Sitting Down With GR8Ness: There's More To Alex Ovechkin Beyond The Goals

ARLINGTON, V.A. — Sitting in his stall at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, still wearing his gear, untying his trademark yellow laces and proudly wearing his No. 8 on a gold chain around his neck, Alex Ovechkin glances over.

“What’s up?” he grins casually, waving me to sit next to him.

I start our chat with a promise: nowhere in this conversation are we going to discuss his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record. He looks a bit relieved, leaning back more comfortably as he offers an unnecessary “thank you.”

It gets tedious discussing the imminent feat, and a lot of what he has heard over the past few years has been repeated over and over, echoed by the media in city after city.

“How do you feel about possibly breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record? Are you going to do it? How long is it going to take you? What would it mean to you?”

And he’ll respond, in kind, with more of the same: “It’s history... It’s big numbers... Pretty cool moment… I take it day by day, game by game.”

At this point, everyone knows Alex Ovechkin, the prolific goal-scorer, arguably the greatest of all-time, who is now six goals away from sole possession of that title.

But Ovechkin is more than that — and wants to be known for more than that, too.

So, who is Alex Ovechkin? 

When defining himself, he shies away from the titles that have been bestowed onto him, like “superstar,” “elite talent” or “sniper” and instead keeps it simple.

“A good person,” he said, flashing his missing-tooth smile. “That’s it.”

Of course, being a generational talent was always in the cards for Ovechkin, who picked up a toy hockey stick at the age of two and refused to put it down.

“I get love in the game right away,” he said.

From there, he got on skates, and when there was no ice available, he’d be outside the facility or on the streets in front of his home in Moscow, playing every position he could with his friends: goalie, defense, winger, center. Anything to get his fill.

That said, he never thought he’d be at this point in his career. His love for hockey became something more; he wasn’t just good. He was gifted and talented beyond his years. It led him to the Russian Superleague, the highest division of hockey in Russia, at only 16 years old.

From there, things snowballed. As he lit things up with Dynamo, he turned into an overnight sensation, a household name with lofty expectations who was on track to go first overall. He was projected to change the game in such a way that the Florida Panthers tried to take him a year early, arguing that he was old enough if you didn’t factor in leap years.

He ultimately went first overall to the Washington Capitals, something he recalls being a surprise even back then.

“That’s a pretty big moment,” Ovechkin said. “I saw so many different players who could be No. 1. It’s changing all the time.”

Still, even though he was aware of the hype surrounding him and more than lived up to it, he admits that he never thought he’d be a generational talent.

“No, (I couldn’t have imagined this),” Ovechkin said. “You get to the NHL, and you just hope you’re going to play well to stay in the league and to be able to be at that level. Nobody thought like, ‘I’m going to be in this position I am right now.’ ”

It’s a hell of a position to be in; not only has he racked up 879 goals, but he’s also logged 3,707 hits, the third-most in NHL history since tracking began in 2005-06. Ovechkin has also rarely been injured, and when he has gotten hurt, he’s barely missed any time, his longest absence being 16 consecutive games.

“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “Of course every season, you have bruises, you have some little stuffs going on. You guys don’t know, but eveybody have some problems with the backs, arms whatever. It’s physical sport… keeping your body healthy is most important.”

Even more impressive is his consistency and pure goal-scoring ability; as he approaches Gretzky, he’s the NHL’s all-time leader in power-play goals (319), and even though goaltenders know his shot is coming, they still struggle to stop it. He’s scored on a record of 180 different goalies, meaning he’s beaten about 83 percent of the goalies the Capitals have faced over the last 20 years and counting.

“I love scoring goals,” he shrugged with a laugh. “Without goals, you can’t win the game.”

Insane numbers? Yes. Numbers that Ovechkin thinks about constantly? No, though he does take great pride in every record.

“You just don’t try to think about it,” he said. “That’s the most important thing. Of course, you going to get some pressures from the media, from players, from the coaching staff, because they expect you to be good. But it is how it is. You have it one day, you have it another day, and you get used to it.”

He stays off social media for the most part and doesn’t really read what’s being written about him because that’s not what the sport is about for him.

At the end of the day, all Ovechkin cares about is having fun. It’s a requirement for the 39-year-old, who declared that once it’s no longer fun, he’ll hang up the skates.

“You give to hockey basically all your life,” he said. “You enjoy the time, and you enjoy the moment. When you come to the rink, talking to the boys, have fun with them, players fans, whatever, you enjoy it.”

“Alex has just stood the test of time a little bit, you know?” Capitals alum and former teammate Mike Knuble said. “What he’s done for hockey and DC and the league and stuff like that… he’s done a lot. It’s fun to see him just happy, and his joy. When he was younger, the joy, you know, carried him. That was the most noticeable. The joy, the joy, the joy. And eventually, you get older, and maybe that settles out a little bit, but still, he plays (with it). It’s amazing.”

It’s something that his teammates have come to admire. Even as he pursues a record bigger than him, one that’s become an elephant in the room and constantly talked about, he doesn’t bask in it.

“He’s very humble and very generous,” linemate Dylan Strome said.

