Alex Ovechkin: 2017-18 season review

Any discussion of Alex Ovechkin‘s season that doesn’t begin and end with “Alex Ovechkin is the Stanley Cup Champion” is broken and wrong.

By The Numbers

Visualization by HockeyViz

About this visualization: This series of charts made by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows various metrics for the player over the course of the season. A short description of each chart:

Peter’s Take

Alex Ovechkin is the Stanley Cup Champion.

A thousand hot takes from a hundred blowhards melt away when you note that Ovi, years past his statistical prime, led his team in compelling fashion to a championship that idiots everywhere said he and they could never win.

His team lost a lot last summer, but even then Ovechkin bristled at the idea that the team would fall off. “We’re not gonna be suck this year,” Ovechkin told Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post. Then, to prove it, Ovi scored a hat trick in his first game. Then, to shove it down our throats, Ovi scored a hat trick plus one in his second game. Starts don’t get hotter than that. At least they haven’t in the last hundred years.

Ovi added 42 more goals throughout the campaign to put him just on the edge of 50, a milestone many thought he’d never near again …which is what they said seven years ago… before he hit it three more times, including after he hit the advanced age of thirty.

None of this is an accident; Ovechkin still generates offense at an elite rate. He’s never been outside the top-five in individual shot attempts per hour.

That continued into the postseason. Ovechkin was the only player to attempt 200 shots in the playoffs, leading the next player, teammate John Carlson, by more than 50. Ovechkin led the league in expected goals, 9.8, by a handy margin over Winnipeg’s Mark Scheifele, and fell second in cumulative game score by 0.3 to Evgeny Kuznetsov, with whom Ovechkin shared a ton of ice time. When it came time to award the Conn Smythe for the playoff MVP, Ovechkin was the deserving, consensus pick.

And that’s just what happened on the ice. Not enough is made of how Ovechkin has become the off-ice leader that this team needed. Beyond the “not gonna be suck” declarations and other guarantees, we’ve been told that Ovechkin made the appeal to change the team’s defense late in the season. I doubt we’ll ever get the full story about how those discussions went, but that improved blue line after mid-February was critical to playoff success.

So here we are, with silver-haired Alex Ovechkin about to turn 33 with three years remaining on his contract. (That contract, which once seemed foolish, should now be considered the best the team ever signed.) With Ovechkin continuing to defy an expected decline in his offense, we’ll probably in store for some more legendary performances from the best hockey player on the planet.

Oh, by the way, Alex Ovechkin is the Stanley Cup Champion.

Ovi on RMNB

We had more than 300 stories about Ovi this season. I’m gonna have to do some pruning.

• Ovi scored a hat trick in the first game. Ovi scored a hat trick plus one in the second game. Ovi leads everybody in hat tricks. Nobody has scored consecutive hat tricks in a century except Ovi. Ovi leads the NHL in goals since 1999, but Ovi didn’t play until 2005. Ovi scored nine goals in five games, jeez oh pete. He personally outscored 23 percent of the teams in the league at one point. He scored another hatty in November. He’s the 43rd player in history with 500 goals and 500 assists and the third ever to score 30 goals in all of his first 13 seasons. He got damn close to another hat trick in the final game of the season.
• Penalty to “whoever tripped Ovechkin.”
• With this OTGWG, Ovi became the all-time leader in OTGWGs. Guess where the shot came form.

• At the end of October, Ovechkin gave his jacket and hat to a homeless man in Edmonton. Nastya expanded on the story.
• On November 18, Ovechkin took a puck to the face and bled everywhere. This bullet is just a setup for the next bullet.
• Backstrom on Ovi’s durability: well, um, you know. But Ovechkin’s durability doesn’t get enough credit outside of the name of this website.
• In November, Ovi tied (and later passed) Mike Bossy for 21st in all-time goals with this crackerjack one-timer. He now sits 19th, one behind Dino.
• Let’s talk about a very special person named Alex Luey. Luey’s had some challenges, but he’s got Ovi on his team. Ovi promised Luey a goal when the young man came a game in Toronto. Instead, Ovi scored three.

• Ovi + aminals. (Also here)
• On February 18, Ovi went without a shot attempt for the first time since the Carter administration.
• In his defense, “shot” and “shit” sound a lot alike.
• Ovi vs Torts!

• On what they discussed: “We just talk about how’s everything, what’s going on? He’s a nice guy.”
• Outdoor goal!

• On his outdoor-game undefeated streak: “I hope outdoor games going to be in the playoffs.” Meh, he did okay indoors too.
• At All-Star Weekend, Ovi won the Hardest Shot Contest.
• On playing in Vegas, regular-season edition: “Are we in a hockey game or is this like a pool party out there?”
• Don’t love Ovi yet? Here’s him owning Pierre.
• On March 12, Ovechkin scored his 600th goal. It was a beautiful, ugly goal.

• Ovi celebrated — as we all would — with Fortnite. Shirtlessly.

• In early November, ahead of the Russian election, Ovechkin published some pro-Putin propaganda called Putin Team and boosted it a few times, though we later learned that Ovi did not himself create the campaign.
• Ovi won the Rocket Richard for the seventh time.
• Ovi hit 1000 games played, highest in Caps history, and made a fitting donation to DC students.
• Is this a playoff guarantee? Or is this a playoff guarantee? I don’t care and it doesn’t matter when he scores two goals in a single period to eliminate the Blue Jackets or scores this pretty slo-mo game-winner to give the Caps a series lead over the Pens.

• Friends, the most wonderfully dumb ritual in Caps loffs history: Hot Lap I. Hot Lap II. Hot Lap III. Hot Lap IV.
• Just a minute into game seven against the Bolts, Ovi and the top line had a perfect sequence: Wilson hit to force a turnover, Kuzy zone entry and pass, Ovi score. I love this play.

• Ovi touched the Prince of Wales. He doesn’t care about our silly superstitions. He’s out here breaking myths.

• Just wanna point out that Ovi scored a goal in the Cup final. Here it is, from several nautical miles south of the Ovi Spot.

• Here’s Ovi’s face while Braden was making The Save.

• Finally, he called his shot.

• Wait, nevermind, here’s the real final thing: the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

• Wait, crap, that’s not it. Here’s the real final one, the greatest moment in the history of our favorite hockey club and favorite hockey player. This is real life.

Your Turn

Is Alex Ovechkin a Stanley Cup Champion? Yes or no? What do we expect from his final three years as a Cap? And, most, importantly, is Alex Ovechkin the Stanley Cup Champion?

Read more: Japers’ Rink

Headline photo: Cara Bahniuk