Crosby and Ovechkin in Vanguard of N.H.L.'s Uphill Battle

By LYNN ZINSER
The New York Times
Published: October 1, 2006

Sidney Crosby long ago grew used to the idea of lifting a team on his shoulders, and last season he added the job of boosting the entire N.H.L. as one of its new, bright stars.

But one night last week, in the woods outside West Point, N.Y., Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 19-year-old wunderkind, found himself with an unexpected heavy-lifting assignment: pushing a Hummer up a hill. The Penguins sprinkled various military exercises into their training camp at the United States Military Academy, including a night march through a swamp, rolling a Jeep with three bad wheels and teaming in groups of eight to move the Hummer.

“That,” Crosby said, shaking his head, “was not something I ever thought I’d experience. We realized we’re lucky to be playing hockey.”

The drills were designed as team-building exercises, an appropriate theme for the N.H.L. season, which opens this week. For all that Crosby accomplished in his rookie season — as did Alexander Ovechkin, the Capitals’ 21-year-old star — the buzz two dazzling players brought to a league rattled by the lockout season of 2004-5 is likely to wane if Pittsburgh and Washington remain two of the league’s worst teams.

Despite Crosby’s 102 points and Ovechkin’s amazing 52 goals and 106 points, the Penguins and Capitals combined for fewer victories (51) than Ottawa (52), the Eastern Conference champion.
The Pittsburgh and Washington franchises have had success; the Penguins won Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992, and the Capitals made the Cup finals in 1998. But both teams have struggled in recent years, with ownership and arena issues to complicate their on-ice failures.

Their misery landed them the high draft picks that netted Crosby and Ovechkin, who made their debuts last season and lived up to their considerable hype. Now the question is whether their teams can build contending squads around them. They can hardly become their league’s saviors, the N.H.L. equivalent of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, without at least the hope of winning a Stanley Cup.

Their cause is helped by the remaking of the N.H.L. in the postlockout era. A salary cap has brought back competitive balance, and new rules have opened up offenses.

“Sid and Alex have come into the league at the perfect time,” said Bill Clement, the lead analyst for NBC and Versus (formerly OLN). “If there hadn’t been a lockout, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Now the game showcases just what they do, which is skate, pass, shoot and score.”

The league is also showcasing its young stars in an invigorated marketing campaign, and it is hard to find a hockey preview not decorated with Crosby’s and Ovechkin’s elfin smiles. They have participated in those efforts happily, and neither has seemed to let it warp his perspective.

“If Alex and I can be part of a group of young guys who help the league, it’s great to be a part of that,” Crosby said. “But we’ve played only one year. You can’t forget that. We have a lot more to prove. Hopefully, it will continue to go well for both of us, but we have a lot of work to do.”

Crosby has Pittsburgh sold. His No. 87 jersey drapes shop windows, and he seems to trail only Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in local sports stardom. Crosby appeared on “The Tonight Show” before he scored his first N.H.L. point, shooting pucks into a clothes dryer at Jay Leno’s bidding.

The attention, though, has not seemed outsized to Crosby, who had the mantle of Canada’s hockey savior thrown on him at age 15 by none other than Wayne Gretzky.

“I couldn’t imagine getting that much exposure and attention at that age,” said forward Mark Recchi, one of the Penguins’ elder statesmen at 38. “He’s handled it wonderfully. He’s a great kid in the dressing room. He’s fun on and off the ice. He’s a very competitive kid, too.”

One of the few ideas that widens Crosby’s eyes is trying to lead Pittsburgh to a Stanley Cup. The reaction is natural for Crosby, a 19-year-old surrounded by a gaggle of teammates who appear to have started shaving last week. The Penguins are banking on a core of players like Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal and goalie Marc-André Fleury, of whom only Fleury can legally buy beer.

“I don’t think there are any shortcuts to building this,” said Ray Shero, who took over remaking the Penguins this year when Craig Patrick, the general manager for 16 years, was fired. “There are a lot of good assets here. It’s just a matter to me of getting the right personality, the right fit around some of these young players and building around them. Whether it’s the right identity for our team, we’ll find out.”

Perhaps the only player who can relate to Crosby’s situation is Ovechkin, whose bosses have taken the same approach to rebuilding the moribund Capitals.

Before the lockout, the Capitals were known for spending big on underachieving free agents, a philosophy they ditched when they traded Jaromir Jagr to the Rangers in 2004. The Capitals’ roster, while not quite as young as the Penguins’, is loaded with enough 20-somethings to make the 36-year-old goalie Olaf Kolzig feel as if he were baby-sitting.

Ovechkin, though, treats the team’s growing pains with a shrug. Asked if he would prefer to play with a top-flight center, a natural question for a talented left wing, Ovechkin said he was perfectly happy with Dainius Zubrus.

“Last year we played together, so I know him and he knows me and we understand each other O.K.,” Ovechkin said. “We are getting better.”

Ovechkin has drawn as many raves in Washington for his attitude as for his scoring. General Manager George McPhee said that he was among the hardest-working players and that he amiably agreed to any promotional appearance the team asked of him. Ovechkin attended the draft this year, and when McPhee offered to let him announce several of the Capitals’ picks, Ovechkin barely paused before marching to the microphone.

“He just does not have a bad day,” said McPhee, who added that watching his team practice and play has been much more fun since the youngsters took hold. “You see those young guys out there working their tails off. No one wants to lose, but we are enjoying the process of building this.”

McPhee and Shero say it is harder in hockey than in other sports to build around a single star player, who is on the ice for only 60 to 90 seconds at a time. Having a top-flight goalie is also crucial, a need both teams are working on. But McPhee and Shero also said that they considered themselves lucky to have the game’s brightest stars glittering in their lineups.

“We have not seen the limits of what Alex can do,” McPhee said. “He is one of the most creative players we have seen in a long time. He’s only going to improve, and we’re going to see how good he can be. If we make the club better, people will see a lot more of him.”