Wilbon takes another shot at Ovechkin



A non-hockey fanatic friend was at my house over the weekend, when the topic of the NHL playoffs came up.

"So, have we all pretty much agreed that Sidney Crosby is better than Alex Ovechkin?" he asked.

Because I'm stubborn, I chose to rephrase the statement.

"I think if you were starting an NHL team tomorrow and you could pick any one player, you'd probably take Crosby first," I said.

Look, no matter how you phrase the thing, it hasn't really been the best 12 months for people who prefer the Ovechkin side in this silly debate. Even so, I'd be reluctant to single out a 24-year old who had just finished his fifth pro season as the symbol of individual success and team failure. Michael Wilbon, though, feels differently. This is from his latest NBA column:

If LeBron James is going to be something other than the NBA version of Alex Ovechkin, which is to say a transcendent talent who collects all kinds of individual hardware but cannot win a championship, he needs to lead his team past Boston, and he should.

Hey now! Well, James is older than Ovechkin, and has two more years as a pro, so if anything, you might want to warn Alex Ovechkin about the dangers of becoming the NHL version of LeBron James. And while Ovechkin didn't shine in Game 7, there are a few names that might be higher on the list of team problems than his. In any case, I'd prefer to turn the floor over to Bog reader Eric Fingerhut, who has a better response to my famous colleague:

"If LeBron James is going to be something other than the NBA version of Alex Ovechkin, which is to say a transcendent talent who collects all kinds of individual hardware but cannot win a championship, he needs to lead his team past Boston, and he should."



Cannot? The guy is 24 and has been in the playoffs three times and now he CANNOT lead his team to the championship? I know there's an instant gratification element to sports today that says if you don't win a championship immediately, you're a choking failure, but this is ridiculous.



Wilbon's buddy Michael Jordan took seven years to win a title. Mario Lemieux took seven. LeBron is on year seven and hasn't won one yet. Elway, who Wilbon says is one of the greatest quarterbacks ever (and I agree), didn't win a title until his final two seasons. Gretzky took five years, and his first three playoff years were eerily similar to Ovechkin (loss in first round, loss in second round, huge upset loss in first round after being winningest, highest-scoring team in the league).

The Gretzky example, of course, is the one that has been used most often in recent days. Ed Frankovic did it well over at WNST:

Reference the 1981-82 Edmonton Oilers. This Wayne Gretzky led club, after being knocked out in the first round in their initial playoff appearance in 1979-80 and then defeated in round two in the post season in 1980-81, set the league on fire scoring an NHL record 417 goals! The Oilers notched 111 points and won their division, over the Vancouver Canucks, by 34 points (sound familiar?) but somehow got bounced in a best of five series by a Los Angeles Kings club that only amassed 63 points in the regular season.....Edmonton Coach Glen Sather stayed the course, made some minor personnel tweaks (added forward Ken Linesman from Philadelphia), and in 1982-83 they went to the Finals only to lose to the Islanders. But in 1984 and 1985 they were Stanley Cup Champions and in 1987 and 1988 they did that again.

Now, did the savvy observers know that was going to happen after Gretzky's third-straight disappointing spring, which ended in the shocking upset to the Kings which sent Gretzky to the world championships in Europe? They apparently did not.

''All those goals and points Gretzky got during the season,'' said Walt Tkaczuk, the Rangers' assistant coach, in the New York Times. ''They don't mean much now.''

UPI reported that the Edmonton papers "headlined the once-heralded Oilers as chokers and quitters." And The Washington Post wrote that "The Oilers learned a valuable lesson while losing their preliminary round series to Los Angeles....[The] emphasis should be on teamwork, rather than individual statistics."

''We've taken two steps forward and one step back,'' Gretzky said in his team's defense. ''It takes a big man to face his mistakes. It takes a bigger man to correct his mistakes. We'll do that next year.''

The Los Angeles crowd repeatedly chanted "Gretzky sucks" during the series, according to The Globe and Mail, which savaged Edmonton's play in the deciding game:

At no time in last night's embarrassment did the Oilers give any indication that they realized the gravity of the situation. They repeatedly ignored the strategy devised for them by coach Glen Sather and were consistently beaten to the puck by the hungry Kings.

Even before the series was over, that paper's columnist, Al Strachan, revealed that the tough questions were already beginning:

The Oilers have been following an accepted format all year and had a great deal of success. But, when they suddenly found themselves on the short end of a 2-1 count in their National Hockey League elimination-round playoffs, the second-guessing began in earnest.



And, when the essence of a team is questioned, the uncertainty usually starts at the top before it filters down. Therefore, the two names that surfaced most frequently were the names of the two men with the highest profile in the Edmonton organization - Wayne Gretzky and Glen Sather....



It is becoming increasingly clear that, at some point, Gretzky is going to have to get into a fight. Abhorrent as it may seem to those with pacifist natures and counterproductive as it may seem to fans who simply want Gretzky to score goals, it is a law of the NHL jungle that you only back down so far before turning and attacking. It has been more than a year since Gretzky's only NHL fight....



Gretzky is a genuine superstar. When you're on a pinnacle as he is, you're highly visible. If you show the slightest flaw, everybody sees it....Hockey, like any sport, can be a brutal business. When things are going well, you can do nothing wrong. When things are going poorly, watch your back.

Co-signed, Al, co-signed.