Friday, February 01, 2008

 

You Can't Stop Ovechkin

by Jes

You can't even hope to contain him.

It's as if Alexander Ovechkin thought to himself, "Hmm, now that Crosby is injured, why don't I just yank the spotlight entirely for myself?".



Didya see the highlights from last night's Habs/Caps tilt, where Ovechkin tore the Habs a new one with a 4-goal, 1-assist performance in the Caps OT win? Did you see him knocking down Habs players like bowling pins? Was your mouth agape at the utter domination?

Now, it's normally hard to be impressed with Ovechkin, considering that he's quite often putting up highlight reel plays, piling up goals, and generally just kicking ass in Maddox-like fashion.

Lately? He's taken the Caps on his shoulders and turned them into a possible playoff-bound club. Hell, even the injury to Michael Nylander hasn't slowed him down.

With 43 goals in 52 games, Ovechkin is now on pace for 67(!) this season. The Rocket Richard trophy is pretty much in the bag. Kovalchuk is slumping and injured, and Iginla is over 10 goals behind.

January has seen Ovechkin put up 13 goals and 9 assists in 13 games. The Caps? They are 7-3 in their last 10 games, and just 3 behind Carolina (With 2 games in hand!) for top spot in the South(l)East Division.

Yeah, I'm totally having a fanboy moment.

Despite Ovechkin's defensive deficiencies, I'd still give him the MVP at this point of the season. Not only is he the dominant force in the game, but he has little help. Lecavalier and Alfredsson are great players, but look at their linemates? Ovechkin might as well be playing with the ghosts of Dane Jackson and Chris Tancill.

It's just too bad Crosby is injured, and we can't see them have a great MVP race to finish the season. :(

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Comments:
For all of his "defensive deficiencies," he is a plus-14 on the season, which is tied for 21st best in the NHL.
 
Yeah, JP's right. He hasn't been defensively deficient this year. The improvement in how AO's played in the defensive end is pretty incredible.

Just for the sake of comparison, he's +29 better than I. Kovalchuk.
 
Yes he is very good two way player now. And, to be fair, he now has very good linemates in Backstrom and Kozlov.
 
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