PITTSBURGH — I've known the names of hockey players for as long as I've known my own. I was lucky enough to be born in Michigan in 1995, just before the Red Wings restored their old glory with back-to-back Stanley Cup wins, and the state's enthusiasm for that team implanted in me a love for the sport that's inextricable from my sense of self. There's video evidence to prove this—me sitting on the floor, lording over a rink symbolized by an oval-shaped train track, using blocks as players while I played PA announcer for an imaginary game at Joe Louis Arena. When I was a few years older, I remember making use of a big, bench-like windowsill at the front of our house, orchestrating games with action figures of guys like Brendan Shanahan, Sergei Fedorov, Paul Kariya, and Peter Forsberg. In the basement, I'd watch VHS recaps of the Wings' '98 Cup triumph, or a compilation of interviews and player profiles for stars like Chris Chelios and Pavel Bure.
What all those players had in common, from my perspective, was that they were established greats, and my knowledge had to catch up to their careers. But that all changed in 2005, when a pair of heavily hyped young prospects each made their debut in the aftermath of a season-cancelling lockout. Alex Ovechkin, first overall in 2004, and Sidney Crosby, picked No. 1 in 2005, were the future. They were the first NHLers I was conscious of knowing before they were actually in the NHL. And as their careers inch closer to the finish line, and I creep closer to my 30th birthday, I'm extra aware of the conduit that these two provide to the person I was two decades ago. I watched them excel then as I do now, but on Saturday, I saw them both play live for the very first time.
As soon as the 2024-25 NHL schedule dropped, I knew I wanted to be at this game. I took the train from New York to Pittsburgh the day before, and I walked over from the Warhol Museum to the 3 p.m. Capitals-Penguins showdown, feeling relieved that Pens head coach Mike Sullivan had finally declared the Canadian national hero Crosby active for the contest less than 48 hours after his boys beat Team USA in the 4 Nations championship game.
It's been 20 years since the Penguins brought Crosby to Pittsburgh. In that time, I've learned pre-draft projections fall short about as often as they hit. But Crosby and Ovechkin seemed to prove the pundits' infallibility, forming an instant Pens-Caps rivalry fueled by their spectacular on-ice achievements. Despite the similarities of their individual success, I still watched a narrative contrast take shape before my eyes. Ovechkin seemed rougher and more intense, blunt with his English and with his signature shot—the one-timer from the circle. He was more willing to hit guys, enjoyed significantly better injury luck, and piled up what should soon be an unprecedented number of goals.
Crosby was ... pretty, in more ways than one. He was a playmaking magician who regularly invented ways for his talented teammates to score, topping Ovi's best assists season seven different times. But his clean-shaven boy-band face made him the target, especially early on, of homophobic and sexist taunts that I never heard or saw opposing fans deploy for the Capitals' leader. All of his winning probably didn't help either. While Ovi had to wait until 2018 for his postseason breakthrough, Crosby's Penguins avenged a 2008 Cup final loss to the Red Wings in the ensuing campaign, then went back-to-back in 2016 and 2017. In between, his Team Canada took gold at the Olympics in 2010 and 2014, while Ovechkin's Russia squads failed to medal in three tries—most disastrously in Sochi in 2014. The story was simple: Crosby was the golden boy for city and country. Ovechkin did one specific thing better than anyone, and god help you if you got in the way of that.
On Saturday, I sat 10 rows up on the "Caps shoot twice" side, with maybe the best possible angle for shots coming from Ovechkin's favorite circle. For warmups, though, I was in close proximity to the Pens. When Pittsburgh ran their drills, while Ovechkin stretched without his helmet on the other side of the ice, I was reminded of that line from Catch Me If You Can: "You know why the Yankees always win? 'Cause the other teams can't stop staring at those damn pinstripes."
In the movie, Tom Hanks thinks this wisdom sounds stupid, and I did too. But seeing the Penguins zoom around in their mustard-yellow-on-pitch-black unis, I got it. Maybe it was the lingering Warhol effect, but the way those colors popped was mesmerizing. And when I saw Crosby and Evgeni Malkin having a conversation maybe 20 yards away from me, it felt like seeing the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry. Wow, yeah. That's it. It's real.
I carried around some lingering bad feelings about Crosby after the 2009 Cup, and the success that followed didn't endear him to me any more. But after college, I really warmed up. I got some good experience with nighttime sports blogging around 2017 and 2018, watching games and then quickly writing a few sentences about anything noteworthy that happened. In that environment, the guys who made the coolest and most exciting plays were my friend, and Crosby gave me more to rave about than anyone in hockey.
