I frequently find myself scratching my head wondering what on earth has happened with Alexander Ovechkin?

The once perennial Hart, Art Ross and Rocket Richard candidate has pretty much dropped off my radar as one of the NHL’s elite talents and is doing so in ugly fashion.

He is on pace this year for 32 goals and 30 assists for 62 points – which would be by far his worst statistical season ever. Now those aren’t terrible numbers, but for a guy you pay $US 9 million to, it is fair to say that he is underachieving, big time.  It is particularly concerning considering he scored 65 goals alone in 2007-08.

Sid and Ovi mix it up

After that season, everyone was saying how Ovi was going to score 60+ consistently and how he was the best and most dominant player in the game. Well that just isn’t and wasn’t true. (I’m going to avoid the argument of Sid vs. Ovi all together, since Sid is injured and I am sick to death of the argument… but Sid is still better)

The next couple of seasons saw his numbers take a very slight dip, and yes, he still was a top 3 player in those seasons. But after that, there has been a steady decline in his production. 32 goals and 85 points last year is respectable, but when you come to expect 50 goals and 110 points, it isn’t all that great. And this season is on pace to be worse, way worse.

Now I could be more sympathetic to Ovi if I saw some of the things in his game that I did like – like his passion and timely goals. Of last seasons meagre 32 goals, 11 were game winners at least. That is pretty good. But this season, he has just one. So not only is he not scoring a lot of goals, he isn’t scoring them when his team needs him most either.

But if he’s not scoring, what does he really bring that makes him an elite player?

Can’t be his passing…

Ovi has never been a great passer. Sure, he has thrown a few nice cross ice passes or some sauce on 2-on-1’s that seem amazing to most fans – but the fact is that most elite professional hockey players can move the puck pretty damn well at least some of the time. Most of his assists come from rebounds from one of his shots – so he’s not exactly what I would call a great playmaker.

Now here is where all the Ovi supporters would usually jump on me and say that he is out there to score goals and not pass the puck. And the famous “If you could put one player on the ice to score you a goal with one minute left who would it be? Ovechkin, no doubt.”

For a while, I would have agreed, at least in theory, with those people. Yeah, sure, if I had to put my money down on one guy to score it would obviously be the guy with the most goals in the league. But he doesn’t score every goal. And I would much rather put a guy out there who can score a timely goal, creates plays, and who makes his teammates better players.

Now, I’m not the number one Pittsburgh Penguins fan in the world, but I can’t think of two guys who do this better than Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. But there are others too. There are few people who would argue against me that Pavel Datsyuk controls play better than anyone in the NHL and is one of the best guys to have on the ice when your team needs a late goal. How about Jonathan Toews? He might not have the standout numbers Ovi had, but I would be calling nineteen before eight if they were both on my team. I might even go for a guy like Marty St. Louis, Corey Perry, or Ryan Getzlaf if I had the choice. If we are using just this season as an example, how about Claude Giroux or John Tavares, Tavares has been single-handedly keeping the Islanders in a lot of games, and winning a lot of them too.

There are some people who will attribute Ovi’s lost production over the last couple of seasons to Boudreau’s more defensively responsible system in Washington. But surely it could not have cut his goal production in half.

I think it comes down to two things; people have figured out his game, and he has a terrible attitude.

Ovi is a skilled player, but don’t shit your pants on him, as John Tortorella would say. Beyond waiting for one-timers on the power play or shooting on the rush, he doesn’t score many other ways. So players and coaches around the NHL said, “hmm, maybe we should play tighter on him on the PK so he can’t get his one timer, and step up and get a stick on him when he is rushing and about to shoot.” And voila, his goal production plummets. Of course he’ll beat you sometimes, but watch him play this year and see how many fewer one-timer opportunities he gets, and how many of his shots get blocked or deflected harmlessly wide.

Ovechkin takes a shot on the rush against Florida

You saw the same thing with Phil Kessel this year. During his tirade where he led the NHL by far in goals and points, other teams were giving him time and space to release his bullet snap shot. Finally, enough was enough and you saw Kessel getting bogged down and bottled up on the rush. He got fewer shots and his totals plateaued. Well since the All-Star break, Kessel has found new ways to score, whether it be going to the net for rebounds or tap ins, or beating players with his speed. I guess Ovi hasn’t figured out yet that he needs to change-up his game in order to keep the defenders guessing.

