“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.
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…
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