USA TODAY Sports reporter and amateur goalie A.J. Perez got an opportunity to face off against NHL star Alex Ovechkin. USA TODAY Sports
ARLINGTON, Va. — The defiant competitor in me wanted to chirp at Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin.
“Hey, Alex, how many Stanley Cup Finals have you been to?” a line I came up with and told a few friends. “I’ve been to 11.”
Granted, I knew it would be bad form to do so for this project, completed in November 2016: A beer-league goalie (me) vs. Ovechkin (the greatest scorer of his generation whose shots can exceed 100 mph).
And now that Ovechkin has had the most dominant playoff performance of his career —13 goals and 24 points— and the Capitals are in the Stanley Cup Final for the second time in the franchise's 44-year history, Ovechkin could have the last laugh. The Capitals will play Game 3 against the expansion Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday night.
Really, the jokes I conjured were a coping mechanism and a way for me to feel — in my head at least — somewhat tough in the net.
“He shoots hard, but on a day-to-day basis, I think he’s respectful (in practices),” Capitals director of goaltending Mitch Korn said. “He understands that his shot can kill you, and if he’s going to kill anybody, it won’t be a teammate."
Ovechkin began playing organized ice hockey at 8, and by 16, he was already playing in Russia’s highest professional league. I was a junior at San Jose State when I first played hockey.
But the beer leagues in the Bay Area, Southern California and Northern Virginia didn’t prep me for facing this guy.
Ovechkin, nice at first, flung his first couple of shots at me. I stayed at the top of the crease like you’re supposed to, trying not to give him much net to shoot at.
“So, now harder, or no?” Ovechkin asked.
Ovechkin told us afterward he was going at “60% intensity,” about how hard he shoots in practice.
I could tell his shots didn’t have the same pop as fans are used to seeing during games, especially in these playoffs as he's in the mix for the Conn Smythe, awarded to the playoff MVP.
Ovechkin was done firing slap shots, and now it was time for his trademark one-timers from the circle to my right. This is Ovechkin’s favorite spot to shoot and where he's scored a good amount of his 607 career regular-season goals and many of his 59 career postseason goals. The latest playoff strike came in Game 2 as the Caps evened the series with the franchise's first Stanley Cup Final victory (3-2) on Wednesday.
The last one-timer came in the Caps' Game 7 victory over Tampa Bay Lightning last week. Evgeny Kuznetsov shuffled the puck over to the waiting Ovechkin, who blasted it past Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy about a minute in as the Capitals eased to a 4-0 victory.
Shockingly, I stopped a few — one with my face. Ovechkin apologized, but this was my badge of honor.
The one-timers gassed me, and now it was time for breakaways.
Sadly, I didn’t have much left, and this is where it became clear that most of my goalie “instruction” came from watching Dominik Hasek, the 2014 Hall of Fame inductee whose unconventional style of strategic flailing appealed to me.
I stopped one of Ovechkin's breakaways. I'm convinced it was because Ovechkin had no idea why I was lying across the crease as he skated in.
As we finished, I thanked Ovechkin for the opportunity and asked for an assessment of my play.
“Not that good, obviously,” Ovechkin replied. “But it’s OK.”
