Nicklas Backstrom, Interrupted
Raise a glass for Ovechkin's classy but soft spoken partner. He's earned it.
Let’s say you’re an 18-year old professional hockey prospect. The scouts tell you that not only do you have the talent and drive to play in the National Hockey League (NHL), the premier professional league in the world, they think you’ve got what it takes to be one of the best players in the the game.
Then they say that they know how it’s all going to turn out. You’ll play more than 1,000 games, a career milestone that marks you as a player who maintained an elite level of performance when an average career lasts less than half that long. You’ll tally more than 1,000 points, a landmark that’s associated with admittance to The Hockey Hall of Fame. You’ll win a Stanley Cup for the team that drafts you and two World Ice Hockey Championships and a silver medal in the Winter Olympics for Sweden.
Along the way you’ll meet the woman of your dreams and have three children with her. There will be other tremendous relationships you’ll have on the ice, but none better than the one you’ll enjoy with a hockey player that has a chance to become the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL. Over time, you’ll assist on so many of his goals that the two of you will become synonymous with one another.
But there’s a catch, they say. While you’ll achieve all of these great things, it will come at a cost. Over the years, your body is going to break down. Slowly at first, but then all at once. One morning, you’ll turn to the team trainers you’ve been working with all of your adult life and tell them that your body isn’t bouncing back the way it used to. You’re an ice hockey player and a man with high standards, and you know that you can’t perform to those standards anymore on the ice right now.
And that’s when you’ll tell your friends that after 16+ seasons playing at the highest level of the game in the world, that you need to step away for a little while and assess where you stand, even though you still yearn to play as much as you did the first time you laced up your skates as a child. But in your heart, though you won’t say it in public just yet, you fear that you’ve skated your last shift. What’s worse, if and when your best friend has a chance to step into the record books, you may have to watch that moment from a distance instead of celebrating it with him on the ice.
Would you take that deal? Yes you would. I’ve outlined an incredible career, one that would provide you with riches and allow you the time to decide what to do with the rest of your life while taking care of your family. What a blessing it would be.
Despite all of that success and joy, it wouldn’t make the moment you are forced to step away any less painful. Which is why all over the DMV, thousands of Washington Capitals fans feel absolutely gutted for Nicklas Backstrom, the second best player in the history of the franchise whose talent and skills often flew under the radar across the NHL. He announced yesterday that his surgically resurfaced hip wasn’t responding the way he thought it should eight games into the NHL season, and as a result, he would take some time away from the game to assess his future.
There will come a time when the Capitals will have a night to honor Backstrom’s career and they’ll roll a brilliant video of its highlights. That night will come, but not for a while. What will come first will be a home tilt tonight vs. the New York Islanders, one that I hope Backstrom will be watching from a box with his family. And if they put his picture on the scoreboard, it would be great if the home fans called down the thunder of the Norse gods for St. Nick when he needs to hear it the most.
NICK-LAS BACK-STROM!
CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP
NICK-LAS BACK-STROM!
Lather, rinse and repeat. He’s earned it. Don’t let him down.