Alex Ovechkin has five Rocket Richard trophies as the NHL’s top scorer, three Hart trophies as league MVP, and one asteroid named after him, but he has zero Stanley Cups.
Does the 30-year-old Washington Capitals captain need to hold hockey’s Holy Grail to legitimize his career, which saw him with 480 goals in only 765 games entering Friday’s game against the Edmonton Oilers?
His coach Barry Trotz doesn’t think so. But Ovechkin, unavailable before Friday’s game, might feel that way.
“I don’t know if Ovie needs to win (to legitimize things) … he’s going to the hall of fame. He’s one of the greatest goal-scorers, but great players want to win a championship,” said Trotz. “I watched Raymond Bourque for a long time and if he had stayed in Boston all of his time, he probably wouldn’t have won a Stanley Cup and he would still be considered a great player. But when the Bruins made the trade with Colorado and he did win a Stanley Cup, that, in his mind, solidified his fantastic career.
“Everybody plays this game to hold that trophy, and it feels a little empty unless you hold that trophy at least once. Ovie has won every conceivable award that he can win — and the one that’s most important to him now is the Stanley Cup, a team award,” said Trotz.
“When I took over, he had just won a team award with the Russians at the world championship and he phoned me from Red Square. They were celebrating and he welcomed me to the Caps for a few minutes,” said Trotz, who had just parted ways with the Nashville Predators.
“But when I talked to him later at the NHL awards, I could tell that winning a team (NHL) trophy was really, really important to him, too. That’s his growth. Ovie has been an NHL star since he was 20. He’s one of the faces of the NHL.”
The Capitals franchise has had a lot of heartache in the playoffs, with only one trip to the Stanley Cup final in 1997, but they are a deep, explosive, character-driven team right now. They’ve got Ovechkin to score, the slick Nick Backstrom to set up players, Braden Holtby to make saves and John Carlson to lead the back end. They just have to get over the hump.
They fell to the New York Rangers in Game 7 of the second playoff round last spring, but easily could have won. They are a legitimate contender in a wide-open Eastern Conference.
“When I got to Washington, I knew they’d had lots of pain over the years,” said Trotz. “One thing I said was I’m not afraid of the pain. I asked (youngster Andre) Burakovsky what he thought about the (Pat) Fontaine goal (Islanders in the fourth overtime in the playoffs) and he had no clue who LaFontaine is. There’s only a couple of guys in this group who’ve had pain. Ovie, Brooks Laich, Backstrom.”
Trotz knows how it is in the city of Washington, though.
“It’s a political city and there’s a — what’s the word I’m looking for? — a suspicion that bad things are going to happen,” he said, with a laugh.
