Super Bowl Sunday also will be splendid for hockey fans.

Six hours before the New Orleans Saints tackle the Indianapolis Colts in Miami, the Pittsburgh Penguins visit the Washington Capitals. Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin will clash on the ice for the final time before what most hockey nuts hope is a prelude to a Sid the Kid, Alexander the Great showdown at the Vancouver Olympics.

Ovechkin versus Crosby is a match made in heaven. The two prolific rivals will forever be linked because they arrived on the NHL landscape in concert for the 2005-06 season.

The two are kind to each other at all-star games and award nights and when they made that brilliant "Road Trip" commercial a few years ago. But don't let their smiles fool you, there is an underlying, competitive animosity towards each other. They are the fiercest of rivals.

Ovechkin, 23 months older than Crosby, was the first overall selection by the Capitals at the 2004 NHL entry draft. The Penguins made Crosby the No. 1 choice the following summer.  

The 24-year-old Ovechkin has scored more goals than Crosby in their four-plus seasons in the NHL, 258 to 169. The 22-year-old Penguins captain has a slightly better points-per-game average than his Washington counterpart, 1.35 to 1.34.

Ovechkin became the ninth player to reach the 500-point mark in only his fifth NHL season. He turned the trick career game No. 373 on Thursday, the fastest since injury-riddled Eric Lindros, who hit the 500-point barrier in his 352nd game at the end of his sixth year.

Ovechkin joined some elite company with the accomplishment. The others to reach the 500-point mark in their fifth season include: Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Peter Stastny, Mike Bossy, Dale Hawerchuk, Bryan Trottier, Denis Savard and Jari Kurri.

Ovechkin has two Hart Trophies and a Pearson Award to Crosby's one Hart and one Pearson. Both have captured the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL's scoring champ.

But that's the individual scene. Crosby has held an advantage in team success. He definitely has figured out how to be part of the solution.

Ovechkin and Russia did manage to win the 2003 world junior championship in Halifax near Crosby's hometown of Cole Harbour, N.S. But Crosby only was 15 at the time and away at Shattuck-St. Mary's prep school in Minnesota.

First brush

The pair first had a brush with each other at the 2004 world junior tournament in Helsinki. Canada and Russia never met in that event. Russia bailed in the quarter-finals. Canada settled for silver. Ovechkin was playing with a heavy heart in Helsinki because his long-time advisor Anna Goruven passed away while in Finland watching the tournament.

The following year, with the NHL lockout in full flight, Ovechkin and Crosby met in the gold-medal final of the world junior tournament in Grand Forks, N.D. Surrounded by the deepest junior team that Canada has put together (if you need evidence take a glance at how many from that club will suit up for Canada at the Vancouver Olympics), Crosby celebrated gold after a dominating 6-1 victory. Ovechkin was knocked out of the game midway through with a shoulder injury.

While Wayne Gretzky decided not to take Crosby on the 2006 Canadian Olympic team, Ovechkin suited up for Russia and lost in the bronze-medal match. Crosby and Ovechkin met up in the 2006 world championship, but neither Canada nor Russia finished among the top-three.

Crosby was the first of the two to participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2007, but the Penguins were ousted in the first round the eventual conference-champion Ottawa Senators. The next spring the Capitals were eliminated in the first round by the Philadelphia Flyers, allowing Ovechkin to make his way 2008 world championship in Quebec City. Russia stunned Canada in the gold-medal final.

A month later, Crosby and the Penguins advanced to the Stanley Cup final only to lose the mighty Detroit Red Wings.

The young rivals finally met in the Stanley Cup playoffs in what turned out to be a memorable seven-game series that the Penguins won. Pittsburgh eventually went on to turn the tables on the Red Wings in a seven-game final.

Ovechkin couldn't watch. He was back in Moscow and the disappointment from being eliminated in the second round by the Penguins and that fact that Crosby and Pittsburgh won the Stanley Cup hurt too much.

Which brings us to Vancouver.

Another setting, another opportunity for the dynamic duo to author an additional chapter in rivalry.