Alex Ovechkin He almost stopped playing hockey.
His mother, Tatyana, was a basketball player, his father, Mikhail, was a soccer player and traveled with their teams, without leaving anyone to take young people to practice. Coach Vyacheslav Kirillov begged Tatyana to recover him in the sport until she surrendered.
Good too. When Ovechkin was 12 years old and played in a competitive Moscow Youth League. He realized that he needed three goals to break a record established by Pavel Bure. He scored the next game six times.
A few years later, other parents thought that putting Ovechkin on the first line with Dynamo was favoritism because his parents worked for the club, so Tatyana asked the coach to degrade him. He made the fourth line the best of the team.
Raised in the last years of the Soviet sports system by parents who were already consummated athletes, Ovechkin had all the opportunities to succeed and, along the way, he showed that he did not need a special treatment. He evolved in a superstar on the ice and the best NHL Draft selection by Washington’s capitals in 2004.
In the last 20 years, it became A Stanley Cup champion who celebrated swimming in Fuentes – has been for a long time Known as a fun person – And the teammates saw him become a husband, father and a generous person who pays dinners on the road and reflect on his career and achievements. The next on that list will be Break the professional goals of Wayne Gretzky record.
“He was a very, very brilliant young man in terms of his goal for his life,” said the member of the Hockey Hockey Fame Igor Larionov, who met Ovechkin when he was a teenager. “I was determined. He was one of the fastest players on the ice, and had a purpose. Every time he stepped on the ice, he was going to be the best.”
Born on September 17, 1985, and reaching the age of majority just when the Soviet Union was giving way to a new Russia, Ovechkin was attracted to the game through his father. If Mikhail’s gifts had a greater impact, their son could have been more like goalkeeper Vladislav Tretiak than a power striker and pure scorer.
“He made some trips and brought me some goalkeeper helmets,” Ovechkin recalled once. “I didn’t know what it was, except that it was something about hockey, and when I was a small child, everything was about hockey, hockey, hockey.”
Ovechkin hugged the hockey and showed that it was good at that. When Marketing Executive Steven Warshaw went to Moscow in the 1990s to work for Pittsburgh penguins after they invested in a team there, he heard everything about the next generation of Russian stars.
“They give them everything they can, the best training, the best everything,” Warshaw said. “It was definitely started a jump as are all the great athletes, especially when you have the lineage.”
Ovechkin was 14 when Larionov, at that time he was already three times champion of the Cup, sat with him in the locker room and shared some tips on how to do additional summer training and commit to training in the gym.
“I knew at parents’ house, mother and dad, to succeed, you must be determined to do additional things outside the ice, on the ice and follow the right steps,” Larionov said. “It is a synergy among the genetics of their parents, its game approach, its impulse, its fire, its power that made it a great player.”
At age 17, Ovechkin scored a tournament of the best six goals in seven games to help Russia repeat himself as a junior world champions and again the top scorer was again the following year, since he emerged as the best prospect in the NHL draft, just ahead of the Evgeni Malkin country.
The blockade that eliminated the 2004-05 season delayed the arrival of Ovechkin in North America, but in his first turn, Ovechkin hit an opponent with such force that he evicted the partition keeping the united plexiglass. He also scored the race goal No. 1, then the number 2 on the way to get 52 of them and become a rookie of the year.
“He was actually giving giant and massive steps towards stardom and began scoring goals, obtained his trust,” Larionov said. “Washington’s capitals caused the right players to surround it to fit and use their greater strength, power, speed and shot.”
Ovechkin led the NHL in goals and points in 2008-09, helping capitals to reach the playoffs in their third season and first of three as MVP of the NHL.
Ovechkin still visits Russia, generally annually, and has been criticized for its relationship with Vladimir Putin After expressing support For the Russian president in November 2017 before an election. At that time, he told The AP and Washington Post: “Only support to my country” and said: “It’s not about political things.”
