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It was Dec. 13, 2008, in New York City and time for the three Heisman Trophy finalists to take their place at the front of the room, awaiting the announcement of who would win college football’s most coveted individual award. But one member of the trio was missing. The one who had been there before.

“I was in the bathroom throwing up,” Tim Tebow confessed nearly 16 years later. The Florida quarterback was there not simply as a Heisman finalist, but as the reigning Heisman winner, seeking to become the second two-time Heisman honoree and first in 33 years.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to win it. I wanted to. Of course, I did. But when you watch the ceremony, what do you see? There’s us on the front row, and then there are all the people sitting behind us. Coaches and staff from your school, the president of the university, everyone. My entire family was there. My sister had flown in from a mission trip to Bangladesh, just for this. I knew there was a party after, with all those people, win or lose, and if I’d lost, I’d felt like I had let them all down. That’s why I got sick.”

Tebow didn’t win. He finished third behind a pair of quarterbacks — Oklahoma‘s Sam Bradford and Texas‘s Colt McCoy — despite earning more first-place votes than either of them.

“Winning the Heisman changes your life, there is no doubt about it,” Tebow said. “And people think, ‘Well, you won one, so the pressure’s off on the second.’ But it’s not. It’s a position every college football player wants to be in, but no one knows what that is like until they experience it.”

Caleb Williams is experiencing it now. The fame, hype, expectations, assumptions, all of it. And he’s the first to do so in this still-new NIL era, his Saturday performances — good and bad — punctuated by television commercials starring him. After a hot start to 2023, Williams and USC have scuffled midseason and his Heisman odds have plummeted.

The one person who has hated seeing that more than anyone not dressed in Trojans colors is the only man to have pulled off what increasingly feels impossible. Archie Griffin does not have any desire to be the only member of the two-time Heisman Trophy winner club. Honestly, he’d enjoy the company. It’s been pretty lonely in his corner of the room for the past 48 years.

“I don’t have to be the only two-time winner and I don’t really want to be,” the 69-year-old Ohio State legend said earlier this fall during a conversation about Williams. “I was the first. That’s plenty enough of an honor for me. I can’t wait to welcome the second.”

No. 45 let out a giant laugh with a shake of the head.

“But I’ve been waiting for a long time, haven’t I?”

Griffin, who stood at the front of the room at Downtown Athletic Club in 1974 and 1975, is and has long been, the living, smiling, complete opposite of that awards show scenario. He still returns to New York every December. And he still makes sure to shake the hand of every fellow Heisman Trophy winner in attendance, especially the person who has just become the newest designee as “the outstanding college football player in the United States…”

“In 1978, three years after I won it for the second time, I shook the hand of Billy Sims, who has become a dear friend,” Griffin said. “I thought, ‘Well, he’s a junior just like I was and he has a great team coming back at Oklahoma just like I did at Ohio State, so he will definitely be back here winning this again next year!’ But he didn’t. And there have been so many guys that I was so excited thinking about them maybe getting to experience that thrill a second time, especially now, when so many amazing young talented underclassmen win it. It’s crazy to think about, really.”

Yet, here we are. It would take a miraculous turn for Williams to repeat. Since Jason White finished behind Matt Leinart, this century alone, those who have returned to college for another shot at bronzed glory have gone 0-for-10, eight who went 0-for-1 and Tebow, who went 0-for-2.

But the possibility of claiming two stiff-arming statues didn’t begin with Griffin or begin to be scrutinized with a recent run of elite quarterbacks.

Times change, failure to repeat does not

The first winner of the Heisman Trophy in 1935, one year before the award was named for John Heisman, was Chicago running back Jay Berwanger. He was a senior. And so were the first 10 winners of the award. The junior who snapped that streak in 1945 was Army‘s Doc Blanchard, who in turn became the first candidate for a Heisman repeat. Unfortunately for the fullback known as “Mr. Inside” there was also a “Mr. Outside,” as in teammate Glenn Davis, who took the award in 1946 while Blanchard finished fourth.

Over the Heisman’s first four decades, from Berwanger through Griffin’s second win, those who had hoisted the stiff-armed trophy at season’s end had tallied 35 seniors and only five juniors, the first four failing to repeat, including the great Roger Staubach, who won the award in 1963 and then failed to even crack the top 10 the following year.

