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Alex Ovechkin has been scoring a lot of goals lately — 17 in his last 15 games — making him the NHL’s league leader. At the Capitals’ season-ticket holder party at Six Flags on Sunday, he proved that his touch transcends hockey. Ovi for Hart whatever trophies soccer players get!
“I must break head you.”
Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin didn’t score in Dynamo Moscow’s 4-3 shootout win over Salavat Yulaev on Saturday, but he did have eight shots on goal in 22:09 on ice. Twice he shot for Dynamo in the skills competition and twice he came up empty. But that’s okay. The coolest part of today’s game was what actually happened before it, as the Russian language television channel TNV captured Ovi and his Dynamo teammates performing a pre-game ritual with which we Capitals fans should be pretty darn familiar.
Ovechkin, in his constricting (see below) bright, red Capitals shorts, kicked around the soccer ball outside of the locker rooms in Kazan with his Dynamo teammates, who were all in their dark blue team-issued sweats.
Photos expertly taken by Perry Keating. (Copyright Perry Keating 2012)
Soon after representing the NHLPA in Toronto, Alex Ovechkin was back at home in Virginia playing soccer with his shirt off. Along with girlfriend (and Olympic bronze medalist!) Maria Kirilenko and Capitals teammates Stan Galiev and Dmitry Orlov, Ovi kicked the ball around on Wednesday night, letting us all know he’s fit and active during this hopefully not overlong offseason.
This is just the latest in the continuing saga of A.O.’s love affair with unamerican football. Recall if you will last year’s world champs, when Team Russia ditched morning workouts to kick the ball around sans shirts. And also that time Ovechkin wore that thing at that place that made us giggle.
Ovechkin’s fitness comes as a huge relief to the Caps community, who last summer suffered terribly under the extinction-level crisis we now know as Fat-Gate. Ovechkin appears lithe and healthy here, which is exactly what any rational person would expect of an elite professional athlete.
A photo essay.
The Capitals booting from the Stanley Cup Playoffs in early May once again got the summer off to a premature start for the boys in red and their fearless leader. After all, peak season hadn’t even begun on the Vineyard and the lakes remained chilly in the White Mountains. But we RMNB chose not to focus on these grave hardships. No, instead we’re going to fire up the Google Machine and take a look back at Ovi’s summer, which spanned a mere 121 days. Alexander embarked on many adventures including a little shirtless soccer (and what summer is complete without that), a scandal involving his midsection that had “gate” on the end for some ridiculous reason, and commercials for Canadian candy bars, which are like regular candy bars except Canadian.
Ovi to soccer ball: “I must stop you.” (All photos taken by Pavel Lysenkov of Sovietsky Sport)
Ahead of its quarter-final matchup Thursday with Canada, Team Russia assistant coach Igor Zakharkin ordered his players to abandon the team’s scheduled morning practice and instead play soccer at Rapid Stadium in Bratislava. Much like former Capitals head coach Ron Wilson, who would arrange team-building bowling outings when the Caps were struggling, Zakharkin is looking to take pressure off of his team.
Russia, who has lost two straight games and is 3-3 overall in the tournament, has not gelled at any point during their time in Slovakia and has played in five straight one-goal games. The dominant team that had won 27 straight World Championship games last year has not appeared. If they lose against Canada, Russia will be eliminated.
Zakharkin spoke with Sovietsky Sport’s Dmitri Ponomarenko and Vitaly Slavin about his decision to avoid the rink today and also discussed the shirtless soccer goalie above, Alex Ovechkin. Fedor Fedin has your translation.
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