Alexander Ovechkin's Motives Different against Elite Russian Opponents?

In response to a recent article of mine, one of my readers left a comment regarding Alex Ovechkin and the fact that he's more concerned with playing physically when opposing teams have elite Russian players than when playing against teams without (and that he would have more goals against those without Russian players since he's not preoccupied with head-hunting anyone):

"A friend and I were discussing Ovie's headhunting of Malkin. He said that it seems that Ovie goes after Russian elite players. My friend is from [North Carolina], so He sees the 'Canes, and mentioned that Ovie goes after Ilya Kovalchuk the same way. He mentioned about his point totals when he's playing against teams with "elite" Russian players? I think you'll notice a drop-off. He's too busy trying to hurt people to score. "

"—m-kim58"

"
"

I thought it was an interesting point and decided to do some research. I took stats (goals scored) for Ovechkin during the regular 2007-2008 season (taken from NHL.com using the box score of game recaps in the schedule tab) when playing against the teams of the two players m-kim58 mentions in her comment—Pittsburgh and Atlanta—and compared them to two teams that do not have any Russian players on them—New York Islanders and New Jersey.

What's interesting is the fact that the results are almost the complete opposite of what we were expecting. It appears that Ovechkin scores more goals when he's playing against Pittsburgh and Atlanta (having elite Russian players) from looking at the stats and making a comparison. It wasn't a large difference, but I really didn't have a lot of games to "sample" from.

The Breakdown

Goals scored against Atlanta: 6
Goals scored against Pittsburgh: 3
TOTAL = 9 goals

Goals scored against New York (Islanders): 2
Goals scored against New Jersey: 0
TOTAL = 2 goals

He scores a little over four times as much against Pittsburgh and Atlanta as he does when playing the Islanders and Devils. The only explanations I can offer are as follows:

1. We are way off on our thinking and he isn't as pre-occupied with Malkin as we believe. (I find this hard to believe because every time he turned around, Malkin was being pushed around by Ovechkin.)

OR

2. Not only is Ovechkin motivated to be physical with the "Russian elite" on opposing teams, but also to work harder to score goals at the same time, which would be exhausting.

Bottom line, he either doesn't spend as much time going after Malkin or spends more energy to be both physical and score goals.

If anyone else has any thoughts (or thinks comparing other stats would allow me to come up with better/more accurate results) let me know. I'd love to hear what everyone else is thinking!