Collection Cornerstones - Ovechkin!

Alex Ovechkin appears from my vantage point to be one of the more polarizing modern athletes in all of sports.  Despite being one of the premier goal-scoring snipers in the National Hockey League for more than a decade now, it seems that he's got two detractors for every one fan.

Well, you can count me as one who's been impressed watching Ovechkin ply his trade over the first 13 years of his NHL career.  As the Capitals were plowing their way through the playoffs this year, and it became apparent that they were going to mow down the storybook Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup Final with relative ease, I decided it was time to make a play for the one card of "The Great 8" that I've always desired.  I have a feeling now that he got the championship monkey off his back, if he continues to score at the rate that he most likely will for the next few seasons his better cards may be unattainable for me years down the line, so I pounced.

Behold!

Pretty psyched with this solid new addition to my hockey collection.  The 2005-06 Upper Deck flagship set is home to two of the more significant hockey cards of the last couple of decades.  The first, Sidney Crosby's Young Guns RC, remains a pipe dream for me, but it's nice to have finally landed a copy of the other here.

I don't particularly care that the card is graded, but since it's impossible to find these for less than triple digits these days and I was buying online sight unseen I did want to ensure that my copy wasn't going to show up with any surprise "dings" or anything of that nature.

Here's a better look at it.  I don't collect the guy by any means, and honestly with this in hand I don't feel the need to ever acquire another Ovi card again.  Some athletes are just such standouts at their particular sport that I feel compelled to add one awesome card of theirs to my collection even though they don't play for a team I root for or "fit" my collection in any significant way.  This is certainly one such card.

Since PSA-slabbed card backs scan so poorly on my scanner I grabbed this image from the internet.  Little brighter and more contrasted than my scan, but you get the point.

Back to the point about Ovechkin being polarizing, if you know something I don't certainly leave a comment.  As best I can tell his lack of fans compared to his contemporaries like Crosby might be a result of a combination of a variety of factors including the fact that he's from Russia, has been a bit of a show-boater at times (though I question whether he's really any worse than most NHL players these days in that respect), doesn't play good defense, and has never led the Caps to a Cup.

All I know is, the guy can straight up put the puck in the net.  There haven't been many players in the history of the league not named Gretzky, Bossy or Hull who have been able to score as frequently and as consistently as Alex has over the first 13 seasons of his career.  He's already sitting on 607 goals, good for 19th all-time, and at just 32 years old.  Barring a major injury he'll move up another handful of spots on that list next year, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could reach top 5 all-time or even higher!

As far as the defense goes, he'll never win a Selke, but I do have to give the man at least some credit for improvement there.  After all, this past playoff season, where play is so tight and every goal is so huge, Ovechkin recorded 27 points in 24 games and finished a +8.  And he wasn't such a defensive liability that he prevented Washington from winning The Cup.  To the contrary, he was a big part of the reason they finally won, as his Conn Smythe Trophy attests to.

If you're a hockey fan, what's your opinion of Ovechkin?  I'd love to hear from you whether you agree with me or not, after all these types of debates are one of the many things that make sports so great...