Evgeni Malkin, unlike Alexander Ovechkin, started the season very effectively

The two main veterans of Russian hockey started the current NHL championship differently. Evgeni Malkin, as if he has shed ten years, is gaining points for Pittsburgh and staying close to the top of the scoring race. And Alexander Ovechkin, who is expected to make a breakthrough and end the pursuit of the league’s best sniper of all time, Wayne Gretzky, failed to hit the goal for the third consecutive match.

The next day of the NHL regular season, which started a week ago, featured only two matches. But both of them feature outstanding forwards, with whom domestic hockey has been largely associated for the past decade and a half. The Pittsburgh Penguins of Evgeni Malkin and the Washington Capitals of Alexander Ovechkin played. The results of away meetings for teams that missed the playoffs in the previous championship and now want to improve were approximately the same. “Pittsburgh” desperately butted heads with the “Detroit Red Wings”, but still lost – 3:6. The Ottawa Senators dealt with Washington easily – 6:1. But if we talk specifically about 37-year-old Malkin and 38-year-old Ovechkin, then their personal results are quite noticeably different.

All media resources covering hockey, despite Pittsburgh’s defeat, paid enormous attention to Evgeni Malkin after the meeting. The reasons were compelling. The goal with which he opened the scoring turned out to be the center forward’s 474th in the NHL regular championships. And according to this indicator, he came out in third place among Russians, ahead of Alexander Mogilny. Ahead, but very close, is Sergei Fedorov, now coaching CSKA, with 483 goals, and also, naturally out of reach, Alexander Ovechkin with 822.

The second reason is actually even more obvious and relevant than the purely formal one. There is no escape from the feeling that before the start of this season, Evgeni Malkin drank the elixir of youth. It is “Pittsburgh” that still looks unstable, but the same cannot be said about its Russian striker. He was good in each of the club’s four matches. The goal against Detroit was Malkin’s third in the championship, and in total he already has seven points, and as of Thursday he shared second place in the scoring list with Leon Draisaitl, a point behind Detroit’s Alex DeBrincat. Evgeniy Malkin has never accelerated so effectively, even 12 years ago, when he literally reigned in the league, eventually winning prizes for its best scorer and simply the strongest hockey player.

In this case, not only numbers are important, but also pictures. Malkin’s point total is not a result of coincidence. He is constantly on the move, constantly in the game. He not only watches for comfortable moments to show his class and experience in all its glory, he creates them – both with the finest passes and by dropping deep back into his zone to retrieve the puck. Indeed, it looks like a small miracle. He is also so motivated that after the loss to Ottawa he refused to talk about his own achievements, but was happy to talk about what his team needs to improve on: blocking more shots, fighting harder in front of the opponent’s goal.

The story with Alexander Ovechkin is of a completely different nature. Here you need to understand what everyone expected from Ovechkin. What was expected, of course, was a frantic pursuit of the most honorable status of the NHL’s leading sniper of all time. Before Wayne Gretzky, who still holds the record for the most goals in the regular season, is 72 goals. That is, in principle, to overtake him, a couple of good jerks are required, nothing extraordinary by Ovechkin’s standards.

But it doesn’t work with the jerk. The match with Ottawa was Washington’s third in the championship, and in none of them did its leader hit the goal. And this despite the fact that there were many chances, including one-on-one situations.

However, those who think that this means that Alexander Ovechkin has become a victim of an age crisis should know history. There were situations when he struggled to gain sniper momentum in the season. And Ovechkin went without goals in the first three matches of the championship twice in his career – 11 years ago and last year. And nothing. In 2013, he was still ahead of all snipers, and in 2023 he finished the championship with a solid set of 42 goals.

Alexey Dospehov