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The Confluence

Penguins must retaliate for Ovechkin’s runs

by Tony on 04/30/09 at 10:02 AM ET
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Retaliate perhaps isn’t the best word.  Nah, it is.

Alex Ovechkin is a big boy.  6’ 2”, 220 lbs.  Quite the fast skater.  Combine those two, and you’ve got the recipe for some hard hits, putting it politely.

Many have stated in the past that Ovechkin has gotten away with numerous hits over the course of his short career that should have been called charging, at a minimum.  Much like Milan Lucic and, yes, Chris Kunitz recently (how ya feelin’ Kimmo ??).

However, in the Penguins point of view, there’s a troubling problem when Ovechkin has taken those runs at Evgeni Malkin and others since the Penguins-Capitals rivalry got ramped back up in the last few years:

No one has retaliated against him.  Well, that needs to stop, and stop now.

Ovechkin had 243 hits awarded to him this past season, good for 9th in the NHL.  The closest Capital to him is 86 behind, that being Milan Jurcina with 157.

The Penguins, on the other hand, have three of the top fifteen hitters in the NHL.  Brooks Orpik is 2nd with 309, Matt Cooke is tied for 5th with 262, and Chris Kunitz is tied for 15th with 207.  Jordan Staal is one behind Jurcina with 156.

Those three guys need to be leading the charge to target Ovechkin.  While you’re at it, just like in the Flyers series with Timonen, Mike Green should have some extra attention given as well.

This isn’t about dressing Eric Godard.  Godard is useless when it comes to this type of stuff, especially with Donald Brashear out with a suspension.  Godard wouldn’t be dropping the gloves with Ovechkin anyway.  And really, no one wants to see that anyway.

Now, I want to be clear.  I am not advocating any attempt to injure Ovie, such as Ottawa Sun columnist Don Brennan when he said in last year’s playoffs “Crosby’s got a bad RIGHT ankle? How will it stand up to a two-hander? The Senators have to find out.”

What I am advocating, however, is to give Ovechkin a dose of his own medicine, for once.

Every time he touches the puck, he gets checked.  He starts those 1-on-5 breakouts, he gets planted on his buttocks.  But most imporantly, he lines up Malkin or Crosby and runs them, he gets lined up himself.  It’s not a difficult scenario to envision.

Now, of course, that is easier said than done.  As indicated before, Ovie is not a small guy.  And, he’s not slow.  So it’s not like he’s gonna be standing still.

The goal needs to be to make Ovechkin start thinking twice about running Malkin, Crosby or any other Penguins

But conversely, that doesn’t mean that the Penguins continue to give him a free pass to go around taking runs at their best stars, which he has done nearly every game in the last couple of years.

Just like Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, it’s not personal, it’s strictly business.

Filed in: | The Confluence | Permalink
 Tags: NHL-Hockey, Pittsburgh+Penguins, Washington+Capitals,

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