Alex Ovechkin debuted a new hockey stick during his first skate back at MedStar Capitals Iceplex on Monday.
After saying hi to reporters and filming some promotional content, the soon-to-be 41-year-old Ovechkin joined the Washington Capitals‘ informal skate, using both his familiar green Pro Reserve twig and a newly-designed stick featuring red and white stripes and the abbreviation “MVO.”
While the exact meaning of the letters remains unknown without hearing from the man himself, “MVO” are the initials of his late father, Mikhail Viktorovich Ovechkin.
Mikhail, who had been one of his son’s biggest supporters throughout his career, died in February 2023 at the age of 71.
A former athlete in his own right, Mikhail was a defender in Dynamo Moscow’s soccer system and played for the club’s reserve team before a serious thigh injury ended his playing career. He later helped shepherd Ovechkin through Dynamo’s hockey system, regularly driving him to practices and eventually following his career to Washington.
Although health problems prevented Mikhail from traveling to Las Vegas for Washington’s 2018 Stanley Cup win, Ovechkin called him immediately afterward. Mikhail later told the Capitals he cried from happiness and couldn’t sleep all night. When Ovechkin brought the Cup to Moscow that summer, they lifted the Cup together at Dynamo’s training facility in Novogorsk.
Years later, Ovechkin showed appreciation to his dad by playing in a friendly with Dynamo Moscow’s soccer team and wearing Mikhail’s old no. 3.
Ovechkin started the friendly against Amkal and scored with his dad in attendance. “My father played for Dynamo Moscow and was injured. And today this match was more for him than for me,” Ovechkin said.
When Mikhail died, Ovechkin returned to Russia to be with his family and missed four games while on bereavement leave, including the Capitals’ Stadium Series game against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Ovechkin called his dad’s passing “the toughest situation I’ve been through all NHL career.”
“He give me everything,” Ovechkin said. “All his health, all his time. He travel with me all over the world and been at every practice when he have a chance.”
He continued, “He always have a great sense of humor. Even when he don’t understand people he always try to ask something. People who know him they’re going miss his smile, they’re going to miss his energy.”
This summer, Russian Hockey Federation vice president Roman Rotenberg helped open an amateur hockey tournament in Krasnogorsk held in Mikhail Ovechkin’s memory. Rotenberg, who know Mikhail personally, credited him with devoting much of his life to supporting Alex’s hockey career and instilling the work ethic and team-first values that helped shape Ovi into one of the hockey’s greatest players. Oveckhin and his mother, Tatyana, were both in attendance.
If the MVO markings are indeed a tribute to Mikhail, it would be the latest in a long line of personal and familial dedications Ovechkin has incorporated into his equipment over the years.
Number 8
When Ovechkin first reached the NHL, he chose to wear the number 8 in honor of his mother, Tatyana, a two-time Olympic gold medalist basketball player with the Soviet Union.
“My mother played with number 8,” Ovechkin said. “So there was never any question about what number I would wear. My mother is my lifelong idol. Because she’s an outstanding athlete.”
Gloves
The name of Ovechkin’s older brother, Sergei Ovechkin, is stitched in Cyrillic onto his gloves along with two eyes. Sergei tragically passed away at age 24 from a blood clot after a car accident when Alex was just 10 years old. Ovechkin has since named his first son after him and his goal celebration, where he kisses his glove and points skyward, is in tribute to his late brother.
Skates
Ovechkin’s skates have the names “Misha,” the common Russian diminutive for Mikhail, on one side, and “Sergey,” for his older brother, on the other.
Chest pads
Since the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash in September 2011, Ovechkin has worn a patch featuring the team’s logo on his chest. Ovechkin lost a childhood friend and former Russian national-team teammate, Alexander Galimov, in the tragedy.
