Same Old, Same Old

Reading the headlines the morning after, one would get the sense that Sidney Crosby outdueled Alex Ovechkin to lead his team to a win.

Anyone who watched that game, Caps fan or Pens fan, would have to respectfully disagree.

That's not to say that Ovie came out on top, either. He finished the night with a goal and a +2, Crosby had two assists and a +1. Both respectable stats for a game that saw each of them have a few chances and a few good shifts...but neither player dominated this game.

This game was in fact a workshop on how to shut down a superstar, a clinic on how to take away time and space. Neither one had much room to maneuver, although being the phenomenal talent that each of them is, they were able to create that room when it was needed the most. When your offense for the night consists of names like Taffe (who?) and Brashear and Pothier and Armstrong...this ain't a battle of the number one draft picks that the NHL seems to want so badly.

I'm not sure when, if ever, the NHL and the media will decide to stop making this into the Ovechkin vs. Crosby show. If anything the likelihood goes down with every meeting that games between these two teams will end up panning out that way. Sure, they have different styles, but you have to think that practicing with Sidney Crosby gives you a better idea of how to shut down Ovechkin - and vice versa. Learn how to take away time and space from someone and you're going to take the power away from any forward.

Yesterday in the gameday preview I mocked how much the commentators love to drool over Crosby, and the same can probably be said (to a lesser extent) for Ovechkin. It's understandable. Two amazing talents cannot be denied. But at what point do we start recognizing the real heroes of a game, even when they're not named Ovechkin or Crosby?

Last night the Penguins got an overtime winner from Gonchar, who had a horrible game otherwise but more than made up for it by...well, winning the game. Evgeni Malkin was everywhere and took more than a few bone-rattling checks from Ovechkin while still making plays and Taffe (WHO?) came out of nowhere to get the Pens on the board early.

For the Caps you had Brashear with an absolutely dominant first period that included a fight and a goal. Then there was Nicklas Backstrom, who continues to thrill and basically created two of the Caps three goals just by being his hard-working, talented self. And Boyd Gordon, returning from an injury that kept him out most of December, slipped right back into his old role of shutdown master, keeping Crosby virtually silent for a majority of the game.

Oddly enough not one of them, with the exception of Gonchar (OT goals are sexier than just being a talented hockey player, I guess) shows up in the headlines. Instead we get things like "Crosby Outduels Ovechkin" and "Crosby Leads Pens Over Ovechkin" and so on and so forth. It almost makes you think they've just got headlines already written regardless of how the game turns out.

Guess what, members of the mainstream media, AP headline writers, whoever you are - it's been three years now. Enough is enough.

All photos courtesy of AP