Posse81
June-29th-2004, 02:53 PM
http://www.washingtoncaps.com/news/index.cfm?cont_id=247705
It's Official - Ovechkin a Cap
by Mike Vogel
It has been nearly three months since the Washington Capitals learned they had won the right to choose first in the NHL’s 2004 Entry Draft. Today the Caps finally exercised that choice. To the surprise of virtually no one, Washington selected Russian left wing Alexander Ovechkin. The Capitals now hope Ovechkin becomes one of the centerpieces of the team’s roster in the years ahead.
Washington management remained typically tight-lipped during the last 11-plus weeks, leading some to believe the team was taking a long look at Evgeni Malkin – rated by virtually everyone as the second best prospect in the draft – and leading others to conclude the Caps would deal the top pick for a lucrative package of players, picks and/or prospects. The reality of the situation was that Ovechkin remained squarely in Washington’s sights all along.
“Malkin has closed the gap but, he has never gone by [Ovechkin], in our opinion,” says Washington general manager George McPhee. “Ovechkin has always been number one. We could have done a trade for volume, but none of those players would have been as good as this guy. You don’t get this opportunity very often.”
For the last two years scouts have been predicting Ovechkin would be the first overall selection in this year’s draft. When the Capitals secured the first choice via the NHL’s annual draft lottery April 6, they earned the right to take the player many scouts believe is the best to come along since the Pittsburgh Penguins drafted Mario Lemieux with the first overall choice in 1984.
Washington hopes Ovechkin can step right into the team’s lineup and make an impact as recent top overall draftees Rick Nash (Columbus, 2002), Ilya Kovalchuk (Atlanta, 2001) and Vincent Lecavalier (Tampa Bay, 1998) have done.
“We have an outstanding player who has great character, and we are not going to put him in over his head,” says McPhee. “We will manage his ice time and expectations, and he’ll get what he earns and what he deserves.”
Ovechkin has been touted as perhaps the best junior-aged player to come out of Russia since Vladimir Krutov and the best prospect from that part of the world since Sergei Makarov. Ovechkin becomes just the second Russian player ever chosen with the first overall pick; Kovalchuk became the first in 2001. Ovechkin has already been named to the Team Russia roster for this summer’s World Cup tournament. Ovechkin was the first 17-year-old named to the Russian senior national team since legendary goaltender Vladislav Tretiak some 35 years ago. Ovechkin played for Team Russia in the world championship this past April and acquitted himself extremely well.
“I’m in my 13th year in the front office and I don’t remember any other player that age playing in the world championships,” says McPhee. “And if they did they certainly didn’t play as well as he did.”
The 18-year-old Ovechkin carries strong sports bloodlines. His mother, Tatiana, was the captain of the 1976 and 1980 gold-medal-winning women’s basketball team for the former Soviet Union in the Summer Olympic Games. His father, Mikhail, played professional soccer with the Moscow Dynamo team.
“He is a wonderful skater with a quick release off his wrist shot, and he is a natural goal scorer, very quick with superb acceleration,” exuded Goran Stubb, the NHL’s director of European scouting, in a report filed more than a year ago. “Ovechkin is very steady, very mature, very bright-minded,” Stubb told The Toronto Sun’s Terry Kochan earlier this year.
“If he is not one of the next superstars, I don’t know anything about hockey.”
Ross Mahoney, Washington’s director of amateur scouting, echoes that assessment.
“He is a complete player,” says Mahoney of Ovechkin. “He comes to play every shift. He works hard, he has good skill, he skates well, he shows good strength for his age, his work ethic is good. There are other players who maybe do some of those things well … but he is a complete player. That’s the best way to describe him.
“He is definitely a very talented player and he has to rank among the top players that I’ve seen over the last 20 years.”
The young hockey prodigy began playing the game at the age of seven but stopped playing when his parents weren’t able to bring him to practices. Two years later Ovechkin’s older brother Sergei convinced him to return to hockey. Sergei Ovechkin was a wrestler who was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago.
Ovechkin’s favorite NHL team growing up was the San Jose Sharks, and he grew fond of former Sharks power forward Owen Nolan, now a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Among Ovechkin’s favorite all-time players are Swedish defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings and legendary Moscow Dynamo and Soviet great Alexander Maltsev, one of the greatest players to ever lace up the skates. Maltsev played on three Soviet Olympic teams, winning two gold medals and one silver. He also played on nine world champion teams and scored 329 goals in 530 games for Moscow Dynamo.
