Three days off the 'internets'

And so much to follow... Capitals Insider had 16 posts!

Capitals Insider, Apr. 11, 2010:

Well, the final game of the regular season didn't go the way the Caps or Alex Ovechkin had hoped.

But none of that matters now. The second season is upon the NHL, and the Caps are set to host Montreal for the first time starting later this week. First things first, though. Ovechkin will win neither the Art Ross nor the Rocket Richard trophies this season.

Capitals Insider, Apr. 10, 2010:

*Ovechkin, I'm told, has brought his personal trainer Dmitry Kapitonov over from Russia to help him get fine tuned for the playoffs. Kapitonov has been here for about a week, and in the past, has helped Ovechkin get back on track.

"If he does something different off the ice, for the most part I don't want to know about it," Boudreau said. "All I care about is Alex being happy and the results on the ice. If it works, it works. We have a great strength and conditioning coach [Mark Nemish] that everyone works with, and Alex does, too. If his guy is over here, it's more of a support system than anything else."

4/11/10 Ovechkin, Chimera, Green on the shootout loss and playoffs



Ovi talks about his 49th and 50th goals



50th for Great Eight



rille100590 — April 12, 2010 — live from verizon center (H/t to Emily)

washcaps: Alex Ovechkin, Wayne Gretzky and Mike Bossy are the only players in NHL history with four 50-goal years in their first five seasons

By CHARLES McGRATH, Apr. 7, 2010, The New York Times Magazine, "Alexander Ovechkin, the Mad Russian":

Photo by Levon Biss for The New York Times

Already Ovechkin is the most fascinating hockey player in the world. He has a chance to one day be reckoned one of the very best ever — if his passionate, reckless style of play doesn’t cause him to maim himself in the meantime.

...

When I visited I.M.G.’s New York offices, an entire room was dedicated to building “brand Ovechkin.” Whiteboards were covered with lists apparently resulting from brainstorming sessions discussing Ovechkin’s “mythology” and “iconography.” A wall was covered with a collage of Ovie photos and quotes.

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A great article, very accurate, and I am proud that Charles used my translations. I guess if you want to write about Alexander Ovechkin, you have to come here to do some research. The best Alexander Ovechkin's archives are here.


And even greater article by Dan Steinberg because of some new info about Alex...

By Dan Steinberg, The Washington Post, Apr. 10, 2010:

Ovechkin shrugs such talk off, joking that he picked up this style "from Russia," but in fact the stereotype of European players had often been the opposite before his arrival. Ovechkin's parents -- who live in Ovechkin's North Arlington home for months at a time during the season -- said that he was always a strong and physical athlete.

She said her son weighed more than 12 pounds at birth, that he began competing with older children not long after he first put on skates at age 8. His parents -- who worked at the Dynamo Moscow sports complex -- would not allow him to lift weights and instead encouraged stretching, pull-ups and soccer while he waited for them to finish work.

After he became entranced by hockey, he would skate outside for eight or nine hours a day, bringing a thermos full of tea and sandwiches made by his mother, and then collapse with exhaustion when he returned home. By the time he was 12 or 13, he was regularly hooked up to an EKG machine at the sports complex, where a doctor would tell the parents whether his activity level was appropriate.

"That was his passion," said his father, Mikhail. "We weren't forcing him. We couldn't get him off the ice."

His parents were both athletes -- his mother a national-team basketball star, his father briefly a professional soccer player -- but even they said they marveled at the physical stature of their youngest son. His father recalled going into a sauna with a 16-year-old Alex and watching him pour water over the hot coals from behind; "I never really paid attention, and then it just shocked me how thick and wide he was," Mikhail said. "He was all muscles."

The Capitals drafted the heralded 18-year-old with the top pick in the 2004 draft, when he was 212 pounds.

While his mother said Ovechkin eats normal portions at home, teammates still joke about his pregame appetite. Two veterans refer to him as "a farm animal" feeding from a trough. "I couldn't eat that much," Green said. "He consumes," forward Mike Knuble added.

By 2006, Ovechkin was listed at 6 feet 2, 220 pounds. Last fall, he was up to 233 pounds, making him the Capitals' biggest player and one of the 15 heaviest forwards in the NHL.

Ovechkin didn't finish first in any of the team's weightlifting or off-ice physical tests this preseason, performing best in the vertical leap. Fellow players, though, say no one is harder to knock off the puck. "Like he's rooted into the ice," teammate Brooks Laich said.

"He's a thick human being," said Carolina's Tim Gleason, whose collision with Ovechkin in November led to the latter's first career suspension. "You don't see many goal scorers finishing hits like him."

Entering Sunday's games, Ovechkin -- who is tied for the league lead in goals -- was also credited with 183 hits, tied for 30th in the NHL. None of the other top 10 goal scorers was in the top 100 in that category, which is dominated by defensive-minded players who focus on physically separating opponents from the puck.

It's been suggested that such persistent contact could raise his risk of injury and even shorten his career, which Leonsis acknowledged "would be conventional wisdom." But Ovechkin seems not to care, saying he doesn't want to talk about the end of his career.

"I've been watching him play for five years now and just waiting, like, my God, when is this guy gonna run out of gas?" said former teammate Brian Pothier.

...

"I said, 'Your safety is really important to everyone,' " Leonsis recalled telling his star. "And I know it's fun when you have a fast car. I mean, I get it. I've been guilty of it too. I've bought fast cars. But it's your safety. And it's your mom and dad and your brother. And it's your life. Slow down just a little bit. Still have the car. Just slow it down just a little bit."

Ovechkin -- who famously declared that speed limits in the District were suspended the day he was handed a key to the city -- now tells reporters that he drives carefully and follows speed limits.

...

After he signed with IMG this fall, the agency began working on his brand profile; the "frame of reference" they settled on was labeled "young mavericks," with Ovechkin compared to such figures as musician Kanye West, tennis player Rafael Nadal and Michael Jordan. The document refers to him as "Superman on skates."

...

The Capitals are fond of saying that Ovechkin never has a bad day. When he arrives at the practice facility at 8 in the morning and teammates are still groggy, he's screaming good morning! "Sometimes you wonder if he ever sleeps," Laich said.

"You can hear him through the whole dressing room, through the facility, all day, just yelling," Shaone Morrisonn said. "I don't know what he's yelling, but he's yelling."




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