Even in 2025, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin still run the NHL

If you're a newer hockey fan - say within the last five to six years - you've been spoonfed your fair share of Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, and others as you worked your way into hockey fandom.

Yet, in the year of our Lord, 2025, it's still the likes of Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin stealing the show by etching their name in history.

Living Legends

Today, Alex Ovechkin broke Wayne Gretzky's NHL goal record - a mark thought to be impossible to beat. In a way only sports can script, Ovechkin did it in the same amount of games as The Great One. Here's the goal in case you haven't seen it yet.

This is one of the great moments in NHL history. Absolutely ripped right from the spot he's scored so many goals over the last two decades. And the celly - electric.

Perhaps you have, but I struggle to comprehend 895 goals scored in the NHL in an era where scoring goals has never been more difficult. Penguins bias aside, Ovechkin is the greatest pure goal scorer in NHL history. (He's not the best player, though. That'll be a conversation for another day.)

Meanwhile, with much less fanfare, Sidney Crosby quietly broke Wayne Gretzky's point-per-game seasons record. With his goal against the Buffalo Sabres at the end of March, Sid now stands alone with 20 consecutive point-per-game seasons - a mark that will likely never be broken.

Crosby and Ovechkin have been staples in the NHL for literally 20 years now. Both came into the league in 2005 and immediately took over. While Ovi won the Calder over Crosby that season, Crosby got the best of him in 2009 on the way to a Stanley Cup - something he'd do several more times.

The rivalry was sparked long before their first playoff meeting, but it would be far from the last time. One of my favorite pieces of NHL media was this commercial from the dawn of their careers.

The NHL needs to get back to this type of marketing. Their old commercials used to be the best. They showed off the personalities of their biggest stars, and therein lies the reason why the stars of today will never live up to the legacies of Crosby and Ovechkin.

Marketable Stars

Ovechkin was the star of the show in this commercial, and he probably had to be force-fed his English lines at this point. It took him some time to learn English, yet he delivered his lines perfectly.

Even though Crosby is a quieter individual, you can see his willingness to participate in the commercial even in just his one-liner at the very end.

Over time, both of them got into select portions of marketing media and continued to show their face to fans around the NHL.

Tell me, if you just lost the Stanley Cup Final in Game 7, would you show your face in a commercial, mourning your loss? Sidney Crosby did.

And the best part?

"I never want to be in this photograph again..."

And he never was.

The only pictures Crosby has been in since this commercial have been with the Stanley Cup above his head. You want to talk about legendary? That's legendary.

This is a more somber piece of marketing media, but an effective one. It shows the other side of victory. The reality is that when one team wins, another team loses. It shows the humanity of live sports. Where one side enjoys glorious victory, the other mourns crushing defeat.

Now here's where I'm going to segue into why Sid and Ovi's stardom still far outweighs that of our younger stars in the NHL today.

Lack of Humanity

Connor McDavid is the next in line to be his generation's greatest hockey player. He has all the tools, skills, and drive to be mentioned among the likes of Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin by the time his career is over.

However, much to the NHL's chagrin, Connor McDavid does not have the marketable personality that Crosby and Ovechkin had.

Let's compare Crosby and McDavid for a moment. Both are Canadian superstars. Both were drafted number one overall with ridiculous amounts of hype leading up to their draft. Both immediately took the NHL by storm. And perhaps most similarly, both had very quiet personalities.

The difference, though, is that Crosby worked on his outward face. He willingly featured in commercials, as we saw, but also his coverage in the locker room was real, or even the team plane.

Crosby's biggest selling point was that he was still a kid, and this kid just happened to be the greatest NHL player the league had seen since Mario Lemieux.

Here he is playing the PlayStation Portable with teammates on a flight. This is what kids do. For as much as Crosby worked on his craft, he still allowed himself to have a personality and still live the life of a boy in his late teens and early 20's.

Kids like video games, and Crosby didn't break that mold. For other young hockey players who also owned a PSP, they could see this and say, "Wow, he's just like me," and be able to relate to an all-time great.

The biggest difference we see with Connor McDavid, the current face of the NHL, is that he doesn't have that type of personality. All McDavid wants is to play hockey, which is equally true of Crosby, but it's to the point where you have to wonder if McDavid does or even thinks about anything else.

Now, being committed to your craft isn't a knock. In fact, it's a noble pursuit. But McDavid is Example A of this generation's stars lacking marketability. Their personalities are all hockey.

Working back to Alex Ovechkin for a moment, his personality is incredibly different from both Crosby and McDavid. He's often seen minutes after games at bars partying with the masses, sometimes also playing soccer back in Russia.

I don't necessarily condone that type of personality. I think there are better things one could be doing. But at the same time, have we ever seen Connor McDavid in public anywhere? All these young Canadian hockey stars, have we ever seen them at a non-hockey sporting event?

My point is that McDavid and his peers aren't helping the NHL grow like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin did (and even continue to do in 2025).

On the ice, Sid and Ovi are almost into their 40's and still playing on pace with the youngsters in the game. Ovechkin broke his leg and scored 40 goals this year. Crosby is playing on a sucky Penguins team and is still 6th in the NHL in even-strength points.

Now, Sid and Ovi are the grandparents of the NHL, but they're proving that even at the end of their careers, they're just as inspirational (if not more) than the young stars of the game.

Those 2000's commercials showed the humanity of the game's stars. Crosby is just a Canadian kid. Ovechkin is just a Russian glutton. Yet both will go down as two of the greatest players to ever play the game.

Kids these days can't hold onto the humanity of McDavid and company because they don't present themselves as human. Kids don't want to emulate robots, they want to emulate real people - people they relate to.

Crosby and Ovechkin have been the realest people for 20 years now, and that's why their impact is still being felt even in the big 2025.

Man, where did the time go?