Ovechkin Gets Limited Ice Time but Scores Game Winner at LinesMaker

Ovechkin Gets Limited Ice Time but Scores Game Winner

NEW YORK (NHL/Newsfeed) — Alex Ovechkin nor­mally earns so much atten­tion for what he does on the ice. But in the past two weeks, much of the focus has shifted to all the time he is not.

For the third time in the past five games, Ovechkin on Mon­day played less than 17 min­utes in a Stan­ley Cup Play­off game for the Wash­ing­ton Cap­i­tals. This time, Game 2 of the East­ern Con­fer­ence Semi­fi­nals against the New York Rangers, he played a career-low in the post­sea­son (13:36), but also scored the game-winning goal in a 3–2 vic­tory that evened the series at one game each.

“I feel good. You have to suck it up and use time what Dale [Hunter] is giv­ing to me,” Ovechkin said. “First period, two peri­ods I didn’t play a lot and I have a cou­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties I didn’t use it. In third, two power plays — I think on first power play we move well and on sec­ond one finally it goes in.

“It’s most impor­tant thing right now guys just win the series and win the game. If you gonna talk about my game time and all that kind of stuff, it’s not a sea­son – it’s the play­offs. How I said before, you have to suck it up and play for team.”

Ovechkin played 17:01 in Game 4 against Boston dur­ing the first round, and has played less than that in three of the past five games. He has been Washington’s best player and face of the fran­chise since he first stepped off a plane from Rus­sia in 2005, and see­ing his low time on ice totals has been a bit of a shock for fans of the team, and even some of his teammates.

Still, the Cap­i­tals have been suc­cess­ful. They are 4–0 in those games where he has played 17:01 or less and 0–2 in the two where he played more than 21 minutes.

“I don’t know what his ice was. I’m not in charge of that,” Brooks Laich said. “He scored the win­ning goal. That’s all that mat­ters. Dif­fer­ent games are going to play out. The first period, actu­ally till about halfway through the sec­ond, I didn’t think that our line had back-to-back 5-on-5 shifts with the penal­ties and the power plays and 4-on-4 the way it was. That’s the way the game goes some­times, but he came through in the clutch.”

Added vet­eran for­ward Mike Knu­ble: “It is pretty evi­dent when we keep going down the line [on the bench]. You get down to the last six or seven min­utes and he’s not out there and Dale starts mov­ing lines around. I don’t know, man. Who cares as long as he scores? I hope he’s not too annoyed by it. I’m sure he is, there’s no hid­ing that — he wants more ice. I get it. Scor­ing the game win­ner tonight takes a lit­tle bit of the sting out of it.”

Hunter has installed a more defen­sive men­tal­ity in the Cap­i­tals, and Ovechkin’s defi­cien­cies at that end of the ice have been appar­ent dur­ing this post­sea­son. He might be a first-year NHL coach, but Hunter is hockey roy­alty in Wash­ing­ton from his play­ing days, and he has had no prob­lem putting the guy with the high­est salary cap hit in the League on the bench in key situations.

Ovechkin played only 3:33 in the first period of this con­test, and had 9:14 through two peri­ods — but that was only because of a mon­ster 2:32 shift that included mul­ti­ple icings on the Cap­i­tals. Hunter took Ovechkin off the ice twice when the team had an offensive-zone face­off in the first period. He put Ovechkin’s line out, but replaced him with Jay Bea­gle so the cen­ter could take the faceoff.

Still, the Cap­i­tals earned back-to-back power plays in the third period, and Ovechkin was out there to col­lect a key goal and sal­vage a split before this series shifts back to Washington.

“I think he’s been pub­lic about not really car­ing for it, but that’s sort of what is going on around here,” Knu­ble said. “We’ve got guys who have played more at times, and guys that have sat. Dale is very sit­u­a­tional and tells us what is going on. The last game we were down, so [Ovechkin] is going to go every other shift and there’s the trade off. I guess at this point in the year it is how it’s going to go, and we’ll abide by it.”

Added Hunter: “He’s a team guy. One thing about that, it leaves him real fresh for the power play. The power play was good tonight, and he had the win­ner on it, and he was fresh to go on the offen­sive game.”

Ovechkin wasn’t alone in not see­ing a lot of ice time in this con­test. Alexan­der Semin only played 12:27, which was a career low in the post­sea­son. Nick­las Back­strom played 16:18 — also the least of his career in the Stan­ley Cup Playoffs.

But Back­strom was the guy who won the face­off with Wash­ing­ton on the power play, and Ovechkin col­lected it before snap­ping a wrist shot through traf­fic for his third goal of the postseason.

Ovechkin let out a scream that could be heard in the rafters at Madi­son Square Gar­den and cupped his glove to his ear, mock­ing a crowd that has been deri­sively chant­ing his name with eight min­utes left in every period.

“Hey, it is a big stage and a great moment for him,” Knu­ble said. “That’s why he’s our best player. He’s got to score in big times like that.”

Added Ovechkin: “The crowd pay their money and they like to yell. They are fans and they sup­port their team. I’m sure they will be yelling in Wash­ing­ton, too.”

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