hull? Modano? Expansion had more or less eliminated interprovincial rivalries, and the league was in a state of flux as Lemieux and Gretzky hung up their respective Jofas.

An amorphous collection of neutral zone trappers began clogging up the NHL like processed cheese—exemplified by the Devils' Intermittent Dynasty of Drear. That changed in 2005, when Crosby and Ovechkin took the ice and the red line was effectively eliminated.

It is hard to find two players more deliciously dissimilar in their approach. Those antonymic personalities—Crosby of the Maritime reserve, the pretty boy with the quiet but barbed tongue on the ice and the dutiful grinder in the corners; versus Alex Ovechkin, the Animal of The Muppet Show, the Keith Moon of the after-party, the peacock with the torqued-back stick in the left wing faceoff circle.

Whereas Crosby seems to emblemize a kind of NHL antiquity—no matter how pretty the goal, we still have work to do, boys, Ovechkin would rather smack the glass and admire his theatrics, revving the fans up like an MC. He never met a Jumbotron he didn't like.

Whereas Crosby likely grew up steeped in the austerity of Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr (on tape, one imagines) and admiring the likes of Joe Sakic, Ovechkin seems, like many in post-Communist Russia, to have mainlined a kind of Babylonian impression of America—equal parts Chris Moltisanti and Charles Barkley; a place where showboating is not just a catharsis but a birthright.

The back-story is irresistible. Crosby was groomed to be the Golden Boy, the face of the league, the slap-shooter on the Nintendo box.  But Ovechkin, by sheer muscle and brilliance, elbowed him out of the way, taking the Calder in 2006. Both used the press to denigrate the other, both have vied ( successfully) for MVP. Now the Battle Royal is on, and I wish I had cable TV.

The Crosby-Ovechkin duel is also a microcosm of a current flashpoint in the NHL. The league has been ailing for years; foundering under declining revenue from incongruous sunbelt teams; it has overexpanded into whimsical markets and robbed Canadian cities of their beloved franchises.

Now that the US dollar is in decline, it may behoove owners once again to expand above the 49th parallel. Hamilton should have a team. The Coyotes can trade sunburn for windburn and become the Jets again, but the question remains: Who does this league belong to? More precisely, what country and what culture?

It is ironic that the product of the once-sworn enemy of the United States should come to the embody the American fork in the road the NHL has elected to take, but Ovechkin is a shining example of capitalist globalism. 

Perhaps it's no surprise that his owner Ted Leonsis, an internet robber baron and inveterate blogger himself, should be so proud of his star player. Ovie is a scion of a world without borders, more American than America itself. Crosby, a great player and a quiet workhorse, is as quaint as a Mounted Policeman. 

It is the age of smoke machines, spotlights, cross-promotion, Les Vegas fight announcements every time a player goes to the penalty box. The provincial do-rights who speak nil of their battle scars have been replaced by premeditated chest-thumping and post-goal Bacchanalias.

I'm waiting for Ovie to spike a football the next time he crosses the redline. Where does Sid the kid fit into this?

It is perhaps telling that when trying to liken Ovechkin to another hockey player, we are left to defer to other sports. He is Charles Barkley. he is Michael Jordan. he is Mohammed Ali. Whatever the outcome of the series, Ovechkin—or his handlers on Sixth Avenue—have won.