Sims came up one spot short in 1979, behind USC’s Charles White. And while the other failed Heisman defenses had been handled with gentlemanly grace, Sims growled his disappointment, saying when asked about his chances of a repeat after a disappointing midseason performance against Texas, “I don’t care. I have one already!” And after White’s Heisman win, Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer angrily stumped at a news conference, suggesting that NFL scouts vote on the award, not the media, and adding, “Billy’s two years were better than Archie Griffin’s two years that he won the thing!”

“I think when you look back on that stuff now, you realize the pressure that came with it,” Sims recalled during a 2016 chat in his Tulsa barbecue joint sitting beneath a framed Sports Illustrated cover of himself and White playing tug of war with the trophy with the headline: “Hey Man, That’s My Heisman!”

“The year I won it I was kind of an unknown guy who kind of came out of nowhere. I was a great story. The next year, man, every question after every game was, ‘Well, do you think you can win the Heisman again? Charles White just did this and the quarterback at BYU [Marc Wilson] just did that. Did you do enough, Billy?’ I don’t care who you are or how tough you are, you are still a college kid. It’s a lot.”

Sims was just the sixth junior to win the award over 43 years. Of the 43 awarded since, 21 have gone to underclassmen. Of the first seven of those, from Herschel Walker in 1981 through Charles Woodson in 1997, all but one left early for the NFL. The lone holdout was BYU quarterback Ty Detmer, who returned after his record-setting 1990 campaign and battled through injuries to finish third in 1991. As he arrived in New York for the ceremony, he confessed, “I’m here to watch Desmond Howard win it.”

After Woodson, seniors ruled again. White, the Oklahoma quarterback who won in 2003 was a senior, but received an injury waiver to return and defend his Heisman the next year. He lost to Leinart, beginning the current era when a stunning 14 of 18 winners were juniors or younger. That “or younger” is no small development, as a longtime unwritten ageism agreement between Heisman voters was finally put to pasture by voters smitten with Tebow in 2007, the start of a three-year sophomoric streak. Then, in 2012, Texas A&M‘s Johnny Manziel won it as a — deep breath — freshman!

How did none of them win again? Those who came up short of sitting alongside Griffin give us a not-short list of reasons.

The circus

Heisman pressure is very real. So is temptation. Exactly what forms that takes is something that changes and evolves along with every other aspect of being an athlete at a high level college football program, as does how those athletes react to it. Griffin didn’t have to deal with social media or even cable television, but even still, Ohio State head coach Woody Hayes assigned a staff member to help Griffin manage the flood of requests from media and Ohio State supporters because, as Hayes explained at the time, “The kid is too nice. He has to learn how to say no.”

After Manziel became the first freshman winner in 2012, the following offseason, then-Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman assigned two staffers to the kid who had just been pinned with the now-infamous Johnny Football moniker — one to manage his schedule and the other to field autograph requests. Alan Cannon, who has overseen A&M’s sports information office since 1999, called his friends at Florida to see how they’d handled Tebow’s repeat performances. “They warned us that this wasn’t going to be about ESPN and CBS anymore,” Cannon recalled. “It would also be about the National Enquirer and TMZ.”

Hyman sat down with Manziel and his family, stating flatly: “Johnny is not a freshman. He’s not a sophomore, junior or senior. He’s a Heisman. We can’t act like this is normal because it’s not.”

As we know now, Hyman was a prophet. Manziel spent his entire Heisman defense becoming notorious, from exploding cigar-smoking party Twitpics to a pay-for-autographs scandal that nearly cost him his eligibility for the season. By the time he threw for 3,732 yards and 27 touchdowns — a 313-yard, three-touchdown improvement over his Heisman year — he lost by a whopping 1,501 points to another redshirt freshman, Florida State‘s Jameis Winston.

Winston stated at ACC preseason media days in the summer of 2014: “If I get Manziel disease, I want all of you to smack me in the head with your microphones.”

