Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, longtime foes and recent friends, are back in the news as a duo again. The Athletic’s Rob Rossi released a piece on Thursday outlining both players’ journeys in the NHL and how each inspired the other to be better.
The two all-time greats entered the league at the same time — the 2005-06 season — and their rivalry created excitement across the league. That’s not something that The Great Eight is going to let anyone forget.
“We saved the NHL,” Ovechkin told Rossi.
Ovechkin’s comment is informed by the fact that he and Crosby began their careers after one of the NHL’s lowest and most painful times in its existence. With the NHLPA and the NHL unable to come to terms on a new CBA, the league closed up shop and locked out the players during the 2004-05 season due to their desire to introduce a salary cap and qualms about revenue sharing. Due to this, Ovechkin, drafted first overall in 2004, had what could have been his rookie season pushed one year back and started at the same time as Crosby, drafted first overall in 2005.
That would be just the first of many examples of fate connecting the two superstars. And, superstars they were from the drop of the first puck that season. Both young players recorded over 100 points in their rookie campaigns but Ovechkin would ultimately take home the Calder Memorial Trophy after posting his first career 50-goal season.
“We banked a lot on them,” current Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said. “We’d lost a season. Our fans just wanted hockey back. But we had to make these new rules to open up the game, make it more attractive to our fans, casual fans, advertisers, everybody.
“That’s where Sid and Alex came in. It wasn’t explicitly said, ‘Hey, you guys go save the league.’ But, well, that was the hope. And it became obvious really fast they could.”
Shanahan, who was still an active player scoring 40 goals for the Detroit Red Wings back in 2005-06, knows firsthand what a boon the Ovechkin and Crosby rivalry has been for the business of the NHL. After retiring from the game in 2009, he immediately transitioned to a role in the league office as the NHL’s vice president of hockey and business development.
He later succeeded Colin Campbell as the NHL’s Senior Vice President in 2011 before moving to the Maple Leafs in 2014.
“They overdelivered on what was expected,” Shanahan said. “It’s almost like they’re taken for granted.”
After Ovechkin and Crosby both pulled their two teams through rough seasons early on in their careers, both the Capitals and Penguins turned into perennial playoff powerhouses. That led to the two sides meeting in the postseason four times from 2009-2018 with the winner of each series going on to win the Stanley Cup.
Both Ovechkin and Crosby are their respective franchise’s all-time leaders in playoff scoring. No moment more personifies their rivalry than when one playoff game in 2009 featured a combined six of those franchise-leading points.
The now famous Dueling Hat Tricks Game saw both players score three goals in Game Two of that year’s second-round series. While Ovechkin’s Capitals ended up winning that battle 4-3, they lost the series in seven games.
Those heated playoff wars and unkind encounters on the ice led to speculation of actual dislike between the two future Hall of Famers. Now in their late 30s, the two have combatted that talk and formed somewhat of a friendship.
They first started being more openly pals with one another at the 2017 All-Star Game. They hung out so much at that event that they spawned a ship name of “Crosvechkin”. In more recent years they sat down for a joint interview in which Crosby said it would be awesome if Ovechkin topped Wayne Gretzky as the league’s all-time goal scorer.
The two took the next step in their bromance last year at the 2023 All-Star Game. After it was announced that they’d be sharing the ice for a Breakaway Challenge attempt, Ovechkin was asked about their relationship.
“He still enjoy play hockey, I’m still enjoying playing hockey,” Ovechkin said. “I’m pretty sure when me and him is going to be retired, we’re going to have a couple of beers together and talk about the whole thing that happened in the past 15, 16 years.
“We’re good friends,” Ovechkin continued. “We can call to each other. If he has some milestones coming up and he reach it – I call him, shoot him a text. First couple years we kind of was different relationship. We was young. But, now we’ve matured.”
The new, dynamic duo then went on to let Ovechkin’s son, Sergei, steal the show in the All-Star Skills Competition.
While they may be at the end of their careers and newer, younger faces like Connor McDavid and now Connor Bedard have stolen some of their spotlight, the two buddies are determined to stay near the top for as long as they can. Spots they have never fallen from over the past 19 seasons.
“Hopefully we’re still a little bit away from being pushed out of the way,” Crosby said.
Both players currently lead their teams in scoring this season. Crosby is even above a point-per-game (22) 18 games into the Penguins’ schedule.
“We saved the league. Now they come in, and I guess we’re old news,” Ovechkin added. “But we saved it. It’s up to those guys to come in and prove me wrong that we’re not the best.”
