"What does he do? He comes into the start of the season, gets seven goals in two games," Trotz said. He finished with 49 goals, with 32 at even strength, his most since 2010. Ovechkin opened the season with hat tricks in the first two games. Trotz saw something of an attitude change, too. He was just four pounds lighter, but the Capitals saw a change in his body composition. Ovechkin returned to Washington more than two weeks before training camp, skating in the mornings and running around the Washington-Lee High School track in the late afternoons. Trotz then told Ovechkin to focus on being the best consistently, "rather than, 'Oh, we have a good team, and I'll be good here tonight because we haven't lost two in a row,'" he said. Just as a coach and just as a friend, knowing this game, how you're going to have continued success is you're going to have to become more of an athlete. "The game's getting quicker it's a young man's league, and you're getting older. "The game's changing, and a lot of people think your game is not going to translate and you can't do anything anymore because you're getting older," Trotz recalled telling Ovechkin that day.
They were engaged in September 2016 and married last summer in an extravagant ceremony. Two months later, Ovechkin went public with his relationship to Nastya Shubskaya, a Russian model and socialite.
She announced the engagement was broken off in July 2014 before marrying someone else the following January. Open, and the couple was engaged by December of the following year.
CAPTAIN OBVIOUS CAPITALS PRO
Ovechkin met Russian tennis pro Maria Kirilenko at the 2011 U.S. The party-boy image was more fodder for his critics, especially in contrast to on-ice rival and Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, who had won a first Stanley Cup by that point and wanted out of the spotlight when he wasn't playing. He was photographed wearing sunglasses upside down while partying with Russian club dancers on a yacht in Turkey during the 2010 offseason, and he had to field questions about his fitness level a year later because of a photograph that wasn't kind to his midsection. His personal life also had been the subject of some scrutiny. Once the hope of the franchise, Ovechkin looked exhausted from the repeated disappointments, often the one blamed most for them.Īt 32 years old, his hair was more gray than black, and after he scored 33 goals during the 2016-17 season - a great year for most players, but one of his worst - Ovechkin's career seemed to be on the decline going into this campaign. Ovechkin went from the fresh-faced and fun-loving star to the weary captain. We're gonna get better, too."Īfter nine postseason trips that ended short of the conference finals, Leonsis's prognostication seemed less of a sure thing. We're either gonna win it this year or next year or the year after. Not long after the Capitals won the Presidents' Trophy for recording the NHL's best regular season record but lost to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the 2010 playoffs, Leonsis made a promise: "Alex and the Caps are gonna win Stanley Cups. "From the first moment he got drafted, diving into the crowd, eating his cantaloupes, getting people drinks, he's always been an extrovert and connected so well with the team." "Not a lot of people can deliver on their promises," Leonsis said. Leonsis disagreed, and his one regret is that the deal wasn't 15 years long.
Former NBA Commissioner David Stern told Leonsis he was a fool for signing Ovechkin to that length a deal, that the superstar would become unmotivated. In 2008, he signed a 13-year deal worth roughly $9.5 million annually, one of the most lucrative NHL contracts with an eye-popping term. "He told me, like, one day we're going to win it," Ovechkin said.
Leonsis said something that afternoon that stayed with Ovechkin 12 years later. Mostly, he was a kid living away from home for a first time, not yet fully grasping his place in the franchise and in Washington. Speaking English was still a struggle, and the native Russian was both wowed and overwhelmed by his new North American surroundings. As a 20-year-old rookie, he visited Leonsis's home and swam in the pool with his kids. In the afterglow of victory, Ovechkin sat between the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy and he wanted to tell a story.
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