Scott Stinson: Ukraine fights for its life, and Ovi keeps playing hockey
The NHL has a problem as Alex Ovechkin draws closer to breaking Wayne Gretzky's all-time scoring record.
By: Scott Stinson
Alex Ovechkin is a remarkable athlete. At 39 years of age, when most players are either retired or in denial of the fact that they should be retired, he is still scoring goals at an elite NHL level.
Now grey-haired and grey-bearded, Ovechkin has his Washington Capitals leading the Eastern Conference by some distance, and he is getting ever closer to breaking one of the NHL’s unbreakable records: Wayne Gretzky’s 894 career goals. After his most-recent goal on Saturday, he’s only eight away.
It’s a remarkable story, a guy who came into the league playing the kind of hockey of which Don Cherry would be proud, barreling all over the ice, shooting from all angles and just basically being a wrecking ball on skates, somehow lasting for 20 seasons that brought Gretzky’s goal total into reach.
He even seems like a fun guy, a big, gregarious Labrador of a man who went on an incredible public bender when the Capitals finally won a Stanley Cup in 2018.
Despite all this, I find it hard to muster up enthusiasm for his record-breaking chase. Ovechkin is Russian, of course. And a proud supporter of Vladimir Putin. And I don’t see how, as the NHL prepares to celebrate what is undeniably an incredible achievement, we are supposed to put that other part over there, in a box.
This is, ultimately, the bargain that the the National Hockey League made with itself three years ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine, its sovereign neighbour, and the NHL did nothing in response.
Despite the killing of thousands of innocents in an unlawful invasion that immediately made Russia a pariah state that was kicked out FIFA competitions and (mostly) the Olympics, the NHL’s formal position in 2022 was that since Russian athletes “play in the NHL on behalf of their NHL clubs, not on behalf of Russia,” it wouldn’t sanction them in any way. The league also said that since many of its 40-ish Russians had families back home, they were in “an extremely difficult position.”
Ovechkin, who said nothing at the time of the invasion other than a generic call for peace, and who had taken a little bit of heat, getting booed in Western Canada where there are significant Ukrainian communities, stuck to his aggressively neutral stance. When he moved into third on the all-time goal-scoring list in 2022, as Russian bombs were falling daily on Ukraine, he said guys like him were merely athletes who had nothing to do with geopolitics. “We just play hockey and enjoy the moment,” he said.
And that was pretty much that. Ovechkin has just played hockey since.
The NHL was, obviously, in a tricky spot. Should it have banned Russian players just because of their passports? Probably not, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have survived legal challenges if they had tried. But it also felt at the time like the NHL could have done more than simply wave the Russian invasion away as not their problem to deal with.
The end result of that choice is that one of the NHL’s most storied records is about to be shattered by a guy who will be celebrated in Moscow even as Ukrainians are still, years later, fighting for their lives.
Ovechkin is no ordinary Russian. He and his wife received a gift and video message from Vladimir Putin at their wedding. In 2017, Ovechkin announced something called Putin Team, a movement of sorts that he was proud to lead that was supposed to do … something. Unite Russians? It was hard to tell. Russia was well on its way to pariah-state status at the time, and Putin Team never amounted to anything beyond the original announcement, but it was clear that Ovechkin was quite happy to throw his lot in with the guy who was already engaging in a battle with the West. Ovechkin’s profile picture on his Instagram account, to this day, is a photo of him next to Putin. The hockey player is flashing a peace sign.
The NHL is already making a big deal about Ovechkin’s record pursuit — the player is admirably donating money to cancer research off the back of the “Gr8 Chase,” as it has been labelled for marketing purposes — and the fanfare will only increase as he gets closer to Gretzky’s total.
At some point in the coming days, Gretzky himself will be tapped to follow the Capitals around, ready to formally pass the goal-scoring crown. Which if nothing else will be funny because it will feature not one but two legendary players who have chosen to remain silent while their politician-leader friends are doing their best to destroy world peace.
Maybe Alex Ovechkin will surprise us all, and use the occasion of his record-breaking goal, and a red carpet ceremony on the ice, to encourage Putin to stop the war, since he’s the one man who unequivocally can.
It’s a nice thought, anyway. But, no. He will thank his family, and the Capitals and their fans, and he will put his helmet on. He will go back to just playing hockey.
Scott Stinson is a journalist in suburban Toronto.
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I am not sure what Mr. Stinson expected from the NHL or Ovechkin. Ovechkin’s apparent support for Putin is odious, of course, but the NHL cannot kick him out of the league for that. That he is on the cusp of breaking the Gretzky’s record is almost unbelievable. Maybe we can push the politics aside in order to enjoy a remarkable event in hockey history. Maybe?
Could we manufacture more problems, just for fun, cause we don’t already have enough.