Early next week the Caps take on the Penguins in a nationally televised game on Versus. The battle between one club attempting to take control of their division and one club crawling back into the playoff hunt is a sideshow next to the confrontation between the One Hundred Million Dollar Man and Our Lord and Savior, Sidney Crosby.

Alexander Ovechkin certainly received a decent, if not fair, share of national media coverage before his new contract (though most was on the subject of why he should leave Washington) and subsequent coverage has been fitting his new status as NHL high-roller. Versus has done a good job covering #8's new contract and the entire Washington situation.

As much attention as Ovechkin rightly receives for his play, it's a shame he still remains a tier below Gretzky Reborn on Versus and NBC. 8 and 87 broke into the league the same year and their fortunes will be forever tied, assuming neither flames out in a few years. Rather than focus on the rivalry (for Washington has no love for Pittsburgh and I can only imagine it goes the other way as well) Versus chose to hitch all of their reins to Crosby and ride him all the way to semi-relevance.

So far the Crosby alliance has worked well for all parties involved. Crosby has continued to meet and exceed expectations and the NHL is the better for it. Still, he's too young and too Canadian to re-secure that spot on Sportscenter himself. The most over-cliche cross-sport comparison with hockey is that of Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. Versus, NBC and the NHL would do well to remember another great NBA moment: Bird and Magic.

When you have multiple young, charismatic, supremely-talents players on similarly explosive trajectories, the worst thing you can do is promote one at the expense of others. Certainly Ovechkin and the Staals and other young guns show up in national tv spots and promotional material. Nevertheless, the NHL and Versus would do well to focus on the surfeit of young talent in the league in the coverage leading up to the All-Star Game. Crosby is only one of 11 All-Stars aged 25 or under.

It's easy to focus on Sidney Crosby and declare Pittsburgh the center of the hockey universe. A more productive long-term strategy would be to promot the vast size of the hockey universe and emphasize the quality of play throughout the league, not just inside the Mellon Arena.


DEEP THOUGHTS
-Someone at ESPN should buy Barry Melrose a pronunciation guide so he can stop butchering Antero Niittymaki's name.
-Peter Forsberg. Teemu Selanne. Ricky Williams?
-Just watched a couple tv pundits describe Bud Selig's new contract extension as a reward for taking the steps to restore the sanctity of the game of baseball. If only we could all get rewarded for investigating our own oversights.