FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The idea of Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin voluntarily joining forces would have been unthinkable a number of years ago. But it's looking like it will be the case in the NHL's All-Star skills competition Friday night at BB&T Center.
Ovechkin said Thursday on media day that he and Crosby are in talks to team up and compete as a pair for the breakaway challenge -- the skills event in which players go through a shootout, competing to see who has the most creative moves.
"Yeah, me and him talked about it," Ovechkin said with a grin. "We'll see what's going to happen."
I asked Ovechkin which of the two came up with the idea.
"I'm not going to tell everything," he said with a shrug and another smile. "If it's going to work, I think it's going to be cool. But we'll see."
Crosby opted to not speak on media day, and will instead be available on Friday prior to the skills competition, so he wasn't available to comment on what he and Ovechkin might have planned.
When Crosby and Ovechkin came into the league together in 2005-06, the rivalry between the two was instantaneous, albeit manufactured. The two most recent No. 1 overall picks -- one the well-mannered good Canadian boy, and the other the tough Russian. Some of the best moments of the rivalry were real, though, like the dueling hat trick game in Game 2 of the 2009 Eastern Conference semifinals, when each player found the back of the net three times in a 4-3 Washington victory.
Crosby went on to lead his team to his first Stanley Cup that year, then added two more to his collection in 2016 and 2017. Ovechkin and the Capitals finally got over the hump in 2018.
As 35-year-old Crosby and 37-year-old Ovechkin have gotten older, Crosby has evolved into one of the greatest two-way players in the history of the game, while Ovechkin is arguably the greatest goal scorer in league history, chasing Wayne Gretzky's goal-scoring title.
As the two have evolved as players, so has their relationship.
"We're good friends," Ovechkin told me. "We talk to each other. If he has some milestones coming up, I'll call him or shoot him a text. The first couple of years, it was kind of a different relationship. We were young, but now we've matured."
With Crosby and Ovechkin both in their 18th NHL seasons, the two are somehow consistently neck-and-neck in career points. Ovechkin currently sits at 1,464 points (812 goals, 652 assists), while Crosby has a slight edge at 1,469 (541 goals, 928 assists). Of course, Crosby has played in 169 fewer games than Ovechkin -- over two full seasons worth of games -- as a result of injuries.
Ovechkin isn't surprised to see where he and Crosby stand in their careers after all this time.
"He's still enjoying playing hockey, I'm still enjoying playing hockey," Ovechkin said. "I think it's great for hockey, for previous generations and future generations to see the comparisons, that battle between the two of us, two organizations. It's great for the game."
While Ovechkin and Crosby have developed a friendship over the years that allows them to come together for moments like Friday's skills competition, they're still very much fierce competitors captaining their respective teams on division rivals.
Once their careers do finally both come to a close, Ovechkin is looking forward to growing that relationship the two have off the ice.
"I'm pretty sure that when me and him are going to be retired, we're going to have a couple of beers together and talk about the whole thing."
Hopefully that won't be for a number of years. The league and the sport is better for it.
MORE FROM MEDIA DAY
• Crosby will also take part in a new event added for this year's skills competition called "Splash Shot" that will take place on the beach. Four teams of two players will shoot at targets, with the last target being one that will dunk their opponents in a tank of water. The first team to dunk their opponent wins. Crosby will be teaming up with fellow Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, native Nathan MacKinnon for that one. The event was pre-filmed just prior to media day availabilities ... which might have something to do with Crosby's absence from media day.
• The skills competition is Friday at 7 p.m. In addition to the Splash Shot dunk event, the other special Florida-themed event this year is Pitch 'n Puck, with players shooting a puck/ball on a par-4 golf hole. The last new event is the Tendy Tandem with eight goaltenders working in pairs -- one shooting, one in goal. Returning events are fastest skater, the breakaway challenge, accuracy shooting, and hardest shot. Roberto Luongo will serve as a goaltender for the breakaway challenge. Women's hockey players Alex Carpenter and Hilary Knight from the U.S. and Emily Clark, Rebecca Johnston and Sarah Nurse from Canada will also participate in the skills events.
• The game is Saturday starting at 3 p.m. with a three-on-three tournament between divisions as with past years. The two Western Conference teams play first, followed by the Eastern Conference teams at 4 p.m., with the winners of each game playing for the title after. Fall Out Boy (my second-favorite band going back to when I was in middle school, if anyone was wondering) will perform at the intermission before the game. Both the skills competition and the game will be on ABC and ESPN+ in the U.S., and CBC, Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada.
• No kids doing interviews this year like with Alex Letang in 2019, but Ovechkin's son Sergei posed for pictures in his dad's podium:
TAYLOR HAASE / DKPS
Sergei Ovechkin at his dad's podium on Thursday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
