The Washington Capitals came into Wednesday night’s matchup with the St. Louis Blues on a four-game losing streak. During that stretch, the team managed just five total goals, and their captain, Alex Ovechkin, did not record a single point.
However, all of that recent misfortune changed against the Blues. And one person appears to be responsible for breaking the streak and inspiring the Capitals’ 6-1 win more than anyone else: Nastya Ovechkina.
Ovechkin’s wife prepared borscht, a beet-based sour soup, for the whole team before their biggest blowout victory of the young season.
“It seems like making Borscht before the game for the whole team will become a must 😆,” Ovechkina wrote on her Instagram story after the win.
After being super-powered by the Eastern European delicacy, the Capitals scored the most goals they have in a single game this season, and Ovechkin hit a long-awaited milestone. The Capitals captain became the first player in NHL history to score 900 career goals after he backhanded a Jakob Chychrun rebound past Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington just 2:39 into the game’s second period.
Ovechkina and her two sons, Sergei and Ilya, were in attendance at Capital One Arena to see Ovechkin celebrate his massive achievement.
The 6-1 triumph also featured two goals from Ovechkin’s linemate, Anthony Beauvillier, and three goals from his long-time teammates, Tom Wilson and John Carlson. The victory catapulted the Capitals out of a tie for last in the Eastern Conference standings and back into a playoff spot.
The much-needed easy win is not the first seemingly powered by Ovechkina’s borscht. During the 2020-21 season, Ovechkina prepared the soup for the entire team. The result of the following game saw the Capitals post their highest-scoring effort of that season, an 8-1 blowout of the Boston Bruins.
The Capitals ambushed the Bruins with six straight goals in the first two periods. They did not score more than six goals in any other game during the 2020-21 campaign.
“Yes, sometimes Sasha asks to make borscht for the team,” Ovechkina said this past summer. “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.”
After Wednesday night’s game, the Capitals didn’t have too long to celebrate as they immediately made their way up to Pittsburgh to play the Penguins on Thursday night in the back half of a back-to-back.
Hopefully, Ovechkin and the rest of the team brought some of Nastya’s borscht with them, and they do not share any with Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin.