Ovechkin was surrounded by young talents in his early years in Washington. The center of Nicklas Backstrom, defense Mike Green and the extreme Alexander Semin joined and made hockey in the unmissable entertainment of the capital of the nation. They were also having a lot of fun out of ice.
“He should have fun and have fun every two weeks,” said his retired teammate Mike Knuble. “You are something like, ‘Oh, what car drives this week?’ And just have a good time doing what I wanted and just play hockey and bag individual awards. “
In a sport that defines players to win championships, Knuble was worried that Ovechkin was known only for individual achievements because the success of the playoffs did not arrive. The capitals went through a series of changes from the main office to the coaching staff and the list, which culminated with Ovechkin, which led them to the Stanley Cup in 2018 as MVP of Playoffs.
“I just didn’t want to let it go,” Backstrom said about the cup.
Although Ovechkin was 32 years old, he and the capitals celebrated as few teams in recent history. They swam in the Georgetown sources, a plaque now marks the place, and the whole race showed the best of Ovechkin.
“A big heart like a big boy,” said teammate John Carlson. “He loves to come to the track and love to score goals and play as we did when we were children.”
Ovechkin also changed the ice. He and Nastya Shubskaya married in 2016, and the couple had even more reasons to celebrate the summer of 2018 when she gave birth to her first child, Sergei, that August. Ilya, was born in the spring of 2020, and the children have been there with their father for many of their great moments since then.
When Ovechkin scored his goals 801 and 802 just before Christmas 2022, go to Gordie Howe For the second place in the list of all time, he entered the costume of his hand with Sergei and Ilya and put them in his lap to take photos.
“First of all, you have to think about your family, the children first, Nast, me,” said Ovechkin. “It changed 100%.”
In 2023 All-Star Weekend in southern Florida, possibly the last appearance of Ovechkin in one of those, Sergei joined him on the ice In an “Ovi Jr.” Coincident Jersey with, of course, his father’s signature No. 8.
“He will remember him throughout his life,” said Ovechkin.
Knuble has enjoyed seeing Ovi to take this, maybe even more than the scorer. Tom Wilson, a teammate since 2013, now a father and is likely to happen to Ovechkin as Captain, has witnessed first -hand growth, joining them for family vacations and seeing him as a family man, playing “Dance Dance Dance Revolution” with his nephews and nieces.
“There is never a boring moment,” Wilson said.
Even at home, where Ovechkin enjoys spending time with his wife, his children and his 9 -year -old black laboratory, Blake.
“You don’t think about hockey,” he said. “You don’t think about training or practice. You just enjoy your life, enjoy your time with children, with family, with friends and you can basically do what you want.”
Backstrom met Ovechkin almost two decades ago before he was 21 years old. The funny times, the Cup win and hundreds of goals between them have gone and come.
“It has always been the same,” Backstrom said. “It has not changed much since the first time I met him: the same type of outgoing person.”
The former teammate Nate Schmidt called Ovechkin “without apologies.” Marcus Johansson, who played his first seven NHL seasons with Washington and had another period with the capitals, said Ovechkin is cozy, “has a big heart and takes care of the people around him.”
That is what the current Center Dylan Strome tells friends and people back home when they ask what Ovechkin is like.
“Very, very, very generous with your time, your money, doing everything possible for people,” Strome said. “He always wants to be with the boys, either to see sports or simply talk or whatever or have a couple of beers, he is always in that.”
Carlson believes that Ovechkin, 39, has remained young as the age gap between veterans and young teammates in the locker room grows, while at the same time appreciate every moment a little more. Wilson has seen Ovechkin sign dozens of albums, sticks and t -shirts for other teams after a game without the slightest hesitation.
“You can’t even really describe it with words,” Wilson said. “It’s just a guy that is bigger than life, bigger than hockey. A personality that hangs them every time, the game will miss it a lot.”
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Sports writer AP James Ellingworth and Aptn Moscow contributed.
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