Alexander Ovechkin must come down, but the space beneath him expands with each leap. He bounces higher and higher — hanging in mid-air for several moments longer — as physics grapples with his ascent. The tiny trampoline creaks and bows to the graybeard captain of the Washington Capitals, until he slowly eases to short hops, finally committing to earth.
It’s 90 minutes before the Eastern Conference-leading Capitals will attempt to become the first team to clinch a spot in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs. To everyone beyond the Capitals locker room, that accomplishment will be a sidenote.
Soon, Ovechkin will become the greatest scorer in NHL history, breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 regular-season goals.
Several of Ovechkin’s teammates juggle a soccer ball next to him below the seats at Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, D.C. He joins in, an essential part of his pregame routine, calling down the wide hallway to goaltender Logan Thompson to join — “L.T.! Let’s go!” His black shorts reveal the carved calves of a three-time Hart Trophy winner. His matching hoodie traces the middle arc of an ordinary 39-year-old father of two.
Above, in the concourse, Ovechkin is everywhere. A souvenir shop outside section 103 has every version of his Capitals jersey. There are sweaters and shirts dedicated to Ovechkin’s face, and black T-shirts with the number eight traced out in an endless row of goats. His helmeted likeness hangs from oversized blue and gold necklaces. Hats. Mugs. Shot glasses. Bobbleheads.
The store clerk shrugs.
“It’s the Ovechkin sanctuary,” she says.
Down on the ice, fans rise with excitement as the team warms up, watching a helmetless Ovechkin circling, his gray hair flowing. He leaps into the glass where a mom holds up a baby, shaking the boards to the fan’s delight. He lines up on the high left side, in his office beyond the faceoff circle, rifling one-timers into an empty net.
During the first period, each Ovechkin shift is punctuated by cheers when he touches the puck, a crescendo that’s been rising all season. Ovechkin’s shot remains violently precise. But he is several beats slower than the Russian machine that filled highlight reels and inspired teammate Tom Wilson to put a signed poster of him on his wall as a pre-teen. He’s worn the same tattered shoulder pads for more than 15 years. Ovechkin has rocked countless opponents in that span, but today those hits only echo of past thunder.
When Ovechkin gets to the bench and collapses forward, he rests his arms on the boards and huffs and huffs. He hunches lower and longer than the players who line the bench beside him. During a timeout, the greatest scorer in NHL history drinks Coke from a black water bottle, marked with white tape.
Alex Ovechkin is always at home when he’s close to the ice. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
One morning this spring, as he neared Gretzky’s record, Ovechkin drove with his two boys — aged 6 and 4 — as they created a youthful havoc in the back seat. As he glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw them smiling and laughing as they played.
“Jesus, I wish I had that kind of energy,” Ovechkin said.
He is just like you.
In the driveway at his house in a suburb outside Arlington, Va., there is a battered portable basketball hoop. Inside, Lego bricks and other children’s toys are scattered, played in equal measure by father and sons. The backyard, though large, does not have a landscaped vista or a resort-style pool. It features the same wide swath of sod laid down when the house was built.
He takes Ubers around town, frequents Hyde’s Social, a sports bar in Arlington, and he pushes his kids in a cart down the aisles of the grocery store. Ovechkin loves Papa John’s pizza. He owns several franchises in the D.C. area. But his pregame meal is chicken parm, from Mamma Lucia, an Italian restaurant chain.
Like many in the nation’s capital region, he is a big Commanders football fan and recently decided to go to a game with his friends. He didn’t think to call ahead, so he had to park in the lot farthest from Northwest Stadium.
Ovechkin wore sunglasses and a hat to move through the mob of tailgating fans. By the time he reached the stadium, a police escort had formed around him, blocking hundreds of fans. As the crowd grew, an officer implored stadium security to let the hockey star in. Ovechkin had forgotten to get tickets.
So, yes, like you — until he’s not.
On his 36th birthday, Ovechkin wore suburban dad apparel — knee-length khaki shorts, brown belt and tucked-in black polo shirt — to an EDM music festival, where he emptied his pockets and handed his keys and wallet and phone to his wife as she shook her head. He waded through a pulsing crowd and climbed on stage, where a member of the Lost Kings, a popular DJ duo, had everyone wish him a happy birthday. Ovechkin then hoisted him over his shoulders and carried him like the Stanley Cup.
A man of routine and comfort, Ovechkin often takes his family to Cafe Milano, an Italian establishment in Georgetown that caters to a who’s-who of the D.C. political establishment and passing professional athletes. Ovechkin texts the restaurant’s head maitre d’ to let him know that he is coming in. The staff then quickly prepares the regular: grilled calamari, Burrata, a couple of bowls of pasta bolognese, branzino, and a bucket of cold Peroni.