Gifted with excellent skills, hands and speed, Ovechkin also boasts good size (6-foot-2, 214 pounds). While most teenaged draftees need to fill out and boost their upper body strength, Ovechkin already has the frame most of them aspire to achieve.
Compared favorably with Kovalchuk, who won a share of the NHL’s goal-scoring title as a 20-year-old in his third season in the league in 2003-04, Ovechkin is said to be a more defensively responsible player who is also better at sharing and distributing the puck.
The comparison isn’t exactly a valid one. While Kovalchuk never played in the Russian Superleague – the highest level of pro hockey in Russia – prior to signing with Atlanta in 2001, Ovechkin began playing in the Superleague at the age of 16 and was a first-liner for Moscow Dynamo last season at the age of 18. Playing as a boy among men, he totaled 13 goals and 23 points in 53 games in ’03-04.
Ovechkin is under contract to Dynamo through next season. The Capitals will begin negotiating an NHL contract with him once the new collective bargaining agreement is reached between the league and the players’ association and after a new transfer agreement is reached between the league and the International Ice Hockey Federation.
“We’re really hopeful that all those things are taken care of before training camp,” states McPhee. “There is a lot of uncertainty over the CBA; we hope that is worked out. It’s our understanding that the league is talking to the IIHF right now, and we’re optimistic something is going on there so we will act in the best interests of the club since those things will be taken care of.”
Some media types made a big deal of the fact that McPhee had not contacted Ovechkin’s agent, Don Meehan, to start preliminary contract talks in the days and weeks leading up to the draft. There’s a very good reason for that.
“Well, I’m really surprised that he hasn’t called us,” laughed McPhee. “To be quite honest, we have never talked to an agent in any draft about who we might take. It does not help us to let the enemy know where we are moving our troops. We’re not going to tell our competitors [what we’re doing]. If we tell agents and then they tell other teams. We’re not going to help our competitors.”
A lot has been written about Ovechkin during the past years and months, but as an 18-year-old who has yet to embark upon what he hopes will be a long and prosperous NHL career, he will write the story himself on the surfaces of the 30 NHL arenas in the years and decades to come.
It's Official - Ovechkin a Cap
by Mike Vogel
It has been nearly three months since the Washington Capitals learned they had won the right to choose first in the NHL’s 2004 Entry Draft. Today the Caps finally exercised that choice. To the surprise of virtually no one, Washington selected Russian left wing Alexander Ovechkin. The Capitals now hope Ovechkin becomes one of the centerpieces of the team’s roster in the years ahead.
Washington management remained typically tight-lipped during the last 11-plus weeks, leading some to believe the team was taking a long look at Evgeni Malkin – rated by virtually everyone as the second best prospect in the draft – and leading others to conclude the Caps would deal the top pick for a lucrative package of players, picks and/or prospects. The reality of the situation was that Ovechkin remained squarely in Washington’s sights all along.
“Malkin has closed the gap but, he has never gone by [Ovechkin], in our opinion,” says Washington general manager George McPhee. “Ovechkin has always been number one. We could have done a trade for volume, but none of those players would have been as good as this guy. You don’t get this opportunity very often.”
For the last two years scouts have been predicting Ovechkin would be the first overall selection in this year’s draft. When the Capitals secured the first choice via the NHL’s annual draft lottery April 6, they earned the right to take the player many scouts believe is the best to come along since the Pittsburgh Penguins drafted Mario Lemieux with the first overall choice in 1984.
Washington hopes Ovechkin can step right into the team’s lineup and make an impact as recent top overall draftees Rick Nash (Columbus, 2002), Ilya Kovalchuk (Atlanta, 2001) and Vincent Lecavalier (Tampa Bay, 1998) have done.
“We have an outstanding player who has great character, and we are not going to put him in over his head,” says McPhee. “We will manage his ice time and expectations, and he’ll get what he earns and what he deserves.”
Ovechkin has been touted as perhaps the best junior-aged player to come out of Russia since Vladimir Krutov and the best prospect from that part of the world since Sergei Makarov. Ovechkin becomes just the second Russian player ever chosen with the first overall pick; Kovalchuk became the first in 2001. Ovechkin has already been named to the Team Russia roster for this summer’s World Cup tournament. Ovechkin was the first 17-year-old named to the Russian senior national team since legendary goaltender Vladislav Tretiak some 35 years ago. Ovechkin played for Team Russia in the world championship this past April and acquitted himself extremely well.
