Wow, you’re lost.

Crosby backchecks.

Crosby works the corners.

Crosby kills penalties.

Crosby takes defensive zone faceoffs.

Crosby is on the ice at the end of games when his team has a lead.

Ovechkin runs people.  That’s not defense, that’s WWF.

Posted by HNBCTB on 02/07/10 at 12:53 PM ET

It’s a team sport.

Posted by redxblack from Akron Ohio on 02/07/10 at 02:09 PM ET

Do you actually watch these guys play or do you just jerk off to stats? Crosby is so much better than Ovy defensively that it’s not even funny. I know you had little to no credibility before, but now you have nothing left whatsoever.

Posted by Dakkster from Southern Sweden on 02/07/10 at 02:26 PM ET

I sorta hate Crosby, so defending him doesn’t come easy to me, but I would rate Crosby as a better skater than Ovechkin. Here’s another opinion from Pierre LeBrun:

Skating
“There’s not much difference there; they’re both great skaters,” said an NHL GM who requested anonymity. “Physically, there’s a lower center of gravity with Crosby. But they’re both hard to knock off the puck when they’re skating. They both have explosive strides. I don’t know if they have a fifth gear, like Pavel Bure did or Marian Gaborik does. There aren’t many players in the NHL that have a fifth gear. But they certainly have a fourth gear, and both have amazing strength on their skates.

“They both have great changes of speed. There’s not much difference between the two other than the physiology and the shape of the legs and that. Ovechkin, I guess, might be just a little faster, just a tad. Crosby has a bit more of a wider stance and that maybe impairs his stride a bit. But it’s all relative. He’s still a great skater.”

It’s really a dead heat in this area. They have a different kind of stride on the ice, but they’re both among the best skaters in the league.

(That was written two years ago.)

So maybe if we polled everyone, more people would vote Ovechkin as a better skater than Crosby, but I think it’s much closer to a draw than having one as a clear winner. I just think that simply throwing around a “fact” like Ovechkin is faster to make your argument isn’t a good idea. You should first provide evidence that he is faster before you use that “fact” to support other conclusions.

Posted by Muero on 02/07/10 at 02:27 PM ET

It’s always going to be an unfair comparison for Ovechkin because as a LW his job defensively is much different. He’s not supposed to take faceoffs or shadow the other teams best Center. His job as you saw today, is to shadow the point man, block the occasional shot, and gather loose pucks in the defensive slot. He does all 3 well and consistently. And I always laugh at Pens fans who accuse him of cherry picking considering Lemieux scored half his goals against us doing the same thing waiting for Jagr,Coffey or Francis to spring him for breakaways.

Posted by eric from baltimore on 02/07/10 at 03:36 PM ET

Lemieux scored half his goals against us doing the same thing waiting for Jagr

Because as we all know, Jagr was a pillar of defensive strength back there.

Posted by pens fan in baltimore on 02/07/10 at 04:23 PM ET

Lemieux scored half his goals against us doing the same thing waiting for Jagr,Coffey or Francis to spring him for breakaways.

I agree with this and also that positionally, it’s an unfair comparison as a center’s defensive duties require a player to do more than a winger. If Ovechkin’s picking off cross-ice passes in his own end, that means there’s a point man wide open.

However, I do not agree that Ovechkin does the three things you mentioned consistently (though he does them more than he did three years ago).

This is just one example, but note where Ovechkin is and what he does on the Rafalski goal (url below) vs. where he should be and what he should be doing. He makes basically every mistake you can make.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JziRHS2nkwk

And as far as shot-blocking is concerned, Ovechkin only has 9, which suggests he doesn’t really do that, though I’m sure Boudreau really wouldn’t want him blocking shots anyway.

Posted by steve on 02/07/10 at 04:52 PM ET

Plus minus is such a horrid stat. Everyone thinks it has something to do with defense, but it really doesn’t at all. The best defenseman in the world would have a bad plus minus if he didn’t have help up front to get him the plusses. Its about offense, defense, and most importantly, puck possession. Defense on the other hand is about how you play in your own defensive zone, and as Eric said, thats why this discussion is pointless. OV and Sid don’t play the same position and have different responsibilities in their own zone. So anyone watching sees Sid doing a lot in his zone while OV hangs around the blue line, but thats what they’re supposed to do.

How about instead of wasting our time with this shit we think about the TEAM aspect of a TEAM sport. Write something comparing the two teams if you’d like, but please stop beating this dead horse.

Posted by Kstewy16 on 02/07/10 at 05:03 PM ET

Steve so you pick one play to show Ovie isnt a good defensive player? Thats one play everyone makes mistakes.

I guess we can look at Ovie’s hat trick goal today and chirp Sid saying he can’t win important D zone faceoffs?

