- Brooks Laich spent 11 seasons next to Alex Ovechkin in Washington
- Laich said early-career Ovechkin competed at a level even Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon never matched
- Read below for the wild Douglas Murray story and the full Empty Netters video
Brooks Laich is putting early-career Alex Ovechkin in a competitive class of his own.
The former Capitals forward spent 11 seasons next to Ovi in Washington. During a guest spot on the Empty Netters podcast with Nate Thompson, Laich said no one in his era, not even Sidney Crosby, could match what The Great Eight brought to the rink in his prime.
“The thing that he does have, I’ll wage war on this, he could compete at a level that no other guy could. Even Crosby, even MacKinnon now. I was so close to him, too, we’re teammates, so you see the f***ing fire in his eyes. He had just ferocity in his eyes, and he could kill you. He could go through you, around you, however you wanted to play it, he could play it.”
Catch the full podcast video here:
Laich then walked through one specific memory from a road trip out in San Jose. Ovechkin and Sharks defenseman Douglas Murray, all six-foot-three, 240 pounds of him, kept finding each other late in the third period of a 3-2 Caps loss.
“Remember Douglas Murray? San Jose Sharks. He was a fridge on skates. Him and Ovi had, we lost the game, I think, 3-2 in San Jose or something, but there’s one night, they had four full tilt collisions in the last 40 seconds. Just f***ing cause. I remember seeing Ovi do that and just go, ‘This guy is amazing.’”
That was Ovechkin in his late twenties. 65 goals one season, 56 the next, and a habit of lowering the boom on anybody wearing the wrong color. Watch the highlight video for proof:
Now 40 years old and just past his five-year, $47.5 million contract, Ovechkin sits at 929 career goals, 758 assists, and 1,573 NHL games played across 21 seasons, all in Washington. He’s said he plans to decide on his NHL future this summer.
What hasn’t changed is the way teammates talk about him. Laich isn’t the first ex-Cap to describe Ovi as a guy who pulled the rest of the room into a fight every shift. He just put the cleanest words to it.
