Alex Ovechkin laced up his skates again this offseason for the Ovi Cup on Saturday — an annual youth hockey tournament named after the Washington Capitals captain. This year’s final day of action was held inside Mytishchi Arena in Moscow.
Current and former NHL and KHL pros hold a friendly game each year with Ovechkin’s 2024 team matching up with a team led by Vyacheslav Fetisov. In addition to the two legends, Kirill Kaprizov, Evgeni Malkin, Kirill Marchenko, Yegor Chinakhov, Alexander Romanov, Ilya Kovalchuk, Alexei Morozov, and Andrei Markov all took the ice, skating to a 6-6 draw.
Ovechkin and Malkin were joined on their team’s first line by six-year-old Sergei Ovechkin. Ovi Jr. was introduced to the crowd as he skated onto the ice through the arena’s Zamboni door.
Malkin and Kovalchuk attempted to get Sergei to take the game’s opening faceoff as the center on the line but the left-shot winger was adamant about sticking to his right-wing position.
Ovi Jr. later converted a breakaway chance in the game, leading his line down the bench for celebratory fist bumps. On the goal, Sergei looked off his father who has 853 career NHL goals, and finished past the opposing netminder’s blocker.
He finished the day a major plus player as he was also on the ice for a couple of goals scored by Malkin.
Sergei, a 2036 NHL Draft-eligible hockey player, has been on skates for a few years after getting on the ice for the first time in December 2020. His dad says he’s now on a team of his own that he regularly plays with.
“Look, my son went out on skates today,” Ovechkin told Match TV’s Alexander Rogulev per a translation from Google Translate. “We will work. It seems he has improved a little over the year. He works out, trains with the team – twice with them and four times separately.”
Ovechkin has let his sons, Sergei and Ilya, take to hockey naturally instead of putting pressure on them. The legendary goal scorer discussed his parenting process during a recent Russian-language interview with his friend and blogger Amiran Sardarov.
“I don’t want to force them,” Ovechkin said per a transcription by sports.ru and a translation by Google Translate. “Seryozha loves hockey, he just adores it. Ilyusha has just started playing hockey. We’ll see what happens. Seryozha himself has wanted it since childhood – stick, puck, stick, puck.
“Ilyusha has more cars, dinosaurs. Now he himself said that he wants to train: ‘Dad, you promised me – take me.’ Well, I promised – yesterday he went and skated.”
The senior Ovechkin sat with Sergei on the bench during the game, giving him some pointers and advice.
Before the spectacle of the all-star-filled matchup, Spartak Moscow won this year’s youth tournament, beating a junior team representing SKA Saint Petersburg. Spartak absolutely dominated in all of their games, going 6-0 with a combined score of 57-4. The winning team posed for a team photo with Ovechkin hoisting the Cup and wearing gold medals in their locker room.
Saturday was Ovechkin’s first appearance out on the ice since it was reported that he missed Sergei Mozyakin’s farewell game due to a minor knee injury. Per that report, Ovechkin was to start his full training to prepare for NHL Training Camp and preseason play this past week.
The Ovi Cup friendly is the last scrimmage that The Great Eight is scheduled for this summer in Russia after he also played in a Dynamo Moscow alumni game and the “Match of the Year” earlier in the offseason.