Ovechkin belies the modern conventions of a professional athlete’s diet and fitness regimen. Images of him clutching Subway sandwiches and a bag of Cheetos before a game have gone viral. When Brooks Laich posted an image on Instagram of vegetables he planned to blend into an organic juice, Ovechkin suggested that he add beer and Russian vodka to the mix.
Ovechkin’s longevity in the NHL — almost 1,500 games — baffles his colleagues.
“He does the same thing now that he did 15 years ago,” says Nicklas Backstrom, the Capitals’ all-time assists leader who played beside Ovechkin for 17 seasons.
Evgeni Malkin, who was drafted second overall the same year as his countryman, marvels at Ovechkin’s ability to have fun, eating what he wants and rejecting the dedicated training routines most pro athletes require.
“His body is amazing. People talk about his weight all the time, but he doesn’t care,” Malkin says. “He plays video games.”
A contradiction on skates.
“PIZZA’S HERE!!!” shouts a speech bubble next to Ovechkin’s beaming smile, missing a middle tooth.
The cardboard cutout of Ovechkin holding a pizza box in his team uniform donning a Papa John’s employees visor, greets fans entering open practices at the MedStar Capitals Iceplex in Arlington.
For two decades, Ovechkin has been one of the NHL’s most marketable faces. But when he arrived in Washington as a 19-year-old in 2005, fans and media weren’t quite sure what to make of him. Clips of the 216-pound teenage phenom playing against grown men with Moscow Dynamo had dazzled fans starved for intrigue after a year-long NHL lockout.
Ovechkin was cast against Sidney Crosby, the mild-mannered and humble wunderkind from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, nicknamed “Sid the Kid,” who rose to fame as an adolescent in Canada’s expectant spotlight and played the game the “right way.”
The new Russian celebrated goals with flair and exuberance, barreled through opponents and stared down their benches. The contrast was stark, but it was Ovechkin who most evoked a “kid” with childlike glee.
As a player, as a person, he was like no Russian who had come before him.
“Alex is very influential. He’s always looking for goals. He has confidence he will score on every shift. This is a little unusual for a Russian player,” says Pavel Datsyuk, the two-time Stanley Cup champion and former captain of the Russian men’s national team. “It is not just the way he plays, but his approach — the yellow laces, the tinted visor.”
He scored two goals in first NHL game. He scored 52 that rookie year. And with each, his spirited celebrations irked the game’s staid establishment. He was absolutely unapologetic. As long as he played hockey, he said, he planned to win every trophy he could.
During his first trip to Manhattan, he dragged his roommate Brian Willsie to Dolce & Gabbana, beaming like a child in a toy store. He was uncomfortable ordering meals in English and carried a dictionary with him through that first season, circling new words each day and asking the team’s training staff for translations.
He ordered sundaes to his hotel room after games, scarfing them down while watching hockey highlights on TV.
Ovechkin scored his first hat trick in Anaheim, tripping over his own excitement after netting the 3-2 overtime winner. The next night, he sang a Russian folk song at the team’s rookie party. Then against the Coyotes, coached by Gretzky, he slid on his back while contouring his stick around his head with one hand to score a goal that still defies a printable description.
“That was lucky,” Ovechkin told reporters after the game. “I saw the replay. It was beautiful.”
At the time, Washington wasn’t a hockey town. Jeff Halpern, who grew up in the D.C. area, watched many iterations of the Capitals in the decades before he became the team’s captain in Ovechkin’s rookie year.
“There was a quietness to the whole thing,” Halpern says of the first few months of Ovechkin’s debut season.
When seats at Capitals games still sat empty, Ovechkin could stroll past the White House or the Capitol unnoticed. But a buzz started to build as the season went on. It’s never stopped.
After Washington won the Stanley Cup in 2018, Ovechkin’s and the Capitals’ popularity reached a pinnacle.
Outside Cafe Milano, on the day of Washington’s Stanley Cup parade, fans flooded the street while players hoisted the Cup from the veranda. Inside, others stood on the bar and sprayed Champagne across the restaurant to the joy of unsuspecting patrons.
The championship kicked off the now famous “Summer of Ovi,” a personal months-long bash that was 13 frustrating years in the making for Ovechkin. Around the Capitals in D.C., that vibe has never really stopped.
“It was a football town,” Halpern says. “Until he got there.”
The Capitals’ Stanley Cup win in 2018 cemented Alex Ovechkin’s place in D.C. sports history. (Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
The poster still hangs at Wilson’s parents’ home in Toronto, along with a signed stick from Ovechkin given to his father after he assisted on Wilson’s 100th NHL goal. Ovechkin fed Wilson the puck on his first goal as well. He signed the stick in Russian: “Assisted on first goal and hundredth goal. Congrats.”
