The NHL All-Star Shame

Look, Crosby is an exceptional talent at just 21 years old. In his second season, he became the first teenager to lead a major sports league in scoring and the youngest to ever be a team captain. A prodigy from childhood, Crosby's first biography appeared on bookshelves his rookie season -- at 17. Boyishly handsome, he is indeed Canada's own. Every time he scores you could almost hear Don Cherry proudly intoning, "What a fine, young North American boy."

Ovechkin, meanwhile, is tied for second in goals scored and coming off a season in which he outshone Crosby at the All-Star Game and became the first player since his countryman Pavel Bure to score more than 60 goals in a season. He is authentic adrenaline once he hops the boards and hydroplanes toward the net. Most nights there are the rushes Ovechkin takes part in during a game -- 24 minutes of pulsating, anything-can-happen hockey. Then there's the game's other 36 minutes.

Again, Crosby is a very nice player, one of the most gifted youngsters in the game. Ovechkin is Sputnik on ice. It's safe to make an argument that he's the best team player in North American sports at the moment -- and it's a flat-out crime that he's a backup at the league's all-star game.

"He's on my team, so of course I'm going to say that," Boudreau said. "I'm betting you Michel Therrien thinks Malkin and Crosby, that the Cavs' coach thinks it's LeBron and that Phil Jackson thinks it's Kobe. You can go on and on -- David Ortiz with the Red Sox.

"Is he the best? That's up to speculation and anybody can guess. I think everybody knows. Every town we go into, everybody is talking about Alex Ovechkin. So I've got to believe he's pretty well known out there. Should he be the poster boy? I don't know. There's a few to choose from."

The NHL and NBC have made their decision. Just call up the "Game of the Week" commercial on YouTube. If the Caps were playing the Penguins on Sunday, it would essentially be billed as Sid the Kid vs. Alex the Ogre.

Did we mention the attention the NHL has been getting lately is for Crosby punching a player in the groin during a scrum, a guy biting an enforcer's finger and Ottawa and Buffalo swapping haymakers? In a world of mixed martial arts submissions, Gary Bettman still tips his hat to the notion that violence sells almost as much as pretty boys from Pittsburgh.

Between voting and marketing, you see what's happening, don't you? Cherry's xenophobia is spreading south, to a provincial North American city near you, where they love how Sidney Crosby looks, how he plays and where he's from.

And they barely tolerate the fact that Alex Ovechkin is better.