Home / News / Bruce Boudreau compares Alex Ovechkin to The Incredible Hulk: ‘The more you hit him, the stronger the angrier he gets’

Bruce Boudreau compares Alex Ovechkin to The Incredible Hulk: ‘The more you hit him, the stronger the angrier he gets’

By Ian Oland

 1 Comment

January 17, 2022 6:51 pm

Bruce Boudreau led Alex Ovechkin to some of his greatest seasons as a pro. Ovechkin scored a career-high 65 goals during Boudreau’s first year behind the Capitals bench in 2007-08. Ovi followed that up with 56- and 50-goal campaigns in Bruce’s next two seasons.

Since Bruce left Washington, Ovechkin continues to torment the NHL, but especially Boudreau-led teams. Coming into Sunday’s game against the Vancouver Canucks, Ovechkin had notched 20 points (10g, 10a) in 12 games against Boudreau’s Anaheim Ducks and Minnesota Wild over nine seasons.

Boudreau was asked how to stop his former pupil pregame.

“[You] ask him not to come on the ice would be the first thing,” Boudreau said joking. “You have to get in his face. It’s not a question of hitting him because the more you hit him — he’s like The Hulk — he gets stronger the angrier he gets. You sort of want to let him sleep.

“At the same time, you cannot give him the time and space to get the shot away,” Boudreau added. “There’s a lot of different things with Alex. He can beat you so many different ways. It seems like anybody who tries to stop him one way, he finds another way. So be really cognizant of when he’s on the ice and hopefully he doesn’t get to do what he likes to do.”

During the actual game, Ovechkin scored on a Capitals’ power play registering his 756th goal, but the Canucks held Ovechkin mostly in check at 5v5, winning the game 4-2.

“It’s almost totally impossible to totally shut down Ovi,” Boudreau said postgame. “He had some great looks at times but I thought [Tyler Myers and Oliver Ekman-Larsson] played big. Against the Capitals, you have to play big because they’re a heavy team and they’re a hard-to-handle team. I thought Tyler and Oliver did a really good job playing against that line all the time.”

During warmups, Ovechkin and Boudreau shared a moment out on the Capital One Arena ice. Ovechkin looked at Boudreau on the bench and patted his belly as if he was hungry. It’s the same motion Ovechkin made after goals late in 2012 after Tarik El-Bashir and Rick Maese of The Washington Post wrote a column entitled “Alex Ovechkin: What’s wrong with the Washington Capitals superstar?” Ovechkin responded with nine goals in nine games.

“I wouldn’t look at him and he was looking right at me and I said, “No more!” because he has a tendency, if he played against me every day, he’d probably have 110 goals a year,” Boudreau said of the moment. “He gets up for it. I mean, seriously, if it wasn’t for (Thatcher) Demko, Ovi had two great looks on 3-on-1’s. He had a couple great looks in the third period. He marvels me at his age to do this continually game in and game out. Again, on a back-to-back for him, as well.”

Boudreau was also asked if he thought Ovechkin would eventually break Wayne Gretzky’s goals record of 894. After hitting paydirt on Sunday, Ovechkin trails The Great One by only 138 goals with four full seasons left on his five-year contract extension he signed over the summer.

“He’s going to play until he does break it,” Boudreau said. “I can tell you that much. So the answer would be yes. What puts him in a different category, or in a category with the Orrs and the Howes and the Gretzkys and the greatest of the game is his will to want to do it. There’s lots of ways that he can be stopped on an individual night, but his will to get it done and be the best is as good as anybody I’ve ever been around. That’s what tells me he’s going to break all these records.”

Headline photo illustration by Ashley Oland

, ,