“I’m in my 13th year in the front office and I don’t remember any other player that age playing in the world championships,” says McPhee. “And if they did they certainly didn’t play as well as he did.”
The 18-year-old Ovechkin carries strong sports bloodlines. His mother, Tatiana, was the captain of the 1976 and 1980 gold-medal-winning women’s basketball team for the former Soviet Union in the Summer Olympic Games. His father, Mikhail, played professional soccer with the Moscow Dynamo team.
“He is a wonderful skater with a quick release off his wrist shot, and he is a natural goal scorer, very quick with superb acceleration,” exuded Goran Stubb, the NHL’s director of European scouting, in a report filed more than a year ago. “Ovechkin is very steady, very mature, very bright-minded,” Stubb told The Toronto Sun’s Terry Kochan earlier this year.
“If he is not one of the next superstars, I don’t know anything about hockey.”
Ross Mahoney, Washington’s director of amateur scouting, echoes that assessment.
“He is a complete player,” says Mahoney of Ovechkin. “He comes to play every shift. He works hard, he has good skill, he skates well, he shows good strength for his age, his work ethic is good. There are other players who maybe do some of those things well … but he is a complete player. That’s the best way to describe him.
“He is definitely a very talented player and he has to rank among the top players that I’ve seen over the last 20 years.”
The young hockey prodigy began playing the game at the age of seven but stopped playing when his parents weren’t able to bring him to practices. Two years later Ovechkin’s older brother Sergei convinced him to return to hockey. Sergei Ovechkin was a wrestler who was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago.
Ovechkin’s favorite NHL team growing up was the San Jose Sharks, and he grew fond of former Sharks power forward Owen Nolan, now a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Among Ovechkin’s favorite all-time players are Swedish defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings and legendary Moscow Dynamo and Soviet great Alexander Maltsev, one of the greatest players to ever lace up the skates. Maltsev played on three Soviet Olympic teams, winning two gold medals and one silver. He also played on nine world champion teams and scored 329 goals in 530 games for Moscow Dynamo.
Gifted with excellent skills, hands and speed, Ovechkin also boasts good size (6-foot-2, 214 pounds). While most teenaged draftees need to fill out and boost their upper body strength, Ovechkin already has the frame most of them aspire to achieve.
Compared favorably with Kovalchuk, who won a share of the NHL’s goal-scoring title as a 20-year-old in his third season in the league in 2003-04, Ovechkin is said to be a more defensively responsible player who is also better at sharing and distributing the puck.
The comparison isn’t exactly a valid one. While Kovalchuk never played in the Russian Superleague – the highest level of pro hockey in Russia – prior to signing with Atlanta in 2001, Ovechkin began playing in the Superleague at the age of 16 and was a first-liner for Moscow Dynamo last season at the age of 18. Playing as a boy among men, he totaled 13 goals and 23 points in 53 games in ’03-04.
Ovechkin is under contract to Dynamo through next season. The Capitals will begin negotiating an NHL contract with him once the new collective bargaining agreement is reached between the league and the players’ association and after a new transfer agreement is reached between the league and the International Ice Hockey Federation.
“We’re really hopeful that all those things are taken care of before training camp,” states McPhee. “There is a lot of uncertainty over the CBA; we hope that is worked out. It’s our understanding that the league is talking to the IIHF right now, and we’re optimistic something is going on there so we will act in the best interests of the club since those things will be taken care of.”
Some media types made a big deal of the fact that McPhee had not contacted Ovechkin’s agent, Don Meehan, to start preliminary contract talks in the days and weeks leading up to the draft. There’s a very good reason for that.
“Well, I’m really surprised that he hasn’t called us,” laughed McPhee. “To be quite honest, we have never talked to an agent in any draft about who we might take. It does not help us to let the enemy know where we are moving our troops. We’re not going to tell our competitors [what we’re doing]. If we tell agents and then they tell other teams. We’re not going to help our competitors.”
A lot has been written about Ovechkin during the past years and months, but as an 18-year-old who has yet to embark upon what he hopes will be a long and prosperous NHL career, he will write the story himself on the surfaces of the 30 NHL arenas in the years and decades to come.