At 10:18 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2017, I put up a blog about his patience in waiting for a New York Ranger to touch the puck to negate a Penguins hand pass violation before creating a last-minute equalizer from a ridiculous angle.
At 10:24 p.m. on Mar. 29, 2018, I published him batting his own rebound, baseball style, for an OT winner.
At 12:20 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2018, I thrilled at the anti-Oiler stickwork that enabled him to backhand a winner past Cam Talbot's glove.
The three headlines tell the tale: "Sidney Crosby Is A Genius," "What The Hell, Sid!," and "How Does Sidney Crosby Keep Doing This?" I was a zealous convert to his greatness.
It would be redundant to try to choose a favorite Ovechkin play. He's scored over 900 goals across the regular season and playoffs, but there's only one—the platonic ideal—that plays on a loop in my head whenever I think his name. The Caps are probably on the power play, Ovi's staked out a claim in the circle to the goalie's right, and he unloads all of his energy into a teammate's pass for a one-timed laser to the back of the net.
A few years ago, I was worried enough about Ovechkin's aging body that I hesitated to join the growing assumption that he'd break Wayne Gretzky's all-time goals record. But despite a lengthy injury absence around the holidays this season, his pace so far this year is better than it's ever been: a Benjamin Button-esque 29 goals in 41 games on the cusp of his 40s, augmented by a bombastic hat trick on Sunday that put him within 13 of The Great One.
That offense has sparked the biggest overall surprise of the NHL season—that the Capitals, who were seemingly running on fumes at the end of last year, have stubbornly refused to give up and instead produced far and away the best record in the Eastern Conference. Logan Thompson has patched up their hole in net, Pierre-Luc Dubois is playing the way the Kings wished he would last year, draft picks like Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael are finding their footing, and John Carlson is steady as ever on defense. What once could have been an empty season made important only by Ovechkin's goals has given way to hopes of a second Stanley Cup to go with that record.
The Penguins, meanwhile, have spent the last several years sliding down the mountain, and they're getting closer and closer to the bottom. Besting only Buffalo at the very bottom of the conference, the NHL's oldest roster has failed to recruit sufficient reinforcements and weathered dips from all three of their legends. Evgeni Malkin, at less than 100 percent, has only scored 10 goals. Erik Karlsson is bringing a diminished attack from the blue line. And Crosby, also dealing with some health problems, isn't drinking from that same fountain of youth as Ovechkin. After a vintage 42-goal season last year, he only has 18 through 57 games, though his 42 assists still show how he can create good results with a less-than-stellar supporting cast. For the best example of his surviving talent, however, I have to go the 4 Nations tournament and highlight the beautiful assuredness of this backhand no-look pass to Nathan MacKinnon.
Watching the once-great 2024-25 Penguins has been embarrassing, in a way that perhaps only Nashville, with its post-spending spree flop, can rival. When a team is this top-heavy, and the top isn't all that powerful anymore, the blowouts become a fact of life: 6-0 against the Rangers to open the season, 7-1 to Dallas in November, 5-0 to the Senators in January. These are nights when the Penguins come off like a cosplay gimmick. They're dressed like the franchise that made the playoffs in 16 straight years. Those names sound like the team that set the standard for the rest of the NHL. But the substance is mostly drained out of them. All that's left are those nights that any sinking team gets blessed with on occasion, when it suddenly seems like they can do no wrong. Last month's 5-1 win in Los Angeles, where Sid and Geno both scored, was an example of such a treat, but then came the next three games: losses by a combined score of 11-3.
The idea that the 4 Nations break could be a reset was entirely wishful thinking. Back on home ice, the Penguins had to face reality. The game took a while to find its final shape, but Saturday's ugly loss would be more of the same.
In person, Ovi on the ice is so unmistakably Ovi. While Crosby could blend in with his teammates at times, and I might have once or twice mistaken No. 67 Rickard Rakell for No. 87, Ovechkin has mass. He just flat-out knocked a guy over after the faceoff following the Pens' first goal, for one. But the way he plays is just fundamentally different from anyone else. Watching him is like watching a Venus fly trap. His longevity comes in part from his understanding of how to conserve energy when he's on the ice, only playing defense when it's absolutely necessary. But you, the viewer, recognize at all times the pent-up danger he carries in his frame. When the circumstances are just right, he can and will be deadly.
