Alex Ovechkin has always played physical — he owns the third-most hits in NHL history — but only has four official fights in his 21 NHL seasons. So, not many players can say they’ve thrown down with The Great 8.
Oleg Tverdovsky, a veteran of 11 NHL seasons, recently recalled the time when he got pretty close.
Before he began his NHL career, Ovechkin played for Dynamo Moscow in the Russian Superleague (now the KHL). During the 2005 Russian Superleague Championship semifinals, he got into a spat with Tverdovsky, then a defenseman for Avangard Omsk, all because of a hit he threw near the benches on Jaromir Jagr.
The 19-year-old Ovechkin landed a hit into the back of Jagr in game two of Avangard Omsk and Dynamo Moscow’s semifinals series, which Dynamo took 11-0. Tverdovsky took exception to the blow and quickly stepped in to defend his team’s best player — a play that’s still recalled in Russia decades later because of the players involved.
“It’s hard to even call it a fight,” Tverdovsky said to Sports.ru’s Daria Tuboltseva and translated by Google Translate. “Dynamo was leading by a large margin, and late in the game, Sasha made a bodycheck on Jagr near the bench. And such things do not happen on any team, in any league, without a reaction from teammates. I was there and simply reacted. There was no need to commit such a dirty trick against our team’s best player in such a situation. So nothing out of the ordinary happened — a bit of a scuffle, just a routine matter.”
Ovechkin seized his first professional post-scrum moment, hyping up the already-rowdy crowd and brandishing his jersey’s logo as he got escorted off. Dynamo Moscow went on to claim the 2005 RSL championship, and Ovechkin racked up 31 penalty minutes in his 10 postseason games.
Ovechkin, Tverdovsky, and Jagr all played in the RSL during the 2004-05 season due to the NHL lockout and were all legends in their own right. Ovechkin, at age 19, had just been the first overall pick at the 2004 NHL Draft by the Washington Capitals. Jagr, a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Pittsburgh Penguins and a five-time Art Ross Trophy-winner, was one of the best players in the world at the time and had been traded from the Washington Capitals to the New York Rangers the season prior in a salary dump. Meanwhile, Tverdovsky, a highly respected veteran defenseman, had just won a Stanley Cup with New Jersey in 2003, and went on to win it again in 2006 with the Carolina Hurricanes.
Although things got heated on the ice, there was no long-term bad blood between the Russians who often played together on the national team. A few weeks after the RSL altercation they were teammates once again during the World Championships, where they won bronze. Tverdovsky agreed with Tuboltseva that, even at the time, it was clear Ovechkin had a great career in front of him.
“I did not perceive that episode as something personal. This is part of the job. He did what he thought was right in the game, and I did what I had to do in that situation,” Tversovsky said.
“After such moments, people calmly continue to communicate, this is hockey.”
The retaliation he faced for landing a big hit on Jagr didn’t deter Ovechhkin from doing it again in 2010, with an infinitely bigger hit on the former Capital. During a preliminary round game between Russia and Czechia at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Ovechkin laid Jagr out with an open-ice hit, which Ovechkin later called it “probably the best hit in my life.”
“I remember it was a tie game,” Ovechkin recalled in 2015. “It was tight. Semin fell on boards. Jagr take the puck and turn on the left side. I knew he [was] not gonna give a pass and he [was] gonna try to make a move on me. And [as] soon as I see he’s going left, I’m already ready to hit him. He just goes left, then right [and I] just kill him.”
He then added, “That was the biggest thing of the hit. Malkin score goal. After that on the bench, coach came to me and said, ‘Just be careful because they probably gonna try to hit you more.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’m ready.’”
