Duff’s notebook: How do you stop a problem like Ovechkin?

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discusses the Red Wings’ attempts to stop Alex Ovechkin from lighting up the scoresheet this evening:

Certainly, McDavid and Ovechkin present a challenge to opposing defensive structure. However, each is a unqiue challenge all its own.

“They’re different, him and Connor McDavid,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “Connor McDavid, you have to be aware of his speed. You have to really start defending him in the O-zone.

The Detroit Red Wings are going from Connor McDavid to Alex Ovechkin. Is that out of the frying pan and into the fire, or vice versa?

“Where I think with Alex, it’s more once you enter your own zone you have to know where he’s at on the ice all of the time. You can’t give him a millisecond, or otherwise he’s getting his shot off and every shot has a chance to go in.”

In 28 career games against the Red Wings, Ovechkin has netted 20 goals. He scored in his first career game against the Red Wings on December 9, 2005. Ovi also netted a tally in their most recent meeting on October 27th.

Continued

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.