It is nothing more than a practice for the Washington Capitals, a just-for-fun outdoor scrimmage providing a needed break from the grind of a professional hockey season.
But the atmosphere at the Chevy Chase Club is anything but ordinary on this Thursday evening in late January. The prestigious country club on Connecticut Avenue, just across the District line in suburban Maryland, resembles a carnival on a cold winter night.
Hundreds of children and teenagers press against the glass at the club’s outdoor skating rink, hoping for an up-close glimpse of Washington’s biggest sports celebrity.
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Alex Ovechkin doesn’t disappoint. The 23-year-old Russian winks at his fans as he skates past, exuding the charm and skill that have made him a star. As the Capitals prepare for the evening scrimmage, the temperature is hovering in the mid-30s and dropping by the minute. But no one seems bothered. Even the adults have smiles on their faces, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who looks on intently from a wooden deck above the rink.
Such is the drawing power of Ovechkin, who can bring a crowd of well-heeled Washingtonians together on a weeknight to watch a hockey team scrimmage in the freezing cold.
It is a small-scale version of what has been occurring for the last year at Verizon Center. Red-clad sellout crowds routinely pack the downtown arena to watch a sport that has sometimes been an afterthought since the Capitals were born in 1974.
So how has a young Russian — a man who barely spoke English when he arrived in the United States in 2005 — managed to turn himself and his team into a household name?
Winning is part of it, of course. The Capitals entered the weekend tied for the fourth-best record in the NHL with 26 games until the Stanley Cup playoffs start. The front office has built an exciting, young team that plays an aggressive, entertaining brand of hockey. Their coach, the rumpled, bald-headed Bruce Boudreau, is that classic sports archetype that fans love — the career minor-leaguer who finally gets his shot and makes good.
Timing is another factor. The Redskins, long the most beloved sports team in Washington, are mired in mediocrity. The Nationals baseball club finished with the worst record in the major leagues last year. And the NBA’s Wizards currently sport their league’s second-worst record.
But it is Ovechkin who has engineered the cultural crossover of hockey. It is Ovechkin who actually has out-of-town reporters asking — with a straight face — if Washington has become a hockey town.
“Ovechkin is the star of the league,” said former Ottawa Senators coach Craig Hartsburg, who lost his job earlier this month the day after Ovechkin scored three goals against his team. “People pay a lot of money to come watch him play, and he performs every single night. He’s certainly worth the price of admission. Not for the other team, he isn’t. But certainly for the fans.”
The Caps selected Ovechkin with the No. 1 pick in the 2004 NHL Entry Draft. George McPhee, the team’s general manager, knew he was getting a world-class offensive talent who could start at left wing immediately. Ovechkin had already proven himself as a teenage phenom playing against grown men in the Russian Super League and in international competition, in which he is one of only two players to start at age 17 for the famed Russian men’s national team at the World Championships.
Now, after less than four seasons in Washington, Ovechkin already ranks fourth in Caps history with 200 goals.
But Ovechkin’s popularity has always been about more than goals. The 6-foot-2, 215-pounder is a bull of a man. His sheer physicality is noticeable even to a hockey novice — the way he steamrolls across the ice to track a loose puck, the way he lines up an opponent and crushes him into the boards with a hard check.
And then there is his infectious enthusiasm. Ovechkin reacts to goals like a man who has just won a million-dollar lottery. He often celebrates by slamming his body into the Plexiglas surrounding the rink and then rebounds like a superball, careening around the ice with his arms pumping, a gap-toothed smile visible from the cheapest seats.
“He’s knocked the wind out of me a few times [during a post-goal celebration pileup],” said Caps defenseman Mike Green, a blossoming star in his own right. “I’m not even joking. He doesn’t realize how strong he is sometimes. But that’s the thing — he celebrates that hard even when his teammates score.”
The records are already piling up. Ovechkin is one of just five NHL players — Hall-of-Famers Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy and Brett Hull — to record 200 goals in fewer than 300 career games. Ovechkin set an NHL mark for left wings last season with 65 goals and earned the Hart Trophy, awarded to the league’s most valuable player. He also won the trophies awarded for most goals (Maurice “Rocket” Richard), most points (Art Ross), and was voted the most outstanding player by his peers (Lester B. Pearson Award). No player had ever won all four major awards in one season.
“We all know that he’s a superstar. But in the locker room, he doesn’t have that persona, doesn’t have that attitude,” said teammate Brooks Laich. “Alex wants to be one of the guys. He plays jokes. He has jokes played on him. That’s really why he has our respect.”
Ovechkin’s impact on the Caps’ economic bottom line has been dramatic, too. The team is averaging 18,018 fans per game, a 27.9 percent increase from last season. The NHL does not disclose actual paid attendance, but according to sources, Washington ranks fifth in that category among the 24 teams based in the United States.
The team seems certain to shatter the franchise attendance mark (17,341) set in 2001-02. They have also hosted 16 sellouts at Verizon Center, and with 15 home games left, are expected to break the sellout record of 23 reached in both 1995-96 and 1988-89. Television ratings, meanwhile, are up 123 percent from last season, according to Comcast SportsNet, the team’s broadcast partner.
That was all part of the dream when Ovechkin was growing up in Moscow with his parents, Tatiana and Mikhail. They were an athletic family — Mikhail signed a professional soccer contract with club team Dynamo before a torn thigh muscle ended his career. Tatiana was even more decorated, a two-time gold medal winner playing women’s basketball for the Soviet Union. It was from her that Ovechkin inherited both his jersey number — 8 — and an almost pathological need to win.
“That leadership is fed completely with his mother’s milk,” said his father, Mikhail Ovechkin, through a translator. “It was in the genes from the time he was a little boy. He was always the one gathering the older children to play games — hockey, football, water polo, anything.”
Hockey stardom almost didn’t happen. Ovechkin had shown aptitude for the sport at a young age. But his parents stopped taking their youngest son to practice when Mikhail was in the hospital with an Achilles’ tendon injury and Tatiana had to work and care for her three sons. It was only through six months of daily pleadings by a youth coach named Vyacheslav Kirillov that Ovechkin’s parents decided to let him resume practice. It was then — at age 7 — that their son began training seriously. It was then that his destiny was set in motion.
“That support is what makes me play so hard all the time,” Alex Ovechkin said. “My parents did everything for me. They knew how much I loved hockey. They knew for me it was important. Now it’s my life.”
