In Alex Ovechkin’s rookie season, 2005-06, the NHL was coming out of a crippling lockout, the first time in the history of major professional sport that a league had lost an entire year to a labor dispute. It wasn’t clear in anyone’s mind what the fallout might be – and the first payroll threshold of the salary-cap era was set deliberately low, just in case the fans didn’t flock back. The good news was that the NHL welcomed two bright young talents to its ranks that year – Ovechkin, drafted first overall in 2004 by the Washington Capitals, and Sidney Crosby, drafted first overall in 2005 by the Pittsburgh Penguins.



Everything that season was predicated on new faces, and what the league anticipated would be a generational rivalry – Sid vs. Ovie. Two immense talents, one from Moscow, with a perpetually crooked grin and charming broken English; the other from Cole Harbor, N.S., the all-Canadian boy, motivated, skilled, telegenic. The NHL,...