Alexander the Great?

In an exhibition game last Friday, he scored four points -- three goals and an assist. The next night, he got a goal and two assists. In another game, opponents held him four times, giving the Capitals power-play opportunities. He has been the obvious talent that made scouts' hearts pound through their sweaters.

But playing on a lesser team than Pittsburgh's more ballyhooed rookie Sidney Crosby, this year's top choice, Ovechkin will experience the greater burden, and his individual stats may be less impressive. The Penguins have surrounded their prospect, no doubt to his benefit, with an array of stars, Lemieux being the brightest. One day recently, about 20 cameras were clicking Crosby during a Penguins practice.

A full-page photo of "Kid Crosby" appears in the October Vanity Fair with the pronouncement that he is "the game's best prospect in 20 years."

Ovechkin has been preparing in comparative solitude. But he certainly knows what he wants (with no apology to Crosby).

"I want to be rookie of the year," he said.

Physically, Ovechkin is the ideal attacker at 6 feet 2, 212 pounds, built like a building, although anything but stationary. A powerful right-handed shooter from the left wing, he also can dip his shoulder and accelerate toward the net literally in the time a defender can move a muscle. Ovechkin possesses the gift of instinct bestowed only on the great ones -- he can anticipate where the action will be and get there ahead of it.

Yet Ovechkin, who helped lead Moscow Dynamo to the Russian Super League title last year, has come to the United States with fewer guarantees than he already had in his homeland. For someone like him, coming to America is not necessarily what it was a generation ago. Back then, it meant freedom to breathe the air. It meant astounding wealth immediately. Then, if an athlete defected from a communist country, it was big news; in the United States, some saw it as more evidence that our way of life was better than their way of life.

For the athlete, it was a dream come true.

It's not nearly the same, of course, in 2005. There was money to be made where Ovechkin was, plenty of it.

After Dynamo won its title, league rival Avangard, in Omsk, signed him to a deal that reportedly would have earned him significantly more than he will make in his first three years in the NHL. Ovechkin is said to have passed up a guaranteed minimum of at least $1.8 million plus bonuses, tax-free, this season in Omsk when he exercised an out clause in that contract to sign for three years with the Capitals. With them he will be guaranteed a comparatively modest (as athletes' salaries go) $984,200 per year, the NHL's new maximum base salary for a first-year player. Performance incentives -- ones he realistically can achieve -- could boost his season's gross to $1.7 million or so. At best, though, the NHL for Ovechkin means a pay cut.

Obviously then, there's still magic in coming to America. It's still where plenty of things are happening. And it's cool to be in a place where something's happening. And for a hockey player, that still means the NHL.

Golden Genes

Ovechkin comes by his athletic skills honestly. His mother Tatiana is the most decorated athlete in the family. She won the Olympic gold medal twice in basketball for the Soviet Union, in 1976 and 1980, and is now president of Dynamo's women's basketball team.