New Year 2024 has already reached all corners of the Earth , and at the same time the time of big hockey returned just in time. In honor of this, the National Hockey League has already held a “Winter Classic” match, but this event, if anything impressed, was a little bit due to its surroundings, scope and off-ice events. The game itself was not memorable and went its own way, without touching anyone.
A full game day, which included as many as 13 matches, among which some meetings especially stood out long before the starting face-off, helped to truly quench the appetite for top-level hockey, and not literally. Naturally, this applies to a greater extent to truly classic confrontations in the recent history of the NHL — the Pittsburgh Penguins against the Washington Capitals, Sidney Crosby against Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin against Evgeni Kuznetsov. Head-to-head matches of these teams always attract a lot of attention, regardless of their tournament position and playing status, although there is something to talk about.
Washington and Pittsburgh already faced each other at the start of the season, and that match ended in a convincing victory for the Penguins in the US capital, and Evgeni Malkin participated in all four of his team's goals, scoring one goal and making three assists. Almost three months have passed since then. By their new meeting, which took place this time in Pittsburgh, Washington had a series of four defeats, but Alexander Ovechkin ended 2023 with a goal, and the Caps themselves secured a position in the top 8 of the East. The Penguins, on the other hand, were riding a three-game winning streak, in which Malkin scored 4 points (3+1) and moved up to clear second place on the list of the best Russian snipers in NHL history, ahead of the great Sergei Fedorov, but remained in the bottom half conference standings.
The Capitals, wanting to break their losing streak, start the year with a victory and at the same time get even for the humiliation at the start of the season, from the very first minutes of the match began to beat the Penguins in front of their own fans. The Capitals were better in everything in the debut: in shots, in play, in puck possession and, finally, in scoring. By the middle of the period, Washington was winning 3:0 and forced Mike Sullivan to replace the goalkeeper. The appearance of Alex Nedeljkovic instead of Tristan Jarry, however, did not help: Alexander Ovechkin upset him too, scoring shortly before the break. Thus, Nedeljkovic wrote his name in history as the 172nd goalie in the NHL to miss a goal against a Russian goalscorer.
It seemed that the intrigue died there. 4:0 at the end of the first period — what's there to catch? But there was something.
Even before the break, the Penguins won one goal back, and then completely reduced the gap in the score to a minimum. Ovechkin's main opponent in the NHL, Sidney Crosby, also scored a goal. The two players who, according to the Caps' all-time leader, saved the entire league, scored a puck in the same head-to-head game for the first time in the last five seasons. Crosby also added an assist to this goal, scoring his 1540th career point in the NHL championships. Now the Canadian is in clear 12th place on the list of the league's all-time top scorers.
Pittsburgh did everything to make a spectacular comeback. Even in the second period, their advantage in shots on target was twofold, and in the third 20 minutes the game was entirely in the possession of the Capitals, who only managed to fight back — both with equal strength and in the minority. Evgeni Malkin alone used a huge number of attempts and showed the best result in the match in terms of the number of shots on target (6), but he was unable to beat Darcy Kuemper. Gino was content with just an assist, but he wanted more. Because of such disappointment, Evgeny almost entered into a fist fight with his opponent, but limited himself to a choke hold against Nick Dowd.
In the end, 4:3 — Alexander Ovechkin's goal allowed Washington to break the series of defeats and at the same time became 126 for the Russian — winning NHL championships in his career. There are 9 winning goals left before Jaromir Jagr's record in this ranking. The main and well-known peak, which Wayne Gretzky still holds, is 64 goals away. Ovi scored three times in the last six matches, and this suggests that this distance will be reduced more than once in the coming months.
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