This is a pretty pointless argument, both players aren’t perfect but I’d say they are both awesome defensive players (especially considering there god like offensive skills), and they will only get better..

BTW HNBBCTB: HITTING a player who has the puck and knocking him down and having your team take the puck is called playing good defense in hockey.

Posted by Patrick on 02/07/10 at 05:33 PM ET

Already qualified that it was just one play, but that’s a putrid, putrid play.

And there’s a big difference between losing one faceoff (even Brindamour, at his best, lost 40% to Crosby’s 43%) and abandoning a dangerous man to skate to the wrong side of the rink, then exiting the zone before your team has puck control and not hustling back when you realize they don’t. It isn’t often that an NHL veteran makes a mistake that blatantly wrong in his own zone.

Posted by steve on 02/07/10 at 07:45 PM ET

ya plus minus is a joke.  its a good offensive indicator at times.  like bobby orr is like +533 or something lifetime.  as a defenseman.  that’s obvious.

um, i guess if you’re arguing roles in terms of defense and crosby having a much more visible role, or a more improtant role and whether that means he’s actually better…wouldn’t it make sense then to say he is better if he has more responsibility i guess?  just sort of how i look at it - you get more responsibility at your job the better you are at something. 

either way, their respective positions help and hinder both of their offensive outputs accordingly.  but you gotta give the edge to crosby i think.

Posted by Boo Kershaw from k on 02/07/10 at 10:12 PM ET

This article comes to a conclusion it doesn’t support.

The author states that plus/minus and corsi do not adequately measure defensive play, but rather offense minus defense to some extent.  I do not argue that the corsi and plus/minus statistics can be used as evidence that Ovechkin is a more valuable player.  If it’s simplified to the math, that does not speak for defense at all.  If Ovechkin’s numbers are higher in an offense minus defense type of stat, it could simply mean that the Capitals’ offense is numerically superior to the Penguins’ offense and that the defenses are equal.  It could also mean that Ovechkin’s offense is higher comparitively to Crosby’s offense than Crosby’s defense is to Ovechkin’s offense.  As a whole, it’s a wash situation that only speaks to a player’s value, which I will not argue that the numbers support Ovechkin has higher value.

Then, the article goes on to claim that Ovechkin can afford to cheat more because of his position.  Cheating here being the ability to leave the defensive zone early to start an offensive rush.  This is a fine argument, if it weren’t for the fact that in the following paragraph, the author states that positional differences should not be taken into account when arguing a player’s defensive value.  The author tries to have it both ways, accepting the positions when it makes an adequate excuse for Ovechkin, but throwing them out when excuses for Crosby are counted.  Furthermore, the argument that there are some defensive left wings and some centers who are extremely weak defensively has little to do with the argument at hand.  Center is a more defensive-minded position than left wing.  By virtue of playing center rather than left wing, a player has to be more defensively active in most systems.  Just because some centers are worse at their jobs than some left wings doesn’t change the fact that centers have to be better defensively than left wings do.  Also, numerically small differences are what made Las Vegas the sprawling center of entertainment and neon it is today.  You take a 50% faceoff guy for a center and I’ll take a 56.9% faceoff taking center (who, naturally turns your center into a 43.1% guy, which is the real difference… he’s not 6.9 percent better than the people you’re comparing him to, he’s 13.8% better). You shouldn’t compare real stats to imaginary ones

It appears the author is using plus/minus and the subjective “physical play” argument to claim that Ovechkin’s defensive game is developing faster than Crosby’s defensive game.  This is done after writing that half of the basis for that argument is a weak defensive statistic and without particularly qualifying the other half. 

The arguments in this article do not support a conclusion that Ovechkin is a better defensive player than Sidney Crosby.  They might support an argument about which player is more valuable or how valuable the intangible that is defensive play to the author’s mind, but they do not support an argument that Crosby has to catch up with Ovechkin defensively.

Posted by J.J. from Kansas on 02/08/10 at 12:53 AM ET

Although I would argue that Ovechkin votes are poor choices, the fact Ovechkin gets a few votes and Crosby does not shows that Ovechkin has (at least in past seasons) been seen as the better of the two defensively.

Just took a look at those lists and some of those outlier votes indicate to me only the notion that a few members of the PHWA are out of their minds.

Notice that Crosby got a second-place byng vote(!) in a year in which he jumped two guys and sucker-punched another in the stones. I’ve never heard anyone, like him or hate him, describe Crosby as either “gentlemanly” or “sporting”. He’s neither. I mean, any time the score ever becomes insurmountable, Crosby spends most of the rest of the game slashing ankles and wrists when the refs aren’t looking. Or engaging in the aforementioned sucker-punching/jumping guys.

