Photo by lis_glassTomorrow night’s Caps game at Verizon Center features the four most talented hockey players on earth competing in a winner take all, game seven, series final struggle for playoff survival. We’ll have the last two winners of the NHL’s Hart Trophy (player most valuable to his team) playing out a rivalry that has made hockey important even to non-fans. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby have been billed for years as the greatest talents of this generation, and this will be the first time one of them eliminates the other from the playoffs.
This game also features two out of three nominees for this year’s MVP awards, as well as this season’s two highest scorers: Ovechkin, and his former Russian Super League linemate Evgeni Malkin, now of the Penguins. The two have feuded in very real ways, with Ovechkin allegedly breaking his old friend’s agent’s jaw. The Caps have denied this silly accusation, but Malkin has reiterated it. Nonetheless, the two worked together at this year’s all-star game to put on the silliest show in the short history of the breakaway competition.
Last night’s 5-4 OT Caps victory in Pittsburgh featured the reawakening of Alexander Semin. Semin was leading the NHL in scoring before an injury in November when a reporter asked him what he thought of Crosby. Taking the bait, Semin said he isn’t a fan of anyone who plays a boring style of hockey. Semin’s two points last night were brilliant, and he could end up backing up his words when the Caps return home for the last game of this dream matchup.
So far, the Caps have been awfully exciting in their playoff games. We’ve seen the Rangers coach throw his water at rowdy Washington fans. We’ve seen a game seven overtime winning goal against the Rangers by former MVP Sergei Fedorov. We’ve seen the Caps bench their starting goalie, former MVP Jose Theodore, in favor of a goalie who spent this season playing in the AHL for the Hershey Bears. Of course, Simeon Varlamov is a recent first round pick who has backstopped the Russian national team, but only one reporter predicted that he’d be here this soon, and no one was buying it. We’ve even seen an investigation into death threats against Ovechkin by Pittsburgh internet nerds.
What the NHL hasn’t seen since the early 1980s is a playoff matchup between the two biggest stars of a generation. Not since Wayne Gretzky and Mike Bossy met in the Stanley Cup finals have the league’s two greatest stars dueled. Sure, Fedorov took part in some legendary games against Joe Sakic and the Colorado Avalanche, but those players became true legends through their struggles against each other. Gretzky and Lemieux never met in the playoffs. Gretzky vs. Bossy was the last time that two guys who had already shown they were above and beyond any other talents in the game met in the playoffs to see which could lead his team to glory. Or, as USA Today put it, “it’s hard to find a comparison.”
Because this is the most significant contest of marquee players the NHL has seen in a quarter century, we’re calling it, in advance, “The Matchup.” We hope it lives up to our expectations, but we really can’t see how it wouldn’t.
