I love Alexander Ovechkin. Sidney Crosby may or may not be the superior player, and he may be the kind of guy most sportswriters would prefer their daughters brought home, but were I a rich, famous professional athlete, my behavior would be far closer to Ovechkin’s. Sure, he’s kind of a jerk, but he’s a playful jerk — this is a big distinction — as opposed to an actual, Jeff Kent-ian jerk.

Plus, he’s hilarious. For example:

Q. How do you prepare for the game? Is it true that you can’t have sex before the match?

OVECHKIN: Sex really helps, actually.

Q. Is that before or after the match?

OVECHKIN: Before and after.

Zing! In our age of canned soundbites and blah blah something about athlete quotes being boring and limited access and yadda yadda, I got bored with that sentence before I even wrote it. The takeaway here is that Ovie is awesome. That’s probably good enough.