While Crosby and Ovechkin still shine, Evgeni Malkin is quietly fading away

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PITTSBURGH — The era that began after the 2004-05 NHL lockout will always start with Sid and Ovi, and justifiably so.

Nobody won more in that era than Sidney Crosby, and nobody scored more goals than Alex Ovechkin. Nobody filled arenas like these two legends, both of whom have left an indelible mark on the sport and who will be compared to one another until the end of time. The NHL was in a bad place in 2005 because of a boring product, a league stuck in the Stone Age and a damaging lockout.

Crosby and Ovechkin largely saved the NHL. There is no debate.

But let’s not forget Evgeni Malkin’s contributions.

It’s perfectly fitting that Malkin’s final seasons in the NHL are being largely overlooked. It’s always been this way. We call him Mr. 101, after all. The reality is that Malkin isn’t close to what he once was. Both Crosby and Ovechkin have aged far better. Ovechkin is 39, and while he isn’t the same force that bulldozed the NHL from the moment he arrived in 2005, he is still doing what he’s paid to do at a staggeringly efficient level. Crosby is 37 and, remarkably, at his age, remains one of the NHL’s 10 best players.

Malkin, meanwhile, looks every bit of his 38 years on some nights. He’s out with an injury, and his statistics are a far cry from his Hall-of-Fame standards. Through 62 games this season, Malkin has 15 goals and 46 points, and while those numbers are hardly shameful, Malkin is undeniably in decline.

He can be forgiven for that. And his numbers don’t quite do him justice.

Consider:

• Malkin has undergone complete ACL construction twice in his career. For all of Crosby’s concussion issues more than a decade ago, those powerful legs have forged a fairly healthy second half of his career. Ovechkin, you may have heard, doesn’t break. He’s built like a tank. Malkin is built like a soccer player. As a result, his body was never going to truck through 1,207 NHL games unscathed. And it has not.

• Crosby has enjoyed playing with accomplished linemates Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell most of the season, and Ovechkin has benefited from being surrounded by a team in contention for the Presidents’ Trophy. Malkin, meanwhile, has been flanked by linemates such as Cody Glass, Phil Tomasino and Danton Heinen for most of the season. He’s not getting many cheap assists with that bunch.

• Penguins coach Mike Sullivan asked Malkin to make changes to his game before the season, and he has. The bad turnovers and even worse penalties that sometimes plague his game haven’t completely disappeared, but if you’ve watched the entirety of Malkin’s career, you’ll note that he’s gone out of his way to play a more responsible brand of hockey. At 38, such changes aren’t easy to make.

• Malkin has been replaced for large periods by Kevin Hayes on the top power play, a move that wasn’t so much made because of his ineffectiveness but because of the coaching staff’s desire to give the Penguins a No. 1 and a No. 1A power play.

Malkin no longer passes the eye test, at least not to his former standard. Where Crosby still looks stunningly similar to the player he was 15 years ago, and while Ovechkin can still unleash the shot that’s about to make him the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer, Malkin’s physical skills are eroding. His shot, more than anything, is what has started to betray him. The former 50-goal scorer’s booming one-timer has largely disappeared.

Lately, his skating has actually returned to vintage form, or at least a reasonable facsimile. The 4 Nations Face-Off break did Malkin quite a favor. Over the last few weeks, before his most recent injury took him out of the lineup last week, he was showing glimpses of the Malkin of old, weaving his way around defenders, challenging players one-on-one and beating them, and even rediscovering his goal-scoring touch enough to get everyone’s attention.

It’s been fun to watch, and, even as his physical attributes have faded, we’ve seen Malkin alter his game and use his under-appreciated hockey IQ to remain a perfectly decent second-line center. These past few months have served as a reminder that Malkin still has a little bit of fire left.

So, what’s next?

Malkin has one year remaining on his contract, and there’s no evidence that he’s going to retire after this season. He recently told The Athletic’s Rob Rossi that he fully intends to play next season.

I’ve long assumed that Malkin is going to retire following the 2025-26 season for a variety of reasons. He’s a fabulously wealthy man. He’s won the Stanley Cup on three occasions. He’s a Russian legend. He’s a Pittsburgh legend. He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And great players, no matter how big or small their egos may be, don’t like to hang around too long. No one wants to be Willie Mays, falling in center field in his 40s while playing for the Mets.

If indeed the 2025-26 season is Malkin’s last, here’s hoping he announces it in advance so he receives the farewell tour he richly deserves.

But I bet he will do no such thing.

Malkin doesn’t crave attention. I suspect he doesn’t like it, even though the visceral connection he has long enjoyed with Pittsburgh fans would seem to indicate otherwise. When the crowd starts chanting “Geno, Geno,” something magical is usually about to happen.

Of course, those chants are more a thing of the past than of the present.

Malkin is probably perfectly happy to slip under the radar. “Ask Sid,” he loves to say when the media is asking him too many questions.

When you ask Malkin about the most important players of the era, he will invariably say: “Not me. Sid. Ovi.”

If you saw Malkin play at the height of his power, you know better. For so long, he was their equal.

The sun didn’t shine on his career as long as it did for Crosby and Ovechkin. But he was truly great in his prime, and he’s probably better now than you think.

I couldn’t help but think of Malkin this past weekend. A couple of promising Penguins prospects have finally arrived in the form of Rutger McGroarty and Ville Koivunen. The media rushed to Crosby, Rust and Rakell to hear their thoughts on the new guys. Crosby, Rakell and Rust, you see, figure to be around in Pittsburgh two or three years from now, when, with help from McGroarty and Koivunen (and others), the Penguins may well rise again.

These past few days have suddenly been about the future, not the past or the present.

That future will soon be without Malkin. That reality has hit a little harder over the past few days, when he hasn’t been around and no one has obsessed over his absence. It’s a shame, but it’s life. All good things must come to an end.

Or, in the case of Malkin, all great things must come to an end.

(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

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