Ovechkin doesn’t go out of his way to mention it, and it’s not the main focus of the dressing room or every game, either. He’ll celebrate every goal the same way – like it’s the first he’s ever scored – and when his teammates score, it’s the same joy. All the while, his Capitals are at the top of the Eastern Conference, a legitimate contender as he enters the twilight of his storied career.

“Why you have to be selfish (about it)?” Ovechkin asked. “My dad always told me like, ‘It doesn’t matter how good you are, how successful you are. You have to stay the same level that you came into the league. Without my teammates, without this organization, you never know what’s going to happen, right?

“If I was drafted by different team, I don’t know if I’m going to have that success. I’m lucky enough to be able to have grown up as a person, as a hockey player in one organization. I’m thankful for that.”

At the end of the day, Ovechkin’s just happy to be here. When he’s not on the ice, he’s your typical guy who’ll spend his downtime resting, hanging out with family, having a beer or two, touring different restaurants or playing “Call of Duty” with his teammates.

That’s how it’s always been. From age 16 to age 39 – better or for worse – he’s been unabashedly himself.

“One of the coolest things about Ovi is he’s never changed for anybody,” Capitals alternate captain Tom Wilson said. “When he came into his league, he was a superstar and rock star, and everybody was on him. Every day since then, he’s been Ovi, he’s been outspoken, he’s been whoever he is. A lot of guys coming into the NHL, they feel like they have to act very professional, be quiet, humble and all that. Ovi is just Ovi. There’s no way to explain it.”

That said, he has had to take it a little bit easier from his early days, where he’d drive 200 miles per hour in his matte black Mercedes-Benz, hijack equipment bag carts and drive them through the halls of the arena — once almost decapitating himself and teammate Mike Green in the process — and throw his opponents through the glass with bone-crunching hits.

“I don’t think (I’ve) slowed things down, but I think it just when you get older, you look back at certain things like, ‘Why you have to do that?’ You know?” he laughed. “You can do different things.”

He pauses for a brief second, and then interjects, “But if I take my time back, I would change nothing.”

“Why would you change nothing?” I ask.

“For what?” he said back, raising an eyebrow. “It’s all good.”

The only thing that’s really changed is that he’s grown up. He remembers the shift when he was named captain in 2010 following the trade of Chris Clark, thrown into a job that critics thought may be over his head at that point in his career.

In a way, maybe he was, but it helped him start to shift the gears, going from the superstar goal-scorer to the more responsible, two-way player that would prove to be the difference when it came to finally winning a Stanley Cup.

Again, he gives all the credit to his former teammates, such as Mike Knuble, Brendan Morrison and Jose Theodore, for helping him get to that point.

“To be honest with you, I get lucky I have such tremendous teammates back then,” Ovechkin said. “They have experience; they’d been in the league long time; they helped me out. Obviously me and (Nicklas Backstrom), ‘Greener,’ we support each other, but we was young. That kind of like experience where you just hear what they say, how they react when they get in certain positions, situations.”

But being a father really cements the “good person” definition for Ovechkin.

In 2018, a couple of months after swimming in the D.C. fountains and celebrating the Cup in an endless party dubbed “The Summer of Ovi,” he welcomed his first son, Sergei, named after his late brother. Two years later, his second son, Ilya, was born.

It marked the ultimate shift in his life. All of the outside noise, every achievement, was no longer about him. 

“For sure, for sure (it changed everything). Now you don’t have to think about yourself,” Ovechkin said. “First priority is your kids. Then it’s wife, parents, all that stuff, but kids are the most important things.”

Over the years, Ovechkin’s gotten to share his love of hockey with his sons, taking them to All-Star Games, putting them in skates — CCM, with yellow laces, of course — and spending his nights when he gets home from the rink with knee hockey in the foyer.

“He gives them everything, shows them the way, brings them in the room after almost every game… it changes your perspective,” Wilson said. “You want to do everything you can for your family.”

It’s refreshing, as when he gets home, he doesn’t need to be ‘The Great 8’ or ‘Ovi.’ He can just be ‘Dad.’

“It’s great, and they love hockey so much as well… Of course, I’ll talk about hockey. The kids ask me about the players, what they want to do, but most of the time, we don’t talk about hockey,” he said.

As Ovechkin prepared for the final two months of the season over the 4 Nations break, he knows there’s still unfinished business. He’d take another Stanley Cup over the goals record, and he’s well aware there’s a lot at stake going into spring in the District.

Going into his final years, he likes to remain in the present, though he said he’ll catch the occasional highlight or two in passing, including “The Goal” against the Arizona Coyotes that had even Gretzky himself looking up at the replay, his off-the-boards play to himself against the Montreal Canadiens that sent Roman Hamrlik for a loop and his hip check that sent P.K. Subban flying over his head, and can’t help but laugh.

Though he couldn’t really imagine things would play out this way, he looks back at the last 20 years, from his dreams coming true to once impossible feats not so far in the distance, with wonder.

“(It puts) so much smiles on your face. Such good memories,” he said. “It’s going to stay forever.”