Many players in the league own some type of Ovechkin memento. After each game — win or lose — Ovechkin is met with a small table of items to sign, often for members of the opposing team.
Over two decades, Ovechkin’s force of play and personality made fans of some of his greatest rivals. Crosby has marveled at his unrelenting pace and says if he had a shot like Ovechkin’s he probably wouldn’t have passed the puck as much as he has.
Ovechkin is an avid admirer of greatness, too. He has signed items from Kobe Bryant, Lionel Messi and Crosby, among dozens of others. Several years ago, after meeting Gretzky and peppering him with questions over dinner in Los Angeles, the Great One sent Ovechkin the stick he used to score his 762nd goal.
“To Alex. I love watching you play,” Gretzky wrote.
Since then, Ovechkin has dated and signed each stick that he has scored with, copying Gretzky, who often texts Ovechkin encouragement and advice about his game.
“Sometimes I talk to Wayne and he seems like a support guy for me,” Ovechkin says. “Giving me advice, giving me a heads up, (telling me to) keep it going.”
Ovechkin — who walks and talks with greatness — is also quick to dish out a nonsensical nickname, which evolves over time as he sees fit.
Early this season, Ovechkin noticed that Jakob Chychrun wore a headband as they waited to go on the ice for warmups and immediately bellowed the title verse of “Bandz Make Her Dance,” a song by rapper Juicy J, accompanied by a wide smile as he bounced side-to-side. The jig caught on and is now belted out every time Ovechkin sees Chychrun before a game. The defenseman, who is in his first season with Washington, has been renamed Bandz.
The Capitals are glued together by their eldest player.
Ovechkin greets each new player who joins the team, reaching out by text or Instagram and often taking them for lunch when they arrive. The franchise has become a place where players like team scoring leader Dylan Strome, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Rasmus Sandin and Chychrun have all found their footing after struggling elsewhere.
“You see a lot of guys come here and their careers get revamped,” Wilson says. “They find their groove again, they’re comfortable, they like it. And that starts with Ovi.”
The tension at Capitol One Arena amps up each time Ovechkin nears the puck. The crowd rises with the mere hint of a shot.
It is not a covert operation. An arrow follows Ovechkin’s movements on the giant screen above center ice.
During a whistle, he sits on the bench and signals for a stick. Ovechkin chooses five new sticks before each game. He uses his own tape for each, cut with his own scissors, wrapped meticulously around the blade’s toe, spiraling to a sudden stop in the middle. Three sticks sit on the rack next to the Capitals bench. The other sits off to the side, marked with a dot and used only when the Capitals are on a power play.
When he was younger, Ovechkin would open a shipment of sticks, holding each for a few moments before deciding which were usable. He’d go through dozens, passing them into a pile of good or bad. He just knew. Now his sticks come from a small company in Winnipeg, which built the exact stick he wanted by reverse engineering one that had the right touch, and re-making it to his precise demands. Still, even among the identical sticks, there are differences deciphered only by Ovechkin himself.
Some of his reliance on routine and superstition was passed on through his family. Throughout his career, his mother Tatyana — a two-time Olympic gold medalist and world champion basketball player — and his father Mikhail, who was a professional soccer player, always sat apart, solely as a matter of routine.
Ovechkin’s fun-loving, gregarious spirit was a gift of his father, friends say.
The Ovechkin family became constants at the Capitals arena, where Mikhail spent intermissions walking through the crowd, often greeting fans, on his way to smoke. Mikhail possessed a deep, full-belly laugh that he passed on to his son. When he died two years ago, at 71, Ovechkin took the loss hard.
“It’s tough, because basically it’s your closest friend — your parent, your dad,” Ovechkin says. “But you can’t go down. You have kids. You have a wife. And this is life.”
He returned to Moscow for the funeral, spending a week away from the team. Ovechkin grappled with tragedy early in his life when his older brother Sergei died after a car accident. Even with his close friends, Ovechkin rarely speaks about Sergei’s death. But when he scores, Ovechkin often kisses his glove and points to the sky to salute him. Ovechkin named his first son after Sergei.
Being a father, Ovechkin says, has given him the chance to mature and put his career into a new perspective.
“Family is the number one priority,” he says. “I have things that I have to think about. Not hockey — all the small things. Do they have food? How do they feel? Are they sick? As soon as everything is fine over there, you feel much happier.”
Alex Ovechkin with his sons Sergei and Ilya in December 2022. (Greg Fiume / Getty Images)
He is the most famous Russian in Washington, a whole in two parts. Everything he does on the ice, and everything he says off it, carries an extraordinary weight, well beyond a game.
