Alex Ovechkin has returned to Washington DC for the first time since the Capitals were eliminated in Game Seven by the Carolina Hurricanes in late April. The Athletic’s Tarik El-Bashir was the first to report the news.
The Capitals captain joined stars like Nicklas Backstrom, Braden Holtby, John Carlson, and Evgeny Kuznetsov on the ice as well as Jakub Vrana and Carl Hagelin who returned earlier this week.
Nothing against anyone else but the energy around here is different when this guy shows up for the informal skates. #Caps pic.twitter.com/QC7erhRhb7
— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) August 30, 2019
Other participants included Nick Jensen, Jonas Siegenthaler, Ilya Samsonov, Vitek Vanecek, Alex Alexeyev, Martin, Fehervary, Joe Snively, Garrett Pilon, and Tobias Geisser. Michal Kempny and Lars Eller, according to El-Bashir, skated earlier in the morning with coaches.
With camp two weeks away, there's a big group at @MedStar today: Ovechkin, Holtby, Kuznetsov, Carlson, Backstrom, Hagelin, Vrana, Jensen, Siegenthaler, Samsonov, Vanecek, Alexeyev, Fehervary, Snively, Pilon and Geisser. Kempny and Eller skated earlier.
— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) August 30, 2019
Joined in DC by his personal trainer Pavel, Ovechkin will conduct his first interview on September 12, the first day of Training Camp.
Nastya Ovechkina first hinted that the Ovechkins were on their way back to the United States late Wednesday night when she posted a video holding Ovi Jr. from the airport on her Instagram story.
Ovechkin sang karaoke with Dmitry Orlov and former teammate Dmitrij Jaskin in Moscow as his last event in Russia before returning to the team.
During his busy summer, Ovechkin served as an NHL ambassador during a trip to China and celebrated his son’s first birthday with an epic party which included a cameo by Alex Semin. Ovechkin also dropped the ceremonial first puck before a KHL game, did the first kick at a Moscow Dynamo soccer game, made the ceremonial first move at the Moscow Grand Prix (chess), and attended a Team Russia basketball game. And how can we forget the news that he inspired Papa John’s Russia’s new nacho pizza and had a cereal created after him, Ovi O’s, which will be sold at Giant during the season.
In the past, Ovechkin came back to DC days before Capitals’ Training Camp began. With his return in late August, Ovechkin continues his recent trend of returning weeks beforehand.
Headline photo: Elizabeth Kong