Travis Moen got a fourth place Selke vote and manny Malhotra had 3 3rd place votes, both of which are mind-numbing. The Selke voters also have Burrows ahead of Hossa. No knock on Burrows (way underrated, well-rounded guy), but he doesn’t intercept passes, set picks or body people off the puck like Hossa does.

Heck, some knucklehead even wrote a goalie’s name on their Byng ballot, which is an award for skaters.

Posted by steve on 02/08/10 at 01:22 AM ET

You might want to consider the fact that Ovie is a wing while Crosby is a center. Right there, you need to realize that they have different roles on the team both offensively AND defensively. One mentioned Crosby is better because he takes faceoffs…. uh, centers do that.  In the defensive zone, each has a different role so on this one you probably need to just discuss how well each one assumes their role. One thing that I have noticed, is that as time moves along, both Ovie and Crosby fans are being honest in admitting respect for the opposition’s talents. Yep, Caps fan here, but I have to admit that Crosby is an awesome player.

Posted by Kevin from Annapolis on 02/08/10 at 08:42 AM ET

As much as I dislike him, I have to admit that Crosby is an excellent player.  I do feel that OV is the best of the greatest right now.  OV has improved his D IMMENSLEY this season, and I think that in their given roles, they are pretty equal there…albeit OV is much more physical. 

Those Pitt fans who say how HORRIBLE OV is and AMAZING Sid is…please answer me this…why have the PLAYERS themselves voted OV MVP?  I would think players know enough about the game to make an educated vote…even if you don’t think this particular blogger does.

If OV continues to play how he is playing now (leader in points, goals and +/-, look to see him named MVP again.  Sure the Caps played well in his abscense, but you simply can not overlook those points…and his ability to bring it in dire situations (see last Pitt game)

And whether you like +/- or not, OV’s would not be that ridiculously high if he were so bad at defense!  I mean it would still be high, but not the best in the league.

Posted by Rachel from MD on 02/08/10 at 09:21 AM ET

Obviously I am a Caps fan…so, I’m sure Pens fans will ignore this.

+/- IS a bit of a questionable statistic, but at the end of the day it shows if a player is on the ice for even strength goals.  It doesn’t equate to defensive ability, but the name of the game is to score more than your opponent, right?

So, which player, Ovechkin or Crosby, has been on the ice for 30 even strength goals against, and which has been on the ice for 55?  I’ll give you a hint—the 55 against is the one that plays C.

Are there explanations for this besides Ovechkin being a better defender?  Of course—for 1 the way the Caps play is they put extended pressure on their opponent when Ovechkin’s line is on the ice.  Ovechkin’s line generally plays against a teams best defensive specialists who are trying to stop him rather than score themselves. (so Pens fans, if you want to claim Ovechkin doesn’t have to play D because they are playing top defensive lines then you also are admitting that Ovechkin & linemates are putting up better offensive #‘s against better defense) 

Ovechkin has matured this season, especially since he got named captain, into a more complete player.  Are there times where he makes defensive mistakes?  Yes, just like every other player.

Posted by Jeff from DC on 02/08/10 at 09:57 AM ET

So we are comparing the defense of a center to a left wing? Sort of a pointless discussion really, especially when they play in such different systems. Not knowing what each player is asked to do by his coach also makes this a difficult subject. Anyone that has played any organized hockey at all knows a center has much greater responsibility in the defensive end then a wing and anyone that has spent anytime watching a team that Boudreau coached knows he encourages the high forward in the defensive zone to take chances so that they maybe in a position for a break out pass that will put them behind the defense.

Both are great players, great players that play different positions and are asked to do different things by their teams.

Now, as far as anyone saying Ovechkin was cherry picking yesterday on his break away I encourage you to watch a full replay of the sequence. The Pens had the puck in the corner, the wing past the puck out to the point on Ovechkins side. Ovechkin was at the top of the face off circle and charged the d man with the puck at the point as he took the shot. Shultz stopped the puck in front of the net, Ovechkin continued skating right past the defense and used his speed to get behind them. Nothing wrong with that play at all, he was doing exactly what he was suppose to.

Posted by Overhead from Norfolk on 02/08/10 at 10:34 AM ET

Patrick, Steve has harped on that play in another comments section.  I guess he just can’t get past it.  That’s what Ovi haters have to do, find the few bad plays and then say he ALWAYS does this.

Posted by dfe123 on 02/08/10 at 07:19 PM ET

@overhead, thanks for bringing that up—all of the Pens fans are commenting on Ovi cherrypicking on that play and saying that he was hanging out at the Pens blueline.  I guess they didn’t really watch the game—excellent description of what actually happened.

Posted by dfe123 on 02/08/10 at 07:21 PM ET