Photo credit: Sport-Express

When you’re super-famous, I guess you get asked to do some bizarre things. Alex Ovechkin has danced to shill for Eastern Motors, operated as hypeman for his boy Sasha Belyi, and modeled to promote a winter clothing-line for Nike. General rule: if Ovi is doing something other than hockey, minds are gonna get blown.

That’s why I was intrigued when news broke that Ovi and his compatriots sang to promote the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. How would his voice sound? Tenor or baritone? Could he possibly improve on the lyrical perfection of Champion? We didn’t know. We had only photos.

Until now.

YouTube User Alex12TV has published video of Ovechkin, Evgeny Malkin, Ilya Nikulin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Nikolai Kulemin, and Alex Radulov singing “Shaybu, Shaybu” with Russian pop star Irina Allegrova. It is delightful. In particular, I’m a fan of Alex Radulov’s air-drumming, Ovechkin’s excited hand motions, and — in general — the screaming, off-pitch singing.

And thanks to RMNB’s Fedor Fedin, here are the translated lyrics of the chorus.

Shaybu, shaybu
The victory is ours
Shaybu, shaybu
Guys, we’re with you
And if we need it a lot, we’ll score again
Shaybu, shaybu
Russia is behind us

Fedor also wrote this wonderful post a few years ago explaining what shaybu, shaybu means.

Photo credit: Sport-Express

Everybody loves a triple threat. Example: Brian Austin Green. Dude can act and rap . Not only that, he can marry well too. He is living the American dream.

Then there’s Alex Ovechkin. Not only does our Russian savior crush opponents and score sick goals on the regular, he’s also an up-and-coming musician. Surely you’ve heard him rap. If there were an iPod in heaven, Sasha Belyi’s Champion would be on eternal repeat.

So imagine our joy on Tuesday when Russian websites reported that Ovechkin was making music again.

With the KHL on a break for the EuroHockeyTour’s Channel One Cup in Moscow, members of the Russian national team gathered in Novogorsk for a team camp. Instead of practicing on Tuesday night however, head coach Zinetula Bilyaletdinov ordered his star players to drop their sticks and pick up the microphones so that they could contribute vocals to two Sochi Olympics-inspired songs Shaybu-Shaybu and We Are The Red Machine. While Russian pop star Irina Allegrova did all of the heavy-lifting, Ovechkin, Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk, Evgeny Malkin, Alex Radulov, and Ilya Nikulin formed a make-shift choir and sang backing vocals. Please, someone leak the MP3′s. We need to hear this.

Now let’s enjoy some excellent photos from the event published by Sport-Express.

Photos

Russian players also received their rings for winning the World Championship last year. See the entire gallery here.

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Created by WelshHockeyFan.

Additional reporting by Fedor Fedin.