Crosby was not quite so legible, but I relished every chance to lock in on him for a shift. I had the perfect vantage point, from the Penguins' own zone, to see the way his eyes observed how this play developed, his instincts eventually leading him into just the right spot to kickstart a Pittsburgh opportunity on the other end. If I could manage to see a hockey game through the eyes of Sidney Crosby, I thought, how much smarter could I become?
I was preoccupied with a thought like that about six minutes into the second period, with Washington holding a 2-1 lead. I'd seen Sid talking with 25-year-old Caps defenseman Martin Fehérváry, who'd just scored a goal, in the faceoff circle closest to me. Dang, what would it be like if Sidney Crosby talked to you like a peer?, I wondered. And then my mind had to process several pieces of information practically all at once. A black-and-yellow figure took the puck at the center of the blue line off a very quick Penguins regroup. The defense was completely unprepared. The figure was Sidney Crosby rapidly approaching the goalie. He tried a backhand shot. Logan Thompson slowed the puck down with his pads. It still trickled through and into the net. I let out a triumphant scream as I rose to my feet. It was a bit of a softie for Thompson to allow, but I still got what I wished for.
In the words of the late Penguins announcer Mike Lange, I was smilin' like the butcher's dog after this goal, and so was the rest of the crowd, which gave a rousing ovation for Crosby's first Pens goal since the first of the month. But what happened next was more reminiscent of the butcher's pig. The Capitals scored, and scored, and scored. The Penguins made a goalie change. Then the Capitals scored again, and the PA announcer cued up "I Wanna Be Sedated." It was an all-too-familiar defensive collapse for Pittsburgh, who no longer has anywhere near the firepower necessary to make up for these breakdowns.
Washington would go on to win 8-3 to dish out yet another humiliating defeat for the Pens. But the third period was not without its own suspense. The Penguins took six minutes of penalties in the span of 30 seconds, and that meant Ovechkin was salivating. Everyone in the building knew what Washington wanted to create with that advantage—set-up after set-up for their record-chasing man in his favorite spot—and that's exactly what happened. Ovi got chances galore on the 5-on-3, staying on the ice for a 4:43 shift as the Caps let him take the shots that the defense was forced to give him. They got blocked time and again, to the joy of the Pittsburgh crowd, but this one stopped my heart for a moment because it was so damn close.
Lest you think Ovechkin is just a one-trick stallion, a later power-play goal for Washington was a credit to his work, even if he didn't get an assist. Showing that he still knows how to turn on the hustle when it can sway possession, Ovi stopped this puck from leaving the zone and set in motion Dylan Strome's goal from the opposite circle. (By the way, I saw Ovechkin fighting in front of the crease in the very last minutes, too.)
All the respect in the world for the Penguins fans who cheered the next goal, the one that made it 7-3, as if it mattered. Maybe it kind of did.
The pregame on Saturday included a really nice tribute to Lange, the local broadcaster who called all five Penguins Stanley Cup seasons and died at age 76 last week. I can't claim any personal connection with him. But when Crosby, Malkin, and Kris Letang skated over to his family in a corner of the rink, the whole arena majestically lit by phone flashlights, I got a little choked up. I had at least some sense of how much of each of their life's work had been put in words by Lange, and how often the fans in the building heard those words. Perhaps they loved hockey, and Pittsburgh, just a little bit more every time they did.
Hockey is a sport that discourages individuality, because one player alone cannot even hope to lift a team into greatness. Most players seem terrified to imply that they believe they're special. But it's all those individuals on and around the ice that make hockey special by imprinting something exceptional in our memories: a star who gets to be an action figure, an announcer coining a catchphrase, a Zamboni driver twirling an octopus that's been thrown on the ice. Over a long enough time, that influence can be magical, allowing us to time-travel between selves, and maybe understand a little more about how we grew older.
In their 40 NHL seasons between them, Crosby and Ovechkin have had an appreciable impact on my identity and how I look at the world—two out of probably billions of inputs, sure, but two of the most consistently spectacular. Twenty years ago, before I knew almost anything about myself besides the fact that I liked hockey, they were asserting their brilliance. Last weekend, they were the sole reason I wanted to make a 20-hour round-trip to Pittsburgh. Twenty years from now, god willing, I'll remember who I was when I got to witness them at work.
