Building Project Starts With One Stick
Top Prospect Ovechkin, an 18-Year-Old Russian, Is There for the Caps'
Taking
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page D01
MOSCOW
His mother swears this story is true: When Alexander Ovechkin was a
2-year-old toddler, she brought him to a toy store. Those were the
dwindling days of the Soviet Union, when stores didn't have as much as
today. But they had toy hockey sticks and they had toy helmets and
little Sasha, as he is called, waddled right over to them and wouldn't
let go.
Don't believe it? "We have a picture with him wearing tights and
holding a hockey stick," his mother, Tatyana, insists.
Sixteen years later, Sasha Ovechkin still won't let go of the hockey
stick -- and should any opponent make the mistake of letting him get
the puck he won't let go of that either. The little boy from the Soviet
toy store has grown up into the slap-shot sensation of Russian hockey
and the top prospect in the world. If all goes according to plan, the
Washington Capitals will make him the No. 1 pick today in the NHL
draft.
What they will get in Ovechkin will be a 6-foot-2, 212-pound forward
who, according to the scouting reports, represents the "complete
package." He's big and quick and doesn't flinch from physical play.
He's a hustler with a devastating stick and equally effective on
defense. Some gush that he may be the second coming of Mario Lemieux.
"They ask him all the time, 'What are your strong points?' " said
Sergei Isakov, a family friend and Russian representative for
Ovechkin's agent. "Everything," Isakov answered with a laugh. "For
today, he's one of the best players for his age and everyone recognizes
that in two years he'll be an NHL star."
People have been telling Ovechkin that for so long that he betrays no
worries about taking on the best the NHL has to offer. "What's scary
about that?" he asked after practice one day recently at Moscow's
Luzhniki Stadium. "If you're scared, you shouldn't even go out on the
rink."
With just the barest peach fuzz on his 18-year-old chin and a few
stubborn pimples left on his ruddy cheeks, Ovechkin somehow does not
sound cocky when he says that, only determined. "I have to be
self-confident. Let the other guys be worried."
That's Tatyana Ovechkina's son. Growing up in a simple, two-bedroom
flat on the 10th floor of a plain Soviet-era apartment building in
northwestern Moscow, Sasha inherited a zeal for competition. His mother
was a two-time Olympic basketball champion, first in 1976, then in
1980, and today coaches the Dynamo Moscow women's basketball team. His
father, Mikhail, once played professional soccer.
"They had a huge influence on him," said Ilya Nikulin, 22, a friend and
fellow hockey player. "They would always push him forward and stand
next to him constantly. . . . He wants very much to live up to their
legacy."
When he was a child, they would always push him out the door to go play
on nearby soccer fields or basketball courts. "Almost every day we were
running around, playing soccer, playing all sorts of sports," recalled
Misha Batanov, 18, a childhood friend. "He doesn't need to prove
anything or follow anyone's footsteps. He's going to be a champion."
By the time Sasha was 8, he was enrolled in hockey school. By 10, he
was collecting hockey player cards and dreaming of the NHL. By 16, he
was playing for Dynamo Moscow's professional hockey team.
By 17, he had so impressed the foreign scouts that the Florida
Panthers tried unsuccessfully to draft him when he was still two days
short of turning 18 by the NHL eligibility deadline, arguing that he
qualified because four leap years had passed during his lifetime.
Last season with Dynamo, Ovechkin scored a team-high 13 goals in 53
games in Russia's Super League and was credited with 10 assists as
well. Last month, he was named to Russia's 26-member World Cup of
Hockey squad.
Anyone who doubts his desire should just ask him about the upcoming
World Cup championship. "We'll win," he predicted simply, leaving no
room for doubt.
Such an attitude impresses the Capitals. Russian hockey emphasizes
speed and technique over contact but Ovechkin on the ice often
resembles a North American player in his willingness to mix it up. "I
can play physical hockey," he said in Russian. "I'm friends with my
body and I like to play physical."
"He has a young spirit and a fearlessness," said Nikulin. "He needs to
grab the puck and keep it and always gets in the way of his opponents
and spoils things for them."
Or as his proud mother put it, "He never loses his fights."
Fueling his will to win, according to family and friends, is the memory
of his older brother, Sergei, who first introduced him to hockey.
Sergei died at 25 in a car accident when Sasha was just 10, a tragedy
that scarred the young boy so much he refuses to discuss it except to
say he still thinks of his brother every day, particularly out on the
ice.
"They were very close," said Nikulin. "The memory of his brother is
something he plays for. But he doesn't talk about it, ever."
Tatyana Ovechkina, now 54, recalled those early days after Sergei's
death, when her younger son Sasha would play the role of comforter. One
day during one of his hockey games, she said, "He looked up at the
stands where I'm sitting and he saw my eyes were bloated with tears and
he ran up to me and told me, 'Mama, don't cry.' "
For Ovechkina, having a son leave to play in America represents a quirk
of family fate. She grew up in an era when Russians challenged the
Americans for dominance in international sports.
She still relishes the memory of beating the U.S. basketball team at
the 1976 Olympics, where her Soviet team won the gold medal, and still
regrets that the United States then boycotted the 1980 Olympics in
Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
"I was very disappointed," she recalled. "It was a big pity. The
Olympics weren't the Olympics without the Americans."
But the world has changed since then and she sees no irony in her son
now heading off to the United States to play for an American team in
the U.S. capital and earning the sort of capitalist big bucks that were
never possible in her youth.
Ovechkin will be eligible for $1.3 million a year under the rookie
salary cap, although incentive clauses could push that higher. He's
already taken some English lessons and is thinking about buying a home
and a BMW. Right now, he has to borrow his parents' car or bum rides
from friends.
Russian hockey officials would like to get a little more of the
Ovechkin windfall as well. Under an international agreement that
expires this year, the NHL pays a Russian team about $250,000 in
compensation for a player picked in the first round of the draft, but
team executives here are pushing to negotiate a new, far more lucrative
contract to take advantage of a rising star like Ovechkin.
"He doesn't cost $250,000 [to train] but much more than that," said
Alexei Panfilov, sports director for Dynamo Moscow, which has not had a
No. 1 NHL draft pick since the fall of the Soviet Union. "I would say
$2.5 million. That's a fair price for Ovechkin. Ovechkins aren't born
every year. To get one Ovechkin you need to bring up 10,000 hockey
players."
Ovechkin himself seems a little lost in all the discussion of high
finance. He still marvels that a Moscow restaurateur who recognized him
came up to his table the other day and offered him a 15 percent
discount card.
He may be a millionaire in the making but he still seems like a typical
Russian teenager. He spends his sparse free time watching MTV or
Russia's Sport television, gyrating with friends on the two-story dance
floor at Pyramid nightclub off Pushkin Square or plowing through a
plate of his favorite food, macaroni and meatloaf, a Soviet-era staple.
And then there are the video games. He seems to love them almost as
much as hockey. His favorite is a shoot'em-up one called Counterstrike.
Is he any good at it?
He laughs. "The best."
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