The reality is that he already had. He won the 2013 award despite 13% of voters left him off their ballots completely, due to a sexual assault investigation that ended with no charges filed only nine days before he became the youngest Heisman winner. Winston would also lead FSU to the 2013 national title. Then he proceeded to crash through a 2014 Heisman follow-up campaign that is still remembered less for football and more for questions about the handling of the sexual assault allegations, crab legs allegedly stolen from a grocery store in April 2014, and a bizarre midseason student center tabletop screaming incident that resulted in a half-game suspension for the biggest game of the season against Clemson.

It all resulted in a sixth-place showing behind Oregon‘s Marcus Mariota, the worst Heisman finish for a uninjured returning winner.

“I think in the decade since then, we have learned a lot about how to handle these things better, whether it’s a coach or a player or an entire athletic department,” Jimbo Fisher, Winston’s coach at FSU and now at A&M, said when asked about then versus now. “I know that the players handle the spotlight better, because now the great ones, they have been in the spotlight since they were kids, when you really think about it. But I don’t care who you are or your background or whatever, fame is fame. And being famous is hard.”

As Hyman recalled it in relation to Manziel: “At the end of the day, it’s a kid who’s trying to become a grown-up. They all are. You can’t babysit them night and day. All you can do is try and educate them on what they are now, a celebrity, and the world they are now living in. Even as that world seems to be constantly changing.”

Unreasonable expectations

Manziel wasn’t the only active Heisman winner to post better or at least just as impressive numbers the following year but was still unable to impress voters like he did the year before. Not even close.

The all-time example of that was Detmer. In 1991, the BYU quarterback went against the norm and returned to Provo for his senior year, the first Heisman winner to come back since Sims. His 1990 statistics were ridiculous, setting 21 NCAA passing records and tying five more as the Cougars finished 10-3 with a signature win over No. 1 Miami in Week 2. BYU marketers devised what is considered the first true Heisman campaign, mailing out paper neckties to hundreds of voters to remind them of, you know, Ty.

As the 1991 season started, Detmer was warned by LaVell Edwards, his Hall of Fame head coach, to not become too obsessed with topping the year before, and to remain in the here and now. It didn’t work. Detmer suffered injuries and BYU opened the season 0-3 against a slate of ranked teams. He was already in his own head before October.

“We are taught as football players and athletes that your goal is to always be improving, and how do you do that?” Detmer recalled last year. “You do it by being better than your last game. But if your last game was a dream game and your last season was the dream season, that’s a measuring stick that can be difficult to manage.”

He says now that the 0-3 start was an unintended blessing. It sent the spotlight elsewhere, for a while. But when BYU didn’t lose again (there were two ties) and he finished the year with another 4,000-yard season, it was enough to earn the Davey O’Brien and Sammy Baugh awards and another first-team All-American selection. But he finished third in the Heisman vote.

“I think that’s probably the greatest challenge, to top what you did, but for me it wasn’t so much about what others expected, though that definitely is on your mind,” said Bryce Young, who won the Heisman in 2021 as he led Alabama to a national championship. Young fought through a season of physical dings to “only” a 10-2 record and didn’t just finish sixth in the Heisman vote behind Williams, but was third among SEC quarterbacks. “For me, the expectations I had for myself were much greater. That’s where my pressure came from. Not to be unfair to myself.”

Injuries

Bradford, as Gators fans love to remind us, lost to Tebow in a grinder of a 2009 BCS National Championship Game, but was returning the following fall with an Oklahoma team that looked even better than the one that had just set a slew Big 12 offensive records.

In the season opener against BYU, he had just thrown a pass that topped fellow Heisman winner White’s Oklahoma career passing yardage mark but was blasted by a hit on the next play. He struggled with a severe shoulder sprain all season and became the first returning Heisman winner since Staubach in 1964 to finish outside the top 10 in voting.

Running back Mark Ingram won instead, becoming Alabama’s first Heisman winner. Days before the 2010 season opener, Ingram injured his knee and ended up having surgery. By the time he returned to action, he was forced to share carries with another future Heisman finalist, Trent Richardson. Ingram also finished outside the top 10.

“The one aspect of football you can’t control is getting hurt,” Bradford recalled in 2014, when an ACL tear cost him the entire 2014 NFL season with the Rams. “But what drives you to get back is to do right by your teammates. Every injury is frustrating, but it’s especially frustrating when you know you had a team that had a chance to do something special if you hadn’t let them down.”

Their team was too good

Sometimes, that team around a would-be Heisman repeater is also loaded with other stars.

