With one minute remaining, the Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin dispatched a no-look shot into the empty Winnipeg Jets’ net and quickly disappeared under a scrum of delighted team-mates. The 802nd goal of his National Hockey League career took him past Gordie Howe into second-place all-time and sent the Capital One Arena wild. After prolonged celebrations finally ended, action didn’t resume until players and fans watched a video tribute to him on the jumbotron. Nobody thought the hoopla excessive because only Wayne Gretzky has ever scored more. The exalted company Ovechkin now keeps.
Wearing 8 on his back because that was the number worn by his mother Tatyana, star point guard on the Russian women’s basketball team that won gold at the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, Ovi, as he is affectionately known, is still routinely banging them in at 37 years old. Very few doubt this unique amalgam of mesmeric stickwork and physical prowess may yet reel in Gretzky, the ne plus ultra whose nickname “The Great One” was earned via 894 goals and a career that ultimately redefined the sport.
With no sign of waning powers and three full seasons remaining on a $9.5 million-a-year contract (€9 million), time appears to be on Ovechkin’s side. His epic assault on the record books, however, is not being savoured as it might once have been because, after 18 seasons lighting up the league, recent events have turned the spotlight on his activities off the ice and, in particular, his lengthy friendship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. He refuses to condemn the invasion of Ukraine and won’t even go as far as to comply with the Capitals’ request that he change the Instagram profile picture showing him hanging out with his biggest fan over in the Kremlin.
I have lots of friends in Russia and Ukraine … I have family back in Russia. It’s scary moments. We can’t do anything. We just hope it’s going to end soon and everyone’s going to be all right
— Alex Ovechkin
“I’m Russian, right?” said Ovechkin when bombs started to drop and the tanks rolled toward Kyiv last February. “It’s not something I can control. It’s not in my hands. I hope it’s going to end soon and there’s going to be peace in both countries. I don’t control this one. Obviously, it’s a hard situation. I have lots of friends in Russia and Ukraine, and it’s hard to see the war. I hope soon it’s going to be over and there’s going to be peace in the whole world. I have family back in Russia. It’s scary moments. We can’t do anything. We just hope it’s going to end soon and everyone’s going to be all right.”
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A perfectly adequate response from a sportsman unwittingly embroiled in a geopolitical conflict far beyond his control. What more, ask his supporters, could he be expected to say? Especially when he has family and his own youth ice hockey academy in Moscow. Criticism of the regime there would invite all sorts of problems for him, his parents, and business associates back home. Fair point. Except his personal relationship with the man responsible for the attack on Ukraine goes back a long way and he continues to show a degree of unwavering loyalty to all Putin represents.
When Russia invaded and annexed Crimea back in 2014, Ovechkin posted a photograph of himself on Instagram, wearing a T-shirt saying, “No War”, and holding a sign that read, “#SAVE CHILDREN FROM FASCISM”. That slogan was part of the Putin government’s ongoing social media disinformation campaign. It was designed to give the impression the invasion was about rescuing endangered children from the clutches of Ukrainian fascists rather than about Putin’s overweening imperialist ambitions against a neighbouring sovereign state.
Between that unseemly episode and the current war, he also led a 2017 social media movement called PutinTeam, a Kremlin-backed initiative to promote the former KGB man’s attempt to win a fourth term as president. When pressed, Ovechkin claimed it was his own idea, yet several other prominent Russian athletes were also approached by the government for their backing at that time. Nobody was too surprised the country’s most famous hockey player lent his celebrity to fronting the cause. He is one of the few to have Putin’s personal phone number and to have received a wedding present from his beloved leader.
“Ovechkin campaigned for him in the fraudulent Russian election in 2018,” wrote the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in a recent letter requesting that the Trudeau government refuse the Capitals’ captain permission to enter Canada for NHL games. “Ovechkin continues to support Putin as ‘his president’ even in the face of Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine. Ovechkin has never condemned Russia’s genocidal war… Permitting Ovechkin to enter Canada would send the wrong message to Canadians.”
NBA stars get lambasted and suspended for outrageous political statements but the greatest hockey player of the past two decades has escaped serious scrutiny for standing with Putin
While there is no indication Canada will stop Ovechkin lining out against the Toronto Maple Leafs on January 23rd and the Montreal Canadiens six days later, his record-breaking feats have attracted heightened media criticism in recent weeks. As pointed out in various outlets, NBA stars get lambasted and suspended for outrageous political statements but the greatest hockey player of the past two decades has escaped serious scrutiny for standing with Putin.
“This should be a wonderful journey in which all sports fans can share,” wrote Larry Brooks of the New York Post. “But it is not that simple. It’s not that easy. What is worthy of adulation? Ovechkin the hockey player is Ovechkin the man. Ovechkin the goal-scorer is Ovechkin the ardent supporter of Putin. He is no hero.”
Difficult to argue with that.
