It appears we know when Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin will be back in the United States before Training Camp begins on September 22.
While speaking with a correspondent from Sport-Express, Ovechkin’s Russian agent Gleb Chistyakov was asked when Ovi is expected to leave Russia.
“Alexander Ovechkin plans to fly out of Russia on September 7th,” Chistyakov told Sport-Express and via a Google Translation. “Then he will fly to America to prepare for the season with Washington.”
This offseason Ovi has been all over the Russian sporting landscape. Most recently he and his son Sergei took part in a ceremonial faceoff before Dynamo Moscow’s regular season KHL opener. He has also taken part in a Dynamo on-ice training session, helped kick off a Russian Premier League match, played in Artemi Panarin’s charity game, featured in Alex Semin’s farewell fixture, and made his own international soccer debut.
Meanwhile, via reporting from The Athletic’s Tarik El-Bashir, we know on-ice work at Capitals MedStar Iceplex has already been underway as a group of players either from the area or already back in the area for the season have been getting work in during informal skates.
With camp set to begin in about 3 weeks, the #Caps informal skates are picking up. Today, Carlson, Kuznetsov, Oshie, Mantha, Orlov, Hagelin, Jensen and Hathaway are out here w/ Snively, Alexeyev and Anas. pic.twitter.com/Vtjby8c4nj
— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) August 29, 2022
Ovechkin’s Russian countrymen Evgeny Kuznetsov, Dmitry Orlov, and Alex Alexeyev are all in the DC area and have been participating in the skates. The Great Eight won’t be too far behind though as he’s been getting ready on his own in Russia.
“We are already training, getting into shape,” Ovechkin said in mid-August. “A month later, the camp begins, we are gradually preparing for it so that we are 70 percent ready for the training camp.”
In 77 games in 2021-22, the burly Russian winger recorded the ninth 50-goal season of his career. He is just 21 goals behind Gordie Howe for second on the all-time list and another season of that ilk would put him just over 60 goals away from Gretzky.
Headline photo: Amanda Bowen/RMNB