When he is not in D.C., Ovechkin spends his time at a home in Florida or at a country house on the outskirts of Moscow. Any return he makes to Russia is a big deal. His impact on sports, fashion and culture can’t be exaggerated. He is a national hero.
Malkin, widely considered to be the second best Russian player of the past two decades, says there is no bigger athlete in Russia than his longtime counterpart.
Throughout his NHL career, Ovechkin’s commitment to his homeland has never wavered. He has represented Russia in every international competition he’s been eligible to play in. He was an ambassador for the Sochi Olympics in 2014, and again for the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
“Everybody is following him right now,” says Viktor Kozlov, who played alongside Ovechkin during his early years in Washington.
But the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine casts a shadow for many over Ovechkin’s chase for the record.
Ovechkin has publicly supported Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout his career. The profile picture on Ovechkin’s Instagram account, followed by 1.6 million people, is an image of Ovechkin and Putin together. He campaigned for Putin on social media ahead of Russia’s 2018 election.
Since the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian national team has been banned from competing internationally by the International Ice Hockey Federation. He has not competed for Russia since 2019.
Around the same time, Ovechkin’s longtime equipment sponsor, CCM, announced that it would no longer use Ovechkin or other Russian players in global marketing campaigns.
“Please, no more war. It doesn’t matter who is in the war — Russia, Ukraine, different countries,” Ovechkin told reporters when asked about the invasion shortly after it began.
“He’s my president,” Ovechkin said, when asked if he still supports Putin. “I’m Russian, right?
“I am not in politics. I’m an athlete.”
As Russia’s most beloved athlete and most famous export, Ovechkin has faced criticism for his comments. Dominik Hasek, arguably the NHL’s greatest goalie, has called for fans to not celebrate Ovechkin when he breaks the record, arguing that as a Russian sports star he serves as an advertisement for Putin’s actions.
For many, that context complicates Ovechkin’s story. For others, it does not.
“In Russia, it’s not a controversy. We love our president,” Kozlov says. “This is Alex’s decision. He decided to be in the picture with our president. That’s respectable, too.”
Jonathan Harris, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, who specializes in comparative politics and the Russian Federation, argues none of Ovechkin’s past comments or his support for Putin should come as a surprise.
Russian nationalism is not comparable to nationalism in the United States, which emerged in a much more diverse environment, Harris says. In Russia, by contrast, there is a sense that the nation and ethnicity are one in the same.
“If a hockey player is invited to stand with Putin, he is in no position to say, ‘Sorry, I’ll just go stand someplace else,’” Harris says.
Prominent Russians just aren’t going to make that statement, Harris argues.
“To criticize Russian nationalism would make you essentially an enemy of the people as far as the government is concerned,” he says. “The Russian stars are very aware of the context in which they operate; they’re not naive.”
In the gaze of every eye, Ovechkin floats alone. Aliaksei Protas spots him at the edge of the net, and the puck moves to The Great Eight’s mass.
Ovechkin shoots. Ovechkin scores. The sport’s own law of physics. Everything rises — the crowd, the roar, the horns, the sirens, the cowbells — and the Capitals find the star they orbit, after his goal. There are still two periods to play, but everyone has already witnessed what they came to see.
The number flashes on a large sign in a corner of the arena: 888.
It is everywhere — emblazoned on the jumbotron, embroidered on thousands of standing fans, in the concourse, and soon it will flood into the streets, flashing on the roof of a white SUV carrying a dummy of Ovechkin suspended in mid-air, diving toward a goat in a Gretzky sweater. A lateral eight: infinity.
So it goes, on and on. Ovechkin will continue to score as the once unfathomable reach of greatness falls beneath him.
But, eventually, Ovechkin must come down. A universe of cosmic hyperbole won’t change that mortal fact. As he reaches a place no player has gone before, Ovechkin nears the end. That the Capitals — that the game — will soon exist beyond Ovechkin is a reality his fans and teammates aren’t ready to grapple with.
“I don’t think people realize the magnitude of what Ovi is to this team and this city,” Wilson says. “He’s obviously always going to be a legend, but it gives you a weird feeling to think about this team without him.”
The next morning at the Capitals practice facility in Arlington, another mass of eights gathers in hope of catching a glimpse of the real one. They stand just beyond the tinted glass windows, where Ovechkin peers across a table — beard speckled white, blue eyes shifting gray — and considers what it will be like to chase no one. He’s not quite ready to answer. Ovechkin grins, looking tired. It’s a question for later, he says, when he can relax. Until then, it’s just another ordinary extraordinary day.
“I live my life,” he says.
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic. Photos: Jess Rapfogel, Julian Avram / Getty Images)