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Ovi and Sid: An enduring rivalry's enduring relevance

As they prepare for yet another important showdown, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are still the leading men on teams they have carried for two decades.

By Barry Svrluga | 2024-04-04

Penguins center Sidney Crosby and Capitals left wing Alex Ovechkin, shown in 2023, have been battling for two decades. (Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports)

Growing up in Quebec, Hendrix Lapierre had jerseys for both of his favorite NHL players: a No. 8 Washington Capitals sweater of Alex Ovechkin and a No. 87 Pittsburgh Penguins version for Sidney Crosby. He remembers being glued to the television that spring night when Ovechkin hung a hat trick on the Penguins in the playoffs and Crosby answered with three goals of his own.

"I can't really remember what year that was," Lapierre said Wednesday.

That would be, he was told, 2009.

"Oh," the Capitals forward said. "So I was 7."

Thursday night, Ovechkin and Crosby will lace up their skates and face each other for the 94th time in their careers, regular season and playoffs included. The first of those would have come on Nov. 22, 2005. How long ago was that?

"I had hair," said Spencer Carbery, the smooth-domed Caps coach who, for the record, would have been a senior forward on the St. Norbert College hockey team at the time.

That Ovechkin and Crosby's matchup at Capital One Arena means plenty in the Eastern Conference playoff race says something about the enduring rivalry's enduring relevance. All these years later, the league's central characters still can't shake each other. Sure, hockey belongs to Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Auston Matthews now. But those careers were built on the backs of Ovechkin and Crosby and all those head-to-head tangles that drew eyes nearly two decades ago and are still of the utmost importance now.

"It's tough to put into words what they've been able to do across multiple eras, generations, and they just constantly show up and are the best players in the league for as long as I can remember," Capitals forward Tom Wilson said. "The consistency for superstars like that to be able to do what they do and just fill the net every year makes even a good NHL player look at them and say, 'Wow, these guys are next-level.'"

Next-level, in perpetuity. Ovechkin, who is 38, and Crosby, who is 36, are marking milestones that account for their longevity while still producing on a nightly basis. Last month, Ovechkin became the first player in NHL history to open his career with 19 20-goal seasons; he's just the sixth player to reach the 20-goal mark that many times in a career. He did that at a time when, over the past 28 games, he put behind an unprecedentedly slow start and is playing at a 53-goals-in-a-season pace.

Crosby, meanwhile, has 84 points in the Penguins' 75 games -- guaranteeing he'll average at least a point per game for a 19th season. The only other player to do that: Wayne Gretzky. This comes at a time when Crosby is essentially trying to will the aging Penguins back into the playoffs, racking up points in 10 of his past 11 games, a seven-goal, 13-assist run that means one thing: When Carbery and the Caps scout the opponent that sits just three points behind them in the race for one of the Eastern Conference's final playoff spots, they have to account for No. 87.

"And they've got to account for 8," Carbery countered.

Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, shown in 2007, entered the NHL with the start of the 2005-2006 season. (Tony Gutierrez/AP)

Which is true, now and forever. Think about what went into building this rivalry, careers that are distinct and styles that contrast but legacies that are in some ways inextricably linked. Ovechkin was the first pick in the 2004 draft, but the following season was lost to a labor dispute. Crosby was the first pick in 2005, so they entered as the league as rookies together. That year, Ovechkin, a left wing, had the first of his nine 50-goal seasons (so far). Crosby, a center, racked up 100 points for the first of six times (so far). Ovechkin beat out Crosby as the league's rookie of the year. Crosby countered by winning the Hart Trophy as the MVP in 2006-07. Ovechkin's first Hart came immediately after.

These guys, trading blows.

"If you ask players my age in the league and even a little older who their guys were growing up, it was probably those two," said Lapierre, who turned 22 in February. "Those guys, they ran the league for so many years. They were the best every year, and expectations were so high, the standard was so high, and they set it every year. And every year, they were incredible."

Incredible to watch but incredibly familiar to each other, too, not to mention completely inseparable from the teams for which they play. It's not just that Ovechkin and Crosby have faced each other this many times -- Thursday will be 69 times in the regular season, and they faced each in 25 playoff games spread over four postseasons. It's that Ovechkin's Capitals and Crosby's Penguins have faced each other all those times. The duo has defined the sport across eras nationally. But each has strengthened the sport in his own town and become a civic icon because there was never even a whiff of them wandering elsewhere.

So how unique is the rivalry? According to research provided by the NHL, plenty of players who spent their entire careers with one franchise faced an opponent who also played for only one organization more than 94 times. Shoot, Alex Delvecchio of the Detroit Red Wings and George Armstrong of the Toronto Maple Leafs squared off 257 times between 1950 and 1971, and neither ever played for another team.

But the list of such matchups is telling because it includes almost exclusively players from the NHL's Original Six, franchises from an era when teams faced each other as many as 14 times a season. The only modern-day exceptions who have Ovechkin and Crosby beat: San Jose's Marc-Edouard Vlasic, who has faced Anze Kopitar of the Los Angeles Kings 100 times and tangled with Kopitar's former L.A. teammate Dustin Brown 98 times.

What a run. And it's still going. This is the NHL's version of Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird, if Magic and Bird ever played in the same division. For all the era-defining aura of that rivalry -- like Crosby and Ovechkin, they entered the league in the same year, but they added a layer of intrigue because they played in the NCAA title game against each other -- Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers played just twice per season. They faced each other in three NBA Finals in four years, from 1984 to 1987 -- and never in the postseason again.

"I'm not sure it has the same feel that O and Sid have of when they came into the league and these teams and how much history we have -- battles every year being in the same division but then also into the playoffs," Carbery said. "It's been impressive to watch from afar. And now being involved in it, you can feel there's a little bit more added to each game that the Pens and Caps suit up."

There will be more added Thursday night -- again. Maybe they won't each hang a hat trick on the other as they did in those 2009 playoffs. But who's to say? That the two have combined for five Hart Trophies, four Stanley Cups, 1,437 goals, 1,693 assists and just about as many highlights shows their statistical legacy in a league to which they each laid waste. That it's 2024 and they're still the leading men on teams they have carried for two decades may be more impressive.


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