HockeyAll eyes on Sid & Ovie as Classic nears

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Read up on the latest tidbits and trends as Hockey Night in Canada's play-by-play voice Jim Hughson takes you behind the scenes and into Saturday's featured game.

This week's work: The Winter Classic, Washington Capitals at Pittsburgh Penguins (CBC, CBCSports.ca, 1 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT).

"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." -- American author Bill Vaughan.

If Alex Ovechkin stays up on New Year's Eve, we suspect it will be for the latter.

The year wasn't a total dud for the Great 8 but it went decidedly downhill early on.

Ovechkin achieved some personal goals and accolades, but anything to do with his Washington Capitals as a team went sideways. The Russian Olympic experience was a bust, just like the Caps' playoff run last year. Halfway through this season his team is just north of mediocre and so, by the standards he's set, is Ovechkin.

But as the calendar is about to turn, all is not lost in Washington. After losing eight straight games the Caps have won 4-of-5 and got back on track, the way most teams do, by keeping the puck out of their net.

They aren't likely to lead the league in shoot-ins and some of their forwards still barely make the blue-line on the backcheck, but the Caps have given up just seven goals in their last five games as they promise a less risky style in the second half of the season.

On the other side of the ice, things couldn't be going more swimmingly for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Sidney Crosby's points streak ended at 25 games (24 goals, 26 assists in that span), but the Pens are still on a 19-4-3 run. Evgeni Malkin is emerging from his coma, Marc-Andre Fleury is closing the door in net and Jordan Staal is finally nearing a return.

So the frozen stage is set, the streaks are all out of the way and once again the classic storyline has narrowed to Sid and Ovie.

Will auld acquaintance be forgot? Not likely. Out with the old and in with the new?

For Crosby, only the moustache.

Crosby versus Ovechkin

Crosby is having an otherworldly season. He's towing the Penguins along, taking part in 60 per cent of their goals during the last 26 games.

Like Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky before him, Crosby has a great knack for performing at his best in big games when the world is watching, so you know how disappointed he must have been not to carry the points streak onto Heinz Field.

Still, Sid goes to the Classic with a 23-point and 18-goal lead on Ovechkin, along with a decided statistical advantage in their regular season meetings.

All of which means nothing, since they've yet to meet outdoors.

Crosby versus Ovechkin, career stats (regular season)
 
                    Crosby            Ovechkin
Games             20                    20
Goals               13                    15
Assists             22                   13
Points              35                    28
Plus-Minus       +2                  +14
Record           12-6-2               8-8-4
 
The Capitals -- lower case

While the focus will always be on the best player and it's easy to simplify the reason for Washington's uneven first half as Ovechkin's problem, you have to look much deeper than that.

The Capitals are a different team down the middle compared to last season. Brendan Morrison, Eric Belanger and Tomas Fleischmann, all of whom were the second centre at some point last season, are gone.  

Behind Nicklas Backstrom, the rest of the cast at centre this season has been Mathieu Perreault, Marcus Johansson, Jay Beagle and David Steckel.

The Capitals hardly measure up through the middle with their main Eastern Conference rivals in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Boston.
 
And then there's the goaltending situation that the hockey world has focused on for a while. Both Semyon Varlamov and Michal Neuvirth look good at times, but can they win now?  

Since experience only comes with time -- and the Caps might not have enough of that -- they may want to find themselves a veteran (Dwayne Roloson, Miikka Kiprusoff?).

Or they can roll the dice with youth, which becomes an increased gamble since Washington doesn't play a lockdown game that makes goalies look good. Even with their new defensive conscience.

Variables other than the weather

1. Not sure what was in the water at Russia House in Vancouver during the Olympics, but four of the league's Russian superstar forwards seem adversely affected by it.

Ovechkin isn't challenging for the scoring lead, but neither are Malkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, or Alex Semin. Malkin, like Ovechkin, has shown signs of life with five goals and five assists in his last eight games, but he's still not at his Conn Smythe level of 2008-09.

The enigmatic Semin has 18 goals this season, but hasn't scored in 11 games and didn't get score in December.

2. In the absence of Staal, who anchored the third line in the Penguins' Stanley Cup run in 2008-09, coach Dan Bylsma has found a pretty good replacement unit from spare parts.  

Pittsburgh's "Buzz Line" features Mark Letestu, Chris Connor and Tyler Kennedy. The diminutive trio doesn't score much (seven points in the last six games), but don't get scored upon (plus-7 in that span) and Bylsma plays them 12 to 15 minutes a game.

3. Will the Curse of the Classic strike again? The visiting team in each of the last three outdoor games (Pittsburgh, Detroit and Philadelphia) has lost in that year's Stanley Cup final. That's a curse the Caps might like a stab at!

And finally...

What we've learned about the Winter Classic is that nothing about the regular season and previous meetings matters at all. The circumstances are so unusual that both teams tend to wade into the game (we hope only figuratively Saturday) before they get used to the light, the crowd  and the ice.

The outdoor game is an event that we hope turns into a game, and if the conditions are right and the performers are on, just might turn into a classic.  

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