It’s always been a crucial component to a candidate’s portfolio that they be on a team that makes a postseason run. But to do that, there has to be more than one great player on a roster. Sometimes that Heisman winner has to share stats, stage and votes with one of those teammates.

“Oh, I knew when I came back in 2004 that if someone on my team was going to win the Heisman it was going to be Adrian,” said White, who returned to Oklahoma after his 2003 Heisman win to share a backfield with Adrian Peterson. A self-described Heisman history buff, White knew about Army’s back-to-back Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside winners and wanted to do the same with himself and Peterson, who would set several NCAA freshman rushing records in 2004. Instead, they both went to New York as finalists, but lost to Leinart. Oklahoma fans still say that the split between Sooners cost one or the other the trophy. White’s response to that: “Great problem to have.”

Leinart, in turn, was back in New York the following year, having thrown for nearly 500 more yards than his Heisman season. He finished third behind USC teammate Reggie Bush and the player they faced a few weeks later in the BCS championship, Texas QB Vince Young.

“I wasn’t upset at all to lose to Reggie,” the former USC quarterback said. “You know, every Heisman winner gets a ballot. I had him No. 1 on my ballot. I was worried that I was going to take votes away from him and cost him the Heisman, not the other way around.”

Their team wasn’t good enough

Just call this the “Lamar Jackson Rule” — that unwritten rule about one’s team needing to compete for titles to remain Heisman relevant.

The Louisville quarterback won the 2016 Heisman, electrifying college football with a stat line of 3,543 yards passing with 30 touchdowns, 9 interceptions and a rating of 148.8, along with 1,571 yards and 21 touchdowns with his feet. The following season his stats were a nearly identical 3,660/27/10/146.6 in the air and 1,601/18 on the ground.

Yet, he went from runaway winner to distant third-place finisher behind Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield and Bryce Love of Stanford. The difference? Jackson’s 2016 Louisville team spent the entire season on the big stage, ranked as high as third and ending the year 15th, even after a three-game skid that landed them at 9-4. The 2017 Cardinals never cracked the top 10, and after four pre-November losses, dropped out of the top 25 and out of mind.

“You can’t do it all by yourself,” groused then-Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino after Jackson accounted for 491 yards of offense and four touchdowns against Wake Forest … and lost 42-32 to drop to 5-4. “He’s had to. I think what he’s done has been more impressive than last year, but the voters won’t see it that way. They’ll want another guy.”

Voter fatigue

Petrino’s complaint isn’t uncommon. And he’s not wrong. Mayfield, who threw for 4,627 yards and 43 scores and took OU to the College Football Playoff, deserved the 2017 award. Even Jackson, whose family became close with the Mayfields during that awards season, has said that. But he has also recognized the reality of voter fatigue.

“I think once you’ve had an incredible season and it’s been a great story, everyone loves it, but maybe they want to learn about a new story, a new guy, something they’ve not seen before,” the Baltimore Ravens quarterback said last month. The 2019 NFL MVP started laughing as he said, “I’m not saying that people get tired of you when you’ve been around for a while, but then again maybe I am.”

Let’s go back to Tebow. He had comparable stats on the field in 2008 compared to his Heisman year and did it while winning the SEC and the BCS titles. And he did garner more first-place votes in 2008 but finished third because 153 of 902 voters left him off their ballots completely.

“Do they get sick of you? Well, I think some definitely got sick of me,” said the only player to attend three ceremonies as a Heisman finalist after he finished fifth his senior year (and helped winner Mark Ingram and runner-up Ndamukong Suh work off nerves in the hotel weight room). “But I will tell you this, and I think every guy who has won it and comes back for another year will tell you. I’d rather be blessed with success and they get sick of me and my team than them not think about us at all.”

Someday someone will finally win their second Heisman. It’s inevitable. At least it should be. Everyone believes that, from all of those winners who didn’t pull it off to the one guy who did. Though, yeah, if they’re being honest, even they are beginning to wonder.

“Yes, one day someone will do it. At least I think so,” Griffin said, again chuckling. “I just hope that when it does, I am still here to congratulate them in person.”

