I will give you an argument. You are not the best player at anything until you can win a Championship. Just ask Michael Jordan. He is the greatest at his sport. For hockey, look to Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Mario Lemieux, and guys like Evgeni Malkin or Sidney Crosby.

You may not like any of these names or their teams but they all have one thing the Washington Capitals and Alex Ovechkin do not have….a Stanley Cup Championship! That makes you great.

I’m going to have to disagree with that. What makes someone physically exhausting to play against is how hard they make you work and how hard someone makes you work when you’re trying to score goals isn’t so much a function of how often they hit you as it is a function of how good they are at preventing opposing players from scoring. Having to endlessly work to get an inch of productive space or to forecheck relentlessly to even have a to create something is what wears a team out, and in my experience it does it more effectively than hitting.

The most active hitters in the NHL only hit 2-3 times a game. Now if they can lay a big hit on you, maybe that serves as a deterrent but the odds of it making a substantial difference when it comes to physically exhausting someone aren’t that big. Contrast that with a team that cycles effectively, forechecks hard, and keeps possession of the puck. If the other guys are in control of the game and you’re forced to chase them around it takes a toll on you every single shift, and that does a lot more to wear out a team than a 20% of being hit one more time does. Because of that, for me what always determined how difficult a defense was to play against was how well they cleared the zone, kept the puck in my team’s end, disrupted passing lanes, kept pressure on in the offensive zone, and so on. In short how effective a player was at keeping the puck away from the high scoring areas in their own end always seemed to make up about 95% of what made them easy or difficult to play against. After all, the vast majority of NHLers will take a hit to make a play and you can’t hit someone if you can’t catch them.

Personally I think most of the onus for wearing down the opponent falls on the forwards. Defensive is inherently reactive; attack is inherently proactive. The defensemen can only react to what the opposition gives them, while the offense can dictate the pace of the game by doing things like dumping the puck in and forcing the other team to retrieve it. Plus hitting will often take you out of position and that’s luxury defensemen don’t have. You can be a foot or two out of position behind the opponent’s net and it’s not a big deal – the same can’t be said of your offensive end. Honestly I feel like there’s no excuse for offensive players not to be hitting because they’re the ones whose game allows them to go out and seek contact whereas defensemen have to pick their spots and take what’s given to them.

And what are all the whiners going to whine about when this team does get a big toughguy defender and it doesn’t help at all?

Capitals forwards have committed more penalties in the offensive zone than in the defensive zone (25 to 21). I don’t know what part of the when during the game those penalties were taken though. With a little research this may completely support your post if those defensive zone penalties are taken in the third period. But I doubt it, how often are we cursing at forwards taking stupid penalties in the offensive zone in the third?

Not sure about Caps leading in 2nd period every game though… there was the 3-2 OT win on Long Island in which Caps overcame 2-0 deficit…