Capitals winger Alex Ovechkin just spent an entire playoff series dealing with one shutdown pair of defensemen – Boston’s Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg. Now in the Eastern Conference semifinals, he’s already getting reacquainted with Rangers defenseman Dan Girardi, who spent so much of last year’s playoff series covering Ovechkin’s side of the ice, and new defensive partner Ryan McDonagh. That’s life in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Ovechkin didn’t score in Saturday’s Game 1 loss to New York at Madison Square Garden. Caps coach Dale Hunter said he re-watched the game tape and after breaking it down play by play thought Ovechkin had his chances. He wants his star left wing to continue to hammer at the Rangers’ defensemen and hopefully wear them down. Especially with the 35-year-old Chara, that philosophy seemed to work against Boston. Ovechkin was held to one shot on goal on Saturday, had two more blocked and missed the net twice. He did have three hits and blocked a shot. Ovechkin said Sunday that he needs to get the puck with more speed in the neutral zone. If the Caps try to get it to him once everyone is inside the offensive zone, Girardi is all over him.
“If you see I have a couple of opportunities in first period. [Brooks Laich] gave me a nice pass before I take a penalty. I just make a bad decision. I just have to put it in my backside. It would be breakaway,” Ovechkin said. “Sometimes I just make that kind of decisions. After that you have to just look at it and think, ‘Jesus, why I do that?’ For me, I just have to maybe have more patience in neutral zone. Don’t come closer to blue line because if I’m gonna have the puck on the blue line and I don’t have the speed, I’m not that kind of danger guy. I just have to wait a little bit, maybe. If Brooksie or [Troy] Brouwer or somebody else gonna have the puck, maybe don’t take full speed right away.”
Ovechkin says he needs to learn from the Boston series when he was given only a chance or two every game. That’s when he needs to pounce because they won’t come his way very often in this kind of game with this caliber of defensive opponent. Patience might not be in his nature, but he needs to add it to his arsenal if he wants to help the cause here.
And, because you were wondering, Ovechkin did hear on Saturday was the Garden crowd mocking him with an “Ovi [stinks]” cheer. Nothing new there except it was a brilliant takeoff on a chant the crowd in Ottawa has started doing for star forward Daniel Alfredsson.
When the clock in a given period closes in on 11 minutes – Alfredsson wears No. 11 – Senators fans do a “3, 2, 1…Alfi, Alfi, Alfi” cheer that brings the house down. New Yorkers became familiar with that tribute when the Rangers played Ottawa in the first round. So the Garden took a sweet cheer for an icon and adopted it for its own nefarious purposes. Each time the clock wound down to eight minutes – Ovechkin wears No. 8, of course – they broke it out with a semi-profane twist.
“That’s good,” Ovechkin laughed when the exact reason for the cheer was explained to him. “I hope they’re going to scream, ‘Ovi’s good.’”
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