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‘Pretty darn impressive’: Ovechkin still wowing teammates amid uncertain future

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'Pretty darn impressive': Ovechkin still wowing teammates amid uncertain future

ARLINGTON, Va. — Last season, Alex Ovechkin passed Wayne Gretzky to become the greatest goal scorer in NHL history. A few weeks ago during training camp, he reached another historic milestone: The Washington Capitals captain turned 40.

“Nothing’s changed. Just a different number,” Ovechkin said.

Someone asked Tom Wilson if his linemate had informed him about what 40 feels like.

“I told them that I didn’t need to ask, because I will not be playing hockey when I’m 40,” Wilson said with a laugh. “It’s so impressive. I’m 31 and it’s hard. [Hockey] takes a toll on the body. We all just play as long as we can. I don’t think anybody in that room will be talking about playing when they’re 40, let alone scoring 44 goals and having a broken leg and all that stuff last year. He’s a machine.”

Ovechkin entered the 2025-26 season with 897 career goals, having surpassed Gretzky’s mark of 894 goals. He scored 44 goals in 65 games last season, sitting out 16 games after breaking his left fibula in a Nov. 18 game against the Utah Hockey Club.

“He’s the GOAT. He’s still flying out there. It’s so pretty darn impressive,” Wilson said. “He can just keep playing and scoring. His mentality and his physical perseverance to just keep going and do what he’s doing is … I mean, there’s really no words to describe it.”

Here’s one word to possibly describe it: unexpected.

Ovechkin finished the 2023-24 season with a whimper that had many wondering if his tank had hit empty. He didn’t register a point when the Capitals were swept by the New York Rangers in the opening round of the playoffs, going without a shot on goal in two of the games.

But Ovechkin answered that uncertainty by expediting his record chase and passing Gretzky on April 6 at the New York Islanders. In the process, he fueled a 111-point Washington season — a 20-point improvement over 2023-24 — that saw the Capitals advance to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since winning the Stanley Cup in 2018.

“The goal chase last year energized our team. It helped us get through the dog days a bit. It was such a cool moment for the whole organization,” Capitals GM Chris Patrick said. “But I think Alex has always been team first. I think the way he’s handling this season just shows that he’s a team-first guy.”


FROM THE MOMENT Ovechkin arrived at Capitals training camp, there was speculation about this season being his last. He’s in the final year of a five-year contract extension he signed in July 2021. He broke Gretzky’s record. He hit the big 4-0. But Ovechkin was noncommittal about his future before the season.

“I don’t know if this is going to be the last. We’ll see,” he said at training camp.

Then, asked again on the eve of the Capitals’ first game: “I don’t know. I take it day by day, you know? You have to have fun. Enjoy yourself. Do the best that you can.”

Ovechkin hasn’t made up his mind. The Capitals say they don’t know which way he’s leaning. They’re happy to give him the time he needs to figure it out.

“I want him to have the space. To have this season go how he wants it to go,” Patrick said. “If he wants to talk, we’ll talk. If not, we’ll figure it out later.”

Ovechkin deferred to Patrick when asked if there was a deadline of sorts this season in which he’d have to inform the Capitals about his future. “I don’t know. You should talk to him, not me. This is the time of the year when you just have to get ready emotionally and get ready physically. We’ll see how it goes,” he said.

Undoubtedly, a preseason announcement about this being Ovechkin’s retirement tour would have put the focus on him rather than his teammates for a second straight season.

“Definitely. It would bring that element to arenas, especially in the Western Conference where it would be the last time he ever goes into those arenas,” coach Spencer Carbery said.

Ovechkin said he welcomes a season without something like the Gretzky goals record chase overshadowing everything else. “You just get tired to hear, ‘When it’s going to happen, how you’re going to do it?'” he said. “Right now, we just focusing on the different things.”

One reason Ovechkin might stick around beyond this season is the Capitals’ resurgence. When he re-signed with Washington in 2021, it was with the understanding that the team wouldn’t go into a rebuild with him on the roster. Surrounding him with talent would keep him happy and support his pursuit of Gretzky’s record.

The retool around Ovechkin has produced two straight trips to the Stanley Cup playoffs and a Metropolitan Division title last season. It has been a combination of solid prospect development and bold bets on trades and signings by management — hastened by the cap flexibility afforded the team as veterans Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie saw their NHL careers end — that were widely successful, such as the trades for forward Pierre-Luc Dubois, defenseman Jakob Chychrun and goalie Logan Thompson.

