NHL 07 Nabs Caps 08

As Eric over at OffWing reports, Alex Ovechkin will grace the cover of EA Sports' NHL07 (screen shots and video available here). Of course my first thought was of the Madden Curse, so I immediately went to see how previous NHL title cover players have done in their cover year (EA has generally featured only one player on its NHL titles since NHL '97). Here's what I found out:

• 1996-97, John Vanbiesbrouck (Panthers): 27-19-10 with a 2.29 GAA and a .919 SV%. Quite good.
• 1997-98, Peter Forsberg (Colorado): 72 games, 91 points. Mui bueno.
• 1998-99, Eric Lindros (Flyers): 71 games, 93 points. Hooray!
• 1999-2000, Chris Pronger (St. Louis): 62 points in 79 games - the most prolific offensive season of his career.
• 2000-01, Owen Nolan (San Jose): Played in 57 games, scored 24 goals and had 49 points - big drops from his previous 84-point season.
• 2001-02, Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh): Played in only 24 games, scoring only six goals.
• 2002-03, Jarome Iginla (Calgary): Played in seven fewer games, scored 29 fewer points. Look out below!
• 2003-04, Dany Heatley and Joe Sakic (Atlanta and Colorado, respectively): Heatley killed a teammate (and his scoring was down) while Sakic was healthy for the entire season, besting a point-per-game and posting his best year in three seasons. But Heatley killed a teammate.
• 2004-05, Markus Näslund (Vancouver): 8 goals, 17 points in 13 games. For Modo. Basically, Naslund's visage on the cover of EA's game forced the NHL to cancel its season.
• 2005-06, Vincent Lecavalier (Tampa Bay): 35 goals, 75 points (slightly better than his previous NHL season)

So what does this tell us? Well, basically, if you're on the cover of EA's NHL game and can avoid the injury bug, you've got a good chance at posting a better year than your previous season and you might even have a career year. Here's hoping Alex accomplishes the former (and saves his career year for when it will really matter). Oh, and that he doesn't kill any teammates.