Nastya Ovechkina is apparently such a good chef that she can power blowout wins for the Capitals with her cooking.
Ovechkina spoke with Sport-Express’s Igor Rabiner in March about when her husband, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin, asked her to prepare borscht for the entire team. The following game’s result saw the Capitals have their highest-scoring single game of that season.
“Yes, sometimes Sasha asks to make borscht for the team,” Ovechkina told Rabiner, as translated via Google Translate. “There was a case when a couple of years ago I cooked huge pots of borscht – and the team, having eaten it, won, I think, 8-1. In any case, the score was incredible. They laughed that it was my ‘fault.’ Since then, such requests sometimes happen.”
The game Ovechkina is likely referring to was an April 11, 2021 bout against the Boston Bruins. The Capitals ambushed the Bruins with six straight goals to open the contest and ended 8-1 victors. They did not score more than six goals in any other game during the 2020-21 campaign.
Ironically, Ovechkina’s husband, the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer, did not score one of the eight goals. Ovechkin recorded 10 shots and had one assist in 21:44 of ice time. Instead, the Capitals got two goals apiece from TJ Oshie, Conor Sheary, and Lars Eller, as well as individual tallies from Nic Dowd and Tom Wilson.
Borscht is a beet-based sour soup, usually featuring a combination of different seasonings, beef broth, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, and sometimes vinegar and/or sour cream. The soup was ubiquitous throughout the Soviet Union, but is widely considered to have originated from Ukraine.
“We all know that borscht generally takes a long time to cook,” Ovechkina said of making the soup for the whole team. “It’s just that the volumes are bigger, which means it takes longer.”
Ovechkin has previously stated that his favorite foods include borscht, pelmeni, and beef stroganoff. Given how he has been able to keep up such an unbelievable scoring pace late in his NHL career, perhaps his wife’s cooking needs to get more credit for his record-breaking goal this past year.
Overall, Nastya’s willingness to cook for the entire team is just another example of how close and tight-knit the Capitals have been under the Ovechkin captaincy.
“I really like the atmosphere in the team,” Ovechkina said. “Many people talk about it because they see the guys’ relationships. Sasha has often talked about how this unity is felt, how they feel like a single whole. I think that only under such conditions can you win something serious in this team sport.”
The Capitals will be looking to win the franchise’s second Stanley Cup next year, and maybe they’ll do it if they have Nastya’s borscht every day.
