Today in the Washington Post, Tom Boswell gets around to noticing what hockey fans have known for a couple of months now -- that Alex Ovechkin is the real deal:
To Ovechkin, what he does on the ice seems simple and yet slightly inexplicable. With time, his English will continue to improve. But perhaps no words, including his own, will ever entirely explain what he tries to do or why he does it. That gift for creativity, for the unexpected, is the future of the Capitals in a nutshell. If the franchise can find players who can complement Ovechkin -- making him better even as he makes them better -- then this season's ugly 18-27-5 record will be remembered fondly as a time when great things were first glimpsed. Ovechkin is that good.
We know, we know, we know. Still, it's nice to see the paper's top columnist acknowledge what's happening on the rink these days.
UPDATE: When I first read the Post story on yesterday's game, an ad for Caps tickets was running that included an Ovechkin highlight reel.
POSTSCRIPT: It seems like a lot of folks picked up on the comment I first heard at Gary Bettman's speech at the National Press Club last Fall. It was then that the MC for the event mentioned that it was generally acknowledged that the Post had cut back its coverage of the team.
Well, it was more than just that. In fact, on most mornings earlier this season, you'd find articles on the Caps buried deep inside the Sports section. But now that Ovechkin has caught fire, the quantity of the coverage and its placement has increased. Further, that comment on coverage was never an indictment of the work of Caps beat writer Tarik el-Bashir, who's been solid throughout the season.
