Ovechkin won’t let Cup out of sight
LAS VEGAS – Lord Stanley’s bulky old chalice has been around a while and is big enough that it can probably look after itself, yet Alex Ovechkin treated hockey’s ultimate Cup more like a newborn baby than a recently acquired friend.
It is a whirlwind in those heady moments when a championship is won and the famous prize is presented, and though Ovechkin was pulled in all directions across the Las Vegas ice for interviews and selfies and hugs and handshakes, the Capitals’ talisman made sure the Cup never strayed from his gaze.
As T-Mobile Arena emptied of all but those wearing red garb and beaming smiles, Ovechkin even paused a television chat to glance over his shoulder and make sure the trophy was not far away. In the 20 minutes after the brave challenge of the Golden Knights had been dispatched and Commissioner Gary Bettman handed over the hardware, Ovechkin came back to the Cup no fewer than five times and never ventured more than 10 feet from where it was being held.
Finally, he clutched it in both hands and pulled it horizontally above his head, then skated over to where his heavily pregnant wife, Anastasia Shubskaya, was waiting, clad in a denim jacket with “Ovechkina — 8” on the back. A baby, their first, will be on its way before too long, and the affection he already has for fatherhood was on display when he gently touched his wife’s stomach as they came together for a kiss.
The project of getting the Capitals over the line and giving the club its longawaited title? Well, that has been a lot longer than nine months in the making.
It was in 2005 when Ovechkin first played in the NHL, fresh-faced and barely out of his teens, almost unrecognizable from the gray-flecked, lumberjackbearded superstar of today. The battle has been long and often frustrating, which is why he cared for the tangible version of the prize so much.
“There is a lot of pent-up emotion in there that got released tonight,” Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan said.
Ovechkin likes pots of silver — don’t we all? He wasn’t going to pass up the chance to clutch the Prince of Wales Trophy after Washington won the Eastern Conference, superstition be damned, and naturally dealt even more reverence to this one.
As families of the Capitals players started to gleefully discuss the “party of parties” that would come later, Ovechkin took the Cup with him as he headed off the ice briefly, for a media conference in the bowels of the venue where Game 5 had ended 4-3 and sealed the series in five games.
His skates were pulled off, and flipflops were needed. His weren’t available (he already has one pair in the Hall of Fame), but Evgeny Kuznetsov’s were at hand, so he wore those.
As he sat, with the Stanley Cup on one side of the table and the Conn Smythe Trophy on the other, he had eyes only for the one that ended decades of Capitals hurt, not the personal accolade as a deserving playoffs MVP. He gazed at the Cup again, patted it a couple of times, and sat — maybe without even noticing so — on the side of the table that meant he was much closer to it.
“It has been tough times, but we fight through it,” he said.
It has indeed been a fight, and his emotions were too raw to put it into full perspective, and the part he didn’t talk about is that it has been a struggle that transcends all kinds of things.
Amid all that is the most remarkable of ironies, that in these crazy times a Russian who counts Vladimir Putin as a close personal friend might just be the most popular man right now in Washington, home of the heartbeat of American political power.
The Stanley Cup will surely make a trek to Moscow before too long, back where they still call Ovechkin “Sacha” (a shortened Russian version of Alexander). You can imagine it now. Just like for Evgeni Malkin last year, a photo op in Red Square, with the beautiful spires of St. Basil’s in the background. As one of the founders of the PutinTeam social youth movement in Russia, Ovechkin will probably be invited to the Kremlin itself, just a few steps away.
Yet aside from perhaps a certain house on Pennsylvania Avenue, they don’t care a jot about all that in Washington, where a hero’s welcome awaits from the red-clad masses as soon as the Capitals touch down.
Later, Ovechkin headed back toward the ice, the place he feels most comfortable, while the assembled group of surface-level well-wishers were still soaking up the taste of victory, the remaining Capitals holdouts in the stands were resisting the pleas of security staff to leave, and life coach Tony Robbins, who is close friends with Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, was saying how Ovechkin has leadership and inspirational skills akin to those he has seen in business titans.
As No. 8 cruised through the tunnel, an acquaintance nodded to the Cup he was still carrying and quipped, “You’re never going to let go of that, huh.”
Ovechkin responded with a grin that showed those famously tortured teeth, as much a testament to his years of grind as his stat book, and something within him shifted. He found Nicklas Backstrom and handed him the Cup, waving his hand to indicate he wanted it shared around so each player could get their selfie with the silver.
But you can be sure that it wouldn’t be out of his possession for long, and that was just fine with his colleagues.
“It represents everything he has worked for,” said Lars Eller, scorer of the opportunistic winning goal. “He won’t let it get too far away from him. Maybe he will sleep with it. He should.”