TORONTO — Everyone remembers Raymond Bourque with Colorado in 2001 and Lanny McDonald with the Flames in 1986, but there haven’t been all that many marquee, late-in-life, first-time Cup winners. Certainly there haven’t been many narrative-changers.
But Alex Ovechkin’s 2018 championship, following years of coming up short in the tournament — and for at least a decade in essentially every high-end competition that included Sidney Crosby — not only changed the narrative for him and his franchise, he is playing as if the spring elevated him into an exclusive club of Cup-winners where only members know the secret.