Under Carbery, who was hired two seasons ago, the Capitals haven’t just avoided a rebuild in Ovechkn’s twilight years. They’re a legitimate contender.

“We’ve created a standard now where we’re a team that’s expected to do well. We’ve got to make sure when teams come into our rink, we keep that expectation that it’s going to be hard playing the Capitals,” Wilson said.

Ovechkin says he appreciates that culture, and the fact that management brought back almost everyone from last season’s team.

“Yeah, I mean you go to locker room and you see the guy who was next to you from last year,” he said. “We have some additions, but they understand the culture. They understand where they’re at. I think it’s pretty good.”

Carbery says he believes it’s that joy Ovechkin feels with his teammates and playing the game that has kept him going.

“I think he loves the game. He loves to come to the rink, he loves to be around his buddies. He loves to go out and compete and try to win. I don’t think that’ll change one bit,” the coach said. “Even though he’s passed Wayne and now has the all-time goal record, I think he’ll be as hungry as ever to get to 900 and then 910 and try to help our team win games.”


CARBERY TALKS TO OVECHKIN every day.

“I won’t be, ‘Hey, do you feel good enough to play next year?’ I have a lot of conversations with him. Part of it is about him and part of it is that he’s the captain. I want to get a sense of what we need as a group. But I also check in on how he’s feeling as well,” he said. “A lot of [his decision] will have to do with how the year goes. At his age, coming back from an injury in training camp. He wants to see how he feels, mentally and physically, going through the grind. See where he’s at.”

Ovechkin’s primary motivation on the ice is bringing a second Stanley Cup championship to Washington. But as Carbery mentioned, Ovechkin still has personal milestones to hit too.

Ovechkin entered this season trailing Gretzky by 42 for the most goals scored between the regular season and Stanley Cup playoffs combined in NHL history. Gretzky has 1,016, and Ovechkin’s combined 49 goals last season gave him 974 for his career.

Ovechkin will also have a chance to set a record for most goals scored by a 40-year-old player. Gordie Howe holds that mark with 44 in the 1968-69 season. From a personal standpoint, Ovechkin is just a handful of games away from 1,500 in his career, a benchmark only 22 players in NHL history have reached.

“He’s got a couple milestones I think coming up right away and it’ll be fun to see him hit those,” Patrick said. “I’m just at a point where every time I see him play, I’m just appreciating it, because he’s 40 years old. We’re not going to have this forever. To get to witness it every night is a treat.”

Defenseman John Carlson, who also doesn’t have a contract beyond this season, said it’s been “a hell of a ride” with Ovechkin, whether or not this is his final season.

“I’m not going to get too nostalgic too early here. But, yeah, it’s been really cool to play with one of the game’s greats, and now the leading goal scorer of all time,” Carlson said. “Those are insane things that you can reflect on. Pretty special times.”

Carlson has been Ovechkin’s teammate since 2009-10. Wilson has played with him since 2013-14. Neither player has given much thought to this being their captain’s last season in the NHL.

“Not really, to be honest. I think he’s one of those guys where it doesn’t really matter. If he’s playing well and he wants to be scoring goals and he wants to stick around, I’m sure they’ll figure a way to keep him around,” Carlson said. “If he doesn’t want to play another year, then he won’t play another year.”

Perhaps Ovechkin will take inspiration with how Gretzky retired from the NHL. He also didn’t want a retirement tour. News about 1998-99 being his final season didn’t leak until very late in the season, creating hysteria around the Rangers’ April 15, 1999, game at the Ottawa Senators as Gretzky’s last stop in Canada. He would formally announce his retirement the next day in New York. Wilson understands that, in an instant, Ovechkin could also call it a career.

“No one will really think about him not being around here until it smacks us all in the face,” Wilson said. “He’s just a Capital. He comes to the rink every day and leads this group. He’s going to do that until he is done. We won’t really focus too much on that. It’s just so fun having him around.”

And so the Capitals wait as Ovechkin ponders whether this is the season that the Russian Machine powers down.

