CollAPSe

So the Caps lost last night, and made a premature exit from the Stanley Cup playoffs in the first round. This morning on the radio, questions abounded as to the fate of Bruce Boudreau, Mike Green, and Alexander Semin. As much credit as he receives, though, I believe George McPhee deserves the lion's portion of the blame. Before the trade deadline we had the Eastern Conference all but locked up, and it was obvious that, despite our surplus of talent on offense, we had too few strong defensive players. Mike Green was the primary example of this - he consistently leads the league in points and goals for a defenseman, but his penchant for joining the forecheck leaves us vulnerable for the counterattack. Given his youth and skill, he would surely be incredibly valuable to a team that would like to score more, and ought to net us an incredibly good shot blocking zone clearing defenseman who we could match up against anybody, in the same way that Montreal matched Hal Gill against Ovechkin. This is the trade that needed to happen before the deadline, and it didn't happen. Montreal neutralized Green during the playoffs, and he cost us dearly in the last game. He had at least two penalties that I remember, one of which led to the first Montreal goal late in the third period.

The other assertion bandied about on the radio is the persistent ridiculous idea that Crosby is somehow better than Ovechkin. Aside from the first game, Ovechkin had an excellent series against Montreal, scoring what should have been the tying goal in the beginning of the third that was inexplicably washed out, and shooting the point shot on the Caps' only goal that counted. People who point to the Penguin's Cup last year make a false argument based on the premise that Crosby took his team on his back and won the Cup all by himself. Comparisons are constantly made to Jordan, but hockey is nothing like basketball. It's rare for a single player to be on the ice for even a third of a game, and rarer still to be able to point to a single player as being the sole reason a team won four games out of seven. Has Crosby ever done that? Has Ovechkin? Hard to say in either case, but it's pretty disgusting listening to sports radio personalities who didn't even know what hockey was three years ago pontificate about the finer points of the game when they truly have no insight to offer. The fact is that Crosby landed on a better team than Ovechkin with a better fanbase and a better history. The Caps are catching up to the Penguins as a franchise, but much less has been demanded of Crosby than has been of Ovechkin. The true time for the debate of these two players is after they've both retired from long fulfilling careers, not when they're still young kids. As for me, I wouldn't trade Ovechkin for Crosby in a million years - I believe he's the better player because he has a greater capacity to take the team on his back and lift the franchise as a whole. Crosby, from what I've seen of him, is little more than a role player with a quick inside shot. His list of capabilities is small, but he's very good at what he does, and the Penguins use him well. Ovechkin, on the other hand, is the type of athlete that can do it all, and is much more of a threat at any point he's on the ice.

This is turning into a rant, so I'll stop.