A Gr8 Skillset: Alex Ovechkin, the Ultimate All-Star

He just gets it.

The NHL’s All-Star Skills Competition takes place tonight, featuring – among many other, lesser stars – Washington’s own Alex Ovechkin, who will participate in two of the contests. One, an old favorite (and frequent landing spot for Caps’ All Stars over the years, from Al “Wild Thing” Iafrate to Tom Wilson, of all people) is the Hardest Shot competition, an event Ovechkin has previously won.

The other will be in the Breakaway Challenge – and he won’t be going it alone, as it was revealed yesterday that he would be teaming up with longtime rival and apparently friend, Sidney Crosby, for… well, we don’t know yet.

And they are not giving anything away.

“Me and him talked about it and we’ll see what’s going to happen,” Ovechkin said at the 2023 Honda NHL All-Star Game Media Day on Thursday. […]

“I’m not going to tell everything,” Ovechkin said. “If it’s going to work, I think it’s going to be pretty cool, but we’ll see.”

There are many things people can say about the NHL’s All-Star weekend; some love it, some hate it, and to each their own. But we can all probably agree that few players embody what the weekend is supposed to be, even when it falls short, and that’s a fun event for the fans, and perhaps for the players, as well. It’s a time to be goofy, let loose, and showcase everything that’s fun about the game.

He certainly always delivers, and has pretty much done so since he started attending the All-Star Game.

For one thing, this won’t be the first time Ovechkin has teamed up with one of his enemies. We all remember the iconic moment from his second All-Star game back in 2009, when he and Evgeni Malkin put together this incredible act:

There was the short-lived (but spectacular) fantasy draft, where a very… happy, let’s go with happy… Ovechkin stole the show – both times.

I mean, the man just wanted a car, NHL. Rude.

As much fun as he seems to be having, he also can straight up bring it, as we saw in his last All-Star appearance back in 2018:

Ovechkin is so much a part of the All-Star weekend that even when he’s not there, he’s there, as we saw last year when Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov put together a little homage (with the help of Evgeny Kuznetsov) to one of his childhood heroes:

The man himself approved.

So what does Ovechkin have in store for us this year, his 8th trip to the All-Star Game?

Should be fun to find out.