from Larry Brooks of the NY Post, So I look at Alex Ovechkin’s pedestrian numbers and forget the seven goals and 14 points in the first 17 games. The one that leaps off the page as most pertinent and most inexplicable is the 18:43 of ice time per game that as of Friday ranked — get this — 67th in the league among forwards who have played at least 10 games.
Then I hear Bruce Boudreau, the coach responsible for that astounding stat, talk about how using four lines makes the Capitals a better team and my thoughts turn to Al Arbour, who back in the day cut Mike Bossy’s minutes so he could get Hector Marini on the ice more often, but wait, no, that didn’t happen, and of course that didn’t happen, are you crazy?
Unless Ovechkin simply is not in good enough condition at the age of 26 to play approximately the 23:03 a match he averaged over the course of the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons during which he was the NHL’s most electrifying athlete, then limiting his ice time so people such as Co...
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November 18, 2011
