Captain entering camp nearly 10 pounds lighter Questions about his conditioning plagued Capitals star forward Alex Ovechkin last season. He arrived at training camp with the goal of staying fresh during the regular season and peaking in the spring, and it didn’t quite work out that way.
Nagging injuries contributed to the perception Ovechkin hadn’t taken his summer training regimen seriously. This year, he wasn’t taking any chances.
“Alex is our captain. He’s here early. He looks to be really in great shape,” Washington owner Ted Leonsis said last week. “He tried something different last year. He wanted to work his way into shape so that he was peaking into the playoffs. And he’s going to try something different this year. We’ll see. The results will speak for themselves at the end of the season.”
Ovechkin doesn’t want to discuss specifics. But he began his training regimen the final week of July and looks noticeably leaner even before training camp begins this Friday. The official team roster lists him at 225 pounds now. He played much of last season around 234. An interview with the team’s website in July created a stir that even reached Ovechkin back home in Russia. His slouching posture made it look like he had a beer gut — not exactly the image a team captain wants to project heading into a critical season for his franchise. Ovechkin laughed off the consternation in an interview last week.
“It was kind of a strange one. I get back home, like my phone starts killing me, saying, ‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’?” Ovechkin said. “I said, ‘What happened? What happened?’ They say, ‘You look fat.’ I think people was a little bit scared with what was happening to my body. But my body’s perfect right now. You can ask Nemo.”
That would be Washington strength and conditioning coach Mark Nemish, who must oversee offseason workout programs for all of the team’s players. Once he saw Ovechkin back on the ice last week he was convinced the 25-year-old Russian took his summer seriously. There wasn’t a philosophical change in the work Ovechkin did with his personal trainer back home. But the timing was different, and — so far at least — it shows.
“I already know he’s in shape,” Nemish said Monday. “I can tell. We’ve worked several times on the ice, and without doubt he’s in the best shape I’ve ever seen him.”
