Watch: Alex Ovechkin spears Trent Frederic below the belt

At this point in his young NHL career, it’s fair to say that Trent Frederic is a bit of a mad man.

He has already shown a willingness to drop the gloves with pretty much anyone, including heavyweights like Tom Wilson.

Those two had a few more tussles in tonight’s 2-1 Capitals victory over the Bruins, but Frederic, being a mad man, also set his sights on someone else: Alex Ovechkin.

First, he tried to fight one of the greatest goalscorers of all time:

After that, he continued to try to get under Ovechkin’s skin, to the point where Ovechkin had enough and did this:

Ouch.

The skirmish above resulted in matching minors, with Frederic getting two for cross-checking and Ovechkin getting two for slashing.

You could certainly make the argument that Ovechkin deserved an extra two for a more egregious stick foul, but my guess is the refs took into account the facts that 1) Frederic got two decent cross-checks in and 2) Frederic started it.

Regardless, Frederic has certainly embraced the (for lack of a better term) shit-stirring role.

You can’t blame Ovechkin for declining to fight a player of Frederic’s caliber, but Frederic deserves credit for mixing it up.

It worked too, as Frederic clearly agitated Ovechkin to the point of getting him to take a penalty.

At some point this season, Frederic will likely do something like this at the wrong time and put his team in a tough spot (kind of like Brad Marchand in his early agitator days), but for now, it sure is fun to watch.

Plus, we get to do it all again on Friday!

UPDATE: $5k fine for Ovechkin.