The Ovechkin Project

DAMIEN COX is a writer/broadcaster based in Toronto. He is an award-winning columnist with the Toronto Star , Canada's largest newspaper. Over the past 25 years, few journalists have covered the biggest stories in hockey around the world to the extent he has, from the NHL to the Olympics to women's hockey. He has been a fixture on TSN, Canada's all-sports television network, and the FAN 590, the country's largest all-sports radio network, since the mid-1990s. In addition to his columns, he is the author of The Spin, a daily sports blog published on TheStar.com. He is the co-author of two other hockey books published by Wiley, '67: The Maple Leafs, their Sensational Victory and the End of an Empire and Brodeur: Beyond the Crease , a collaboration with record-setting goaltender Martin Brodeur. A proud native of Hamilton, Cox lives in Toronto with his wife, Vicki, and four children, Meghann, Delaney, Dawson and Leagh. GARE JOYCE has written about sports since the early '80s and for ESPN The Magazine and espn.com since 2003. He has had breakfast with Sidney Crosby before the phenom had a driver's license, lunch with King Clancy at the Hot Stove Lounge and an uncomfortable dinner at McDonald's where he spilled his milkshake in the lap of a seven-foot NBA center. Between meals, he has written four books, The Only Ticket off the Island: Baseball in the Dominican Republic , When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game , Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts , and a best-selling biography of Crosby. His work has been short-listed for The Best American Sports Writing series seven times and he has won four Canadian national magazine awards. He is a lifelong Torontonian, a doting father to Ellen and Laura and a deeply committed partner to the writer Susan Bourette.

Prologue. Chapter 1 Vancouver "It's a Dangerous Game and He's the Most Dangerous Guy." Chapter 2 Dynamo "If You Won't Become a Player, I Don't Know Who Will." Chapter 3 Selkirk, Stonewall, Piestany, Halifax, Moscow "Like a Wild Stallion." Chapter 4 Washington "How Could Something Which on Paper Looked So Right Be So Wrong?" Chapter 5 Helsinki, Moscow, Pittsburgh, Washington, Toronto "Is Pittsburgh Beside the Ocean?" Chapter 6 Washington "It Was on from the First Time He Stepped on the Ice." Chapter 7 Madison Avenue, Washington, the Champs-Elysees "You Basically just Signed the Babe Ruth of Hockey." Chapter 8 Vancouver "Like Gorillas out of a Cage." Chapter 9 Buffalo "This Is a Crazy Business." Chapter 10 Chicago "I Respect Everybody, but on the Ice It Can't Be Everything" Chapter 11 Washington, Montreal "It's Not Going to Happen. It's Not Going to Happen." Epilogue Las Vegas "He Is Not Alone Over There." Acknowledgments. INDEX.