“We respect Alex so much and everything he’s done for this organization. So when the time comes for him to make his decision on his future, he will,” Carbery said. “We don’t know what the future holds. He’s left it open. Certainly as an organization, we’re like, ‘Heck yeah, as many more years as you possibly can play.'”

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Senators’ Tkachuk (hand) to miss at least month

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Senators' Tkachuk (hand) to miss at least month

Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk is expected to miss at least a month with an injury to his right hand, coach Travis Green said Tuesday.

Tkachuk injured the hand Monday when he was cross-checked by Nashville Predators defenseman Roman Josi early in the first period and went awkwardly into the boards. He finished out the 4-1 loss but didn’t always look comfortable.

Green told reporters Tuesday that surgery is an option for Tkachuk but that, at a minimum, he’ll miss four weeks.

“He’s going to miss a significant amount of time,” Green said. “We’ll know more in the next 24 hours. We don’t know exactly, but it’s four weeks plus. We don’t know exactly.”

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Confident Couturier helps Tocchet win home debut

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Confident Couturier helps Tocchet win home debut

PHILADELPHIA — Sean Couturier wrestled with a bad back and slogged through a strained relationship with his former coach in recent years, and — at times — it was too close to call which hurdle irked the Philadelphia Flyers‘ captain more.

Feeling healthy and starting the season with a clean slate under new coach Rick Tocchet, Couturier flashed a reminder of just how productive he can be for a Flyers team itching to move out of a rebuild and into the playoffs.

Couturier had two goals and two assists to make Tocchet a winner in his home coaching debut and lift the Flyers to a 5-2 win over the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Monday night.

“I think he trained hard this year. He came into camp in really good condition,” Tocchet said of Couturier. “When your captain comes in in good condition, it helps the coach out. It was nice of him to come in real good shape for us.”

The 32-year-old Couturier has been sidelined with back issues and was even a healthy scratch under former coach John Tortorella. Two seasons ago, Tortorella benched Couturier only 34 days after he was named team captain. Couturier was on the fourth line for the home opener last season — seemingly a lifetime ago and now anchored by a strong relationship with Tocchet.

“I’m starting to find my confidence back,” Couturier said.

Couturier, who was a rookie in the 2011-12 season, became the longest-tenured athlete in Philadelphia sports once Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham retired at the end of last season.

Tocchet easily received the loudest cheers from fans during pregame introductions ahead of the home opener. The Flyers hired the former fan favorite as coach in hopes his return would push them out of an extended rebuild and into playoff contention. Tocchet, who played more than a decade with Philadelphia in separate stints at the start and end of his career, is at the start of his fourth head-coaching job after time with Tampa Bay, Arizona and Vancouver.

Tocchet took over months after the Flyers fired Tortorella with nine games left in another losing season for a franchise that hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2020.

“Love the first win type of thing but I’m just happy the guys for the guys, the way they’ve been working on the concepts,” Tocchet said.

Philadelphia, once a model franchise in the league, has one of the longest championship droughts in the NHL.

The Flyers have failed to win the Stanley Cup since going back to back in 1974 and ’75. Those Broad Street Bullies teams have become a cherished part of the franchise’s past but also a reminder of how much time it has been since the Flyers won: They last played in the final in 2010.

The Flyers opened with a somber nod to those Bullies teams with a tribute for Bernie Parent. Parent, who died in September at 80, won Conn Smythe and Vezina trophies in back-to-back seasons for the Stanley Cup champions. The Flyers painted his retired uniform number “1” behind each net and chose to bypass a moment of silence for fans to instead “show the same passion he lived for with a standing ovation.” They will wear a “1” jersey patch this season.

“It was a great effort in his honor,” Couturier said. “He’ll definitely be missed around here. We used to always seem him around at the games. He always had that quality of just light, lighting everything up and putting a smile on everyone’s face.”

The Flyers gave the player of the game a goalie mask in the style of Parent’s version that he wore in the 1970s and netted the goaltender the cover of Time magazine. Dan Vladar had 24 saves on 26 shots to earn his first win with the Flyers and become the first player to wear the mask.

Vladar helped hand the Panthers their first loss in four games — which included a win in Florida over the Flyers last week.

“Every single guy had goosebumps during the ceremony,” Vladar said. “It was a sad thing but what a hell of a player and a hell of a person he was.”

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