Sielski: Ovechkin, Giroux have different expectations
Every spring is supposed to be the spring for Alexander Ovechkin. It never is. For the last nine years, nobody in the NHL has piled up individual achievements and collective letdowns like Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. He's led the league in goals six times, been named its most valuable player three times, and led the Capital
Every spring is supposed to be the spring for Alexander Ovechkin. It never is.
For the last nine years, nobody in the NHL has piled up individual achievements and collective letdowns like Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. He's led the league in goals six times, been named its most valuable player three times, and led the Capitals to six division titles and eight playoff appearances. Not once have they advanced past the tournament's second round. In the race for the Stanley Cup, the Capitals are always the hare, never the tortoise. They're always fast and flashy and confident until they fall in for the handshake line and start packing for summer. The former Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser called them "choking dogs," and the insult is in its way a measure of expectations that Ovechkin and his team have never been able to meet, and that many of their counterparts around the NHL - say, Claude Giroux and the Flyers - don't have to face.
That same dynamic is at work as the teams prepare for this first-round series, which begins Thursday night at the Verizon Center. Around here, we don't often think of the Flyers' being pressure-free entering a postseason series. They haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1975, and they haven't won a playoff series since former coach Peter Laviolette tagged Giroux with that "best player in the world" label after the Flyers knocked off Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2012. But the Flyers - under a first-year head coach in Dave Hakstol and in the midst of a rebuilding phase - weren't supposed to be even the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference this year, and the Capitals were right back where they often have been after 82 games: atop the NHL standings with 120 points, the No. 1 seed in the East, a Cup favorite.
So here is a series with one superstar, Giroux, who has nothing to lose, and another, Ovechkin, who has nothing of substance to gain. If the Capitals ease past the Flyers as they're supposed to, in four or five games, big deal. It's just the first round. But if the Flyers somehow draw out the series, steal an early game in Washington, perhaps, then the Capitals' heavy history could make everything a little more interesting.
The Flyers will need Giroux at his best to pull off that trick. And though he is not the scorer that Ovechkin is, even though Laviolette's exaggerated praise may have been little more than a motivational tactic to help a young captain recognize how great he could be, it's worth noting that Giroux has been on average a more productive postseason player than Ovechkin has. In his 57 career postseason games, Giroux has 61 points (1.07 a game). In 72 playoff games, Ovechkin has 70 points (0.97).
That statistic doesn't mean Giroux is better or more skilled than Ovechkin. But it does indicate how the nature of the NHL postseason can change how a particular player or players might perform.
"Guys can elevate," Hakstol said Wednesday after the Flyers had finished practice. "There's a different level you get to that you can't hold throughout the whole regular-season schedule. You wouldn't survive. I think that's one of the things that makes the NHL playoffs so special."
"You try to play a little harder, a little better," Giroux said. "Eighty-two games is a lot of games, and when it comes to the playoffs, you really just give everything you have every game. It's not really hard to get the motivation to go out there and play hard."
There is playing hard, however, and there is playing the kind of hockey fit for a long playoff run, and it doesn't seem coincidental that, in most of their recent postseason flameouts, Ovechkin and the Capitals weren't inclined to keep the defensive zone as tidy as most teams did. From 2007-08 through 2013-14, they never finished better than 16th in the NHL in regular-season goals allowed, and it was common to see Ovechkin - their captain, purportedly their tone-setter - cruising through center ice in lackluster pursuit of an opponent's counter-rush, holding his stick with just one hand, as if backchecking were a task beneath him. No one can doubt that in this regard, Giroux has been the more complete player, comparable to the Red Wings' Pavel Datsyuk or the Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews than Ovechkin.
"Everyone's playing 200 feet in the playoffs," Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds said. "You can't really switch it on defensively. Defense is all about working hard, being willing to sacrifice your body, and smarts, trying to be in the right position. You play like that the whole year, and it's second nature to you. The guys who are only playing 100 feet of the ice, I don't think playoff time's going to come around and all of a sudden they're going to be the best defensive players in the league."
Under head coach Barry Trotz, the Capitals have become a sounder defensive team over the last two seasons, ranking sixth in goals-against last season and second this season. So maybe, finally, Ovechkin has completely accepted what he must do, how he must play, to have a long and satisfying spring. Starting Thursday night at the Verizon Center, another superstar without the same burden to bear will be happy to put him to the test.
@MikeSielski
