Will Ovechkin Ever Win a Cup?

This question has been asked many times for a few years now and the consistent response is "Yes, all the truly great players eventually won a Stanley Cup." This is kind of true. When you think of the truly elite players in history, they all have at least one Stanley Cup on their resume. To be fair, a lot of those players played in a league of six or twelve teams. If you look at lists of greatest players to never win a cup, they are almost all active players (Thornton, Iginla, etc...). So historically the notion that all the greats win the grand prize is true, but the rapid expansion to 30+ teams changes that.

No matter what, Alex Ovechkin will be remembered as one of the top three players of his generation and one of the greatest scorers of all-time. He has already scored over 1,000 points and will likely hit the magical 600 goal plateau next season. He is a human highlight reel that every hockey fan can appreciate. He plays the game with joy, passion and an edge that not many possess. He has been the face of the Washington Capitals franchise for 12 years. Ovechkin has assembled an impressive trophy case with three Hart Trophies (MVP) and six Maurice Richard Trophies (leading goal scorer). Truthfully the only award he is missing is not in the trophy case, but on his hand (a championship ring).

The key to winning a Stanley Cup is not individual performance, it is a well constructed team with a great leader. Look back at each of the Stanley Cup winning teams since the salary cap was put in place. It has typically been the team with the most quality depth and an elite captain or coach that takes home the trophy. The Capitals have been one of the best teams in the NHL the last five seasons. This is their window to win a championship and help cement Ovechkin's legacy. That window is closing rapidly. In fact, this may have been Washington's best team in franchise history and the last realistic chance they had to win during the Ovechkin era. T.J. Oshie, Karl Alzner, Justin Williams and Kevin Shattenkirk are free agents this summer. They are going to lose at least one, probably two, of those players to other teams. The problem for the Capitals is they have not been successful at finding young talent to replace expensive veterans. This is the same reason the Blackhawks dynasty has crashed and burned. In the age of the salary cap, no one can afford to keep the same team year after year. If you have success then everyone wants paid, but you cannot afford to keep everyone. This is especially true when Alex Ovechkin is being paid nearly 13% of the Capitals salary cap.

With all of this in mind it may not be completely fair to put the blame of not being a champion solely on Ovechkin. However, this is what comes with being a great player and team captain. Once you put the "C" on your jersey, it no longer matters how many scoring titles you win. What matters is how much your team wins. You become responsible for making everyone on your team better. The best example of that is Sidney Crosby. When The Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009, Crosby was not the team leader yet. He was the best player on the team and was the captain, but the true leaders were the veterans around him. Crosby had the freedom to just play. When those veterans left, Crosby continued to just play and the Penguins suffered a string of seasons where they were eliminated early in the playoffs. That is when Crosby learned he did not have to lead the league in scoring, he had to get his team to the playoffs then help lead and push them. That is why the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2016. As much as it would pain Ovechkin to hear this, he has to follow the Crosby model. Simply posting up at the top of the circle and waiting for a perfect pass is not enough for Ovechkin to be a winner. He needs to get to the dirty areas, back-check and set-up teammates for scoring chances. If Alex Ovechkin is ever going to win a Stanley Cup as the captain of the Washington Capitals, his game has to change.

The players you can fairly compare him to historically are high scoring wingers. Who are the dominant scoring wingers that had to be their team's best player? The players I compare Ovechkin to are Jaromir Jagr, Pavel Bure, Brett Hull and Jari Kurri. Three of these four players won Stanley Cups, but none of them were the best player on the team or captain when they did it. Jagr won in his first two years in the league as a third line winger on Mario Lemieux's Penguins. Pavel Bure never won a Stanley Cup. Brett Hull did not win until he went to Dallas and was the third or fourth option on a veteran team. He later won again as a third line winger in Detroit. Jari Kurri happened to be a super scoring winger on the 80's Oilers where he played third fiddle to Gretzky and Messier. The fact of the matter is it is hard to make your teammates better when you are on the wing. The position does not lend itself  to controlling play. Centers and defensemen can control play and effect the entire rink. Goaltenders have the most impact on the outcome of the game. However, wingers really only control about 1/3 of the ice. So again it is very difficult to blame Alex Ovechkin for not having more team success.

I am not absolving Alex Ovechkin for not winning a Stanley Cup. This is more on him than it is on anyone else in the Capitals organization. The one area you can blame Ovechkin for is playoff performance. He is just not as effective in the playoffs as he is in the regular season. His regular season points per game for his career is 1.12, in the playoffs it drops to 0.94. Not a significant drop, but still a huge impact on a team that relies on him so heavily. Maybe the most comparable player to Ovechkin in terms of style and impact is Evgeni Malkin who averages 1.09 points per game in his playoff career.  More importantly to me is Ovechkin just does not make plays in key moments. When the pressure is highest he seems smallest. Can anyone recall a a truly clutch play from him in a game 7 or series clinching game? The Capitals were forced to sign Mr. Game 7, Justin Williams, because they could not rely on Ovechkin in big playoff moments. My signature memory of Alex Ovechkin in the playoffs is from 2009 in game 7 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. He gets a clean breakaway three minutes into the game. If he scores, the roof would have blown off the Verizon Center and the Capitals cruise to victory and the conference finals. Instead he puts it into Fleury's glove and the Penguins go on to win the game 6-2.

The Capitals have never reached the Conference Finals, let alone the Stanley Cup finals, with Ovechkin. I am not sure they ever will. He is simply the wrong player in the wrong era to lead a team to a championship. I am not saying Ovechkin will never win a Stanley Cup, he probably will someday. However, it will not be with Washington or anywhere that he is forced to be the #1 guy. His best chance to win a Stanley Cup will come late in his career, after Washington's window has closed. He needs to find a team where can simply be the powerplay specialist and offensive dynamo. This has become evident after another sad and early end to a great season in Washington.