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 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 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 as he chased down No. 99.
“How do you feel about 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, now officially the greatest of all-time after surpassing the Great One for the most goals ever with 895.
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.’ ”
