Alexander Ovechkin, the Mad Russian

Levon Biss for The New York TimesBIG STICK Unlike other hockey greats (Gretzky, Orr, Crosby), Ovechkin doesn’t speak softly off the ice.

At the Olympics in Vancouver this year, in an early-round game against Slovakia, the Russian hockey player Alexander Ovechkin toppled Zdeno Chara, the normally immovable 6-foot-9 giant

who plays defense for the Boston Bruins, like a bus knocking over a lamppost. A few nights later, early in the third period against the Czech Republic, he leveled Jaromir Jagr, the Czechs’ most famous player, with a check so hard that your teeth rattled even if you were watching on TV. Jagr crumpled like a pedestrian who had been run over at a crosswalk.

Jagr is now 38, a literal graybeard, and for the past two seasons has farmed himself out to Russia’s less-stressful professional league. But until Ovechkin ran into him, he had been playing so well in Vancouver that it was as if he had turned back the clock. He even speculated about returning to the National Hockey League when his Russian contract expired. After he was hit, Jagr was not the same player for the rest of the Games. Ovechkin didn’t apologize but told reporters he meant nothing personal by taking Jagr out. “It’s just a moment,” he explained to reporters. “If I have a chance to hit somebody, it does not matter who it is.”

The Czech captain, Patrick Elias, later told me that this particular hit was just hockey as usual and had no bearing on the outcome of the game (which the Czechs lost 4-2), but in fact it was a landmark moment, signaling a changing of the guard. Jagr, big and handsome with a huge mane of dark hair, used to be the most talented and charismatic hockey player in the N.H.L. That job is now held by Ovechkin, who is 24 and brings to it equal charm and likability, possibly even greater skill and certainly more menace. Before the Olympics began, Jagr said, laughing, that the biggest difference between them is that Ovechkin is “crazier.” Already Ovechkin is the most fascinating hockey player in the world. He has a chance to one day be reckoned one of the very best ever — if his passionate, reckless style of play doesn’t cause him to maim himself in the meantime.

Ovechkin, who plays left wing for the Washington Capitals, is 6-foot-2, 233 pounds. He has a massive brow, high cheekbones, a nose broken so often it bends permanently to the left, wide-set eyes (one closer to his nose than the other) and a goofy, gap-toothed smile. He sometimes resembles a genial caveman. Despite his appearance and history of thunderous hits, though, Ovie, as his adoring fans call him, is hardly a goon. In 2005-6, he was the N.H.L. rookie of the year, scoring 52 goals, tied for third most in the league. In the 2007-8 and 2008-9 seasons he led the league in goals, with 65 and 56, and won back-to-back M.V.P. awards. He has been at, or near, the top of the scoring chart this year and is on track for another 50-goal season.

Ovie doesn’t just score often, he scores memorably. Against Phoenix in January of his rookie year, there was what is now known simply as the Goal. Going one on one against the Coyotes’ defenseman Paul Mara, he got knocked down and landed on his back but kept the puck on the end of his stick and, as he slid backward, flung it over his head and into the net. This magical feat was viewed so often on YouTube that Caps officials estimate ticket sales went up 15 percent as a direct result. (After January 2008, when Ovechkin signed a 13-year, $124 million contract, which he negotiated himself, sales increased another 20 percent.)

There are now so many celebrated Ovie goals on YouTube that connoisseurs can argue over them like stamp collectors comparing the 1840 British Penny Black, say, with the 1868 Franklin Z-Grill. Which is better? The goal against Buffalo in December 2008, when he slipped the puck around a defender’s legs, fell and then, while sliding on his stomach, whipped a shot through the goalie’s leg pads? Or the one against Detroit in January 2009, when he dragged the puck between his own legs, faked a backhander and then drilled a shot into the top of the net? What about the stupefying goal against Montreal the following month, when, catching the Canadiens on a bad line change, Ovechkin spun 360 degrees, passed the puck to himself off the boards, got knocked on his side and while skidding across the goal mouth lifted a shot over the goalie’s outstretched leg? Against the New York Rangers in early February, he scored a one-hander, pushing the puck between the skates of the defenseman Michal Rozsival, picking it up on the other side and then stabbing it with one arm past the Rangers’ goalie, Henrik Lundqvist.

You can’t really practice moves like these, though in idle moments at the Capitals’ practice rink, on the top floor of a parking garage in Arlington, Va., Ovechkin sometimes seems to be working on them. He likes to scoop the puck up with his stick, bounce it off the blade a few times and then bat it, baseball style, into the net or else flip it backhand over his shoulder. For all his sliding acrobatics, Ovechkin is even more effective, if less spectacular, when he stays on his feet. He is such a powerful skater that he can cover the distance from the blue line to the goal in just a couple of strides, and scores a lot of goals simply by barreling down the left side, dangling the puck for an instant, the way Mark Messier used to, and then snapping off a wrist shot that is one of the hardest in the game. Ovechkin scores a lot because he shoots a lot, firing away more often than anyone has since the days of Phil Esposito.

Charles McGrath, a former editor of The Book Review, is a writer at large for The New York Times.

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