Our friend Fedor Fedin translates Alex Ovechkin‘s interview following the Sunday’s Flyers game. Below A.O. discusses shooting strategy, breaking a bad stat, and free wings.
Alexander Ovechkin: (Regarding penalty shot) It was the first of my career?
Q: In NHL. You remember when you scored earlier?
AO: [Thinking] No, I don’t…
Q: Stats say that it was 0 from 5 [5 attempts – no goals] AO: Everything should happen a first time, right?
Q: Yeah, so did you think about your moves beforehand?
AO: I figured I’ll do what I always do and was planning to shoot from my forehand, but because I saw him standing up, I had to shoot from my backhand.
Q: It means that you didn’t go through the hassle of your penalty shots stats? Because you play some years in the league and didn’t know about it.
AO: 5th year, 5th penalty shot. It’s time to start scoring. [Laughs] Q: It is interesting tradition here: if you score 5th goal, everyone gets free wings. You feed everyone here with that goal?
Q: Who receives it?
AO: Not all.
Q: Ray Emery played last year in KHL. Russian fans know him very well. What do you think about him as a goalie? He just returned from injury.
AO: High-quality goalie, sure, he had some problems in Russia and in Ottawa too. But I don’t think he was playing his best. But we used all moments we created.
Q: Game against Flyers without fighting like dish without a salt, don’t you think so?
AO: Our team isn’t made up of fighters.
Q: But wait your duel against Mike Richards or something like that…
AO: No, no…
Q: Last question: did you have special mood for Philly like against fighting team? Like against Vityaz in Russia.
AO: – I think there’s no sense to compare Flyers and Vityaz.
Q: Why?
AO: I don’t want to say.
There you have it. Ovie prefers his Philly cheesesteak without salt and feigns ignorance to his penalty shot drought.