It also seems like he just doesn’t care all that much anymore either. I watched him play the Leafs earlier this season, and I barely noticed him on the ice. There was a time when you would know that number eight was on. He would hit you, fly around the ice, and get more pucks to the net than anyone. Gone are the end-to-end goals and explosiveness from a few years ago. Now, he seems happy just to let the game come to him.

Not only have Ovi’s numbers taken a severe hit in the past couple of seasons, but he is also doing other things that make me dislike him even more as a player and ambassador for the NHL.

His renowned physical game is downright reckless. He has been suspended three times for dangerous hits and I would suggest there would have been a few more suspensions if the Shanahan era had started a few years earlier. His most recent suspension was a clear headshot, yet no one seems to get on him too much about it for some reason.

Ovi takes a few days off instead of going to Ottawa for All-Star Weekend

And what about skipping the all-star game for a weekend away with the boys? I mean, who can blame him for wanting to see the boys, but do it at a more appropriate time. Lidstrom and Selanne asked ahead of time not to be selected, which would have been the proper thing for Ovi to do if he knew he wasn’t going to go. But what’s his reason? He isn’t injured. Lidstrom and Selanne deserve an exemption because between them they have been to 22 all-star games and are both 41-years-old.

Despite the fact that his play has been garbage this season and he doesn’t really deserve to be an all-star anyway, people still like him for some reason. (Maybe it’s because he’ll put a cowboy hat on and use two sticks like an idiot during the skills competition, but who knows) He should have done his duty and gone to all-star weekend, even if he plans to half-ass it like everyone else does anyway. The fans shouldn’t suffer because he doesn’t feel like an all-star because he took a cheap shot at someone and is having a cry about it.

The NHL has made Ovi a star. He gets paid millions of dollars and people idolize him, so why not pay it back and show up for them. He has no problem showing up for the dozens of commercials he is in, or doing a cameo in a Russian rap video. I think now that he established himself as a public figure, he would rather be a celebrity than a professional athlete; he doesn’t want to win, he wants to be famous.

Two Russian stars - I'll take the one on the left, please

Now I am not arrogant enough to say that if I were George McPhee, I would have taken someone else in 2004 entry draft (Except maybe Evgeni Malkin, who has developed into a much more rounded player). That year was pretty light on talent after Ovechkin and Malkin went 1-2. But I certainly wouldn’t have made him captain of my team and built the franchise around him – he just doesn’t have a winning attitude.

Earlier this year he called Boudreaux a “Fat Fuck,” (which may be true) because he didn’t put him on in the last-minute when they needed a push for the tie. He was having a bad game and Boudreaux recognized this and put the best players at the time on the ice. They ended up tying it up.

What kind of captain displays this terrible attitude? It’s a selfish me-first way of playing the game. A true leader does what is best for the team. If that means sitting on the bench during the final minute, then he is on the bench cheering the boys on.

I’ll just touch on the fact that his team wins their god-awful division each year (which probably helps them win the conference too, since they play the four mediocre teams in the Southeast eight times each), yet he still can’t manage to get any playoff success. We all know how that story ends.

Washington underachieves every year, and it’s not because they have a lack of talent. The success of a team reflects the leadership of the team. Maybe Ovi’s poor attitude, leadership and lack of focus are rubbing off on Semin and Backstrom, who are both struggling as well. Semin has been particularly bad, and has been a healthy scratch more than once this year.

In case you can’t figure it out, I don’t like Ovi, nor have I ever really liked him. But at least up until this season I respected his talent and passion for the game. Well that respect is gone now. I can think of a dozen players that I would build my team around before Ovechkin.

It’s just too bad for Washington that it ended up this way, because with Ovi locked up until 2020-21 at a $US 9.5 million cap hit per season, they are probably praying that he turns it around, or thinking of a way out, though I doubt there are many teams willing to take on that contract and give up the talent Washington will want in return.

But hey, I hear Montreal is willing to pay big bucks for guys who lose their scoring touch, so maybe there is hope still.