These are days of global awareness, of headlines on tariffs and imports. Cars from Japan and Germany, avocados from Mexico, computers from China, coffee from Colombia, wine from Italy….
Ice hockey from Canada.
These are days of irony. The fellow who just set the career record for goals in hockey’s premier league, the NHL—which is based mostly in American cities but is a Canadian commodity—is a Russian import working these past 25 years in Washington, D.C.
And no surprise: this turn of events has its political implications.
Alex Ovechkin, originally from Moscow but a U.S. resident throughout this century, has surpassed Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian national hero who has become chummy with the American president who lately has denigrated Gretzky’s country.
These are disorienting times. Consider that, during the latter days of the Cold War in the 1980s, American president Ronald Reagan declared Ovechkin’s homeland—then, technically, the Soviet Union—to be “the evil empire.” But over a remarkably productive career with the Capitals, Ovechkin often has been said to be as beloved in Washington as that old Commie detractor Reagan had been there.
It would be difficult to characterize Ovechkin as a Communist (as opposed to Yankee capitalist) given that, according to Forbes magazine, he has earned roughly $160 million in player salary and bonuses and never has dropped below $2.5 million in off-ice earnings for 13 years.
Of course, the universal appreciation of professional hockey skill is a heartwarming thing, with Ovechkin honored by teammates, fans and the sport’s officials from all over the map. During this season’s pursuit of Gretzky’s record, the Washington area has been flooded with lawn signs and goal counters urging Ovechkin on.
But these are the days of philosophical whiplash.
Gretzky recently has come under attack in his homeland for siding with U.S. president Trump and the latter’s calls for making Canada America’s 51st state (with, Trump added, Gretzky as that new “state’s” governor). Gretzky, who played the last 11 seasons of his 21-year NHL career for U.S. teams, has lived south of the border since 1988, noting on a radio show this week that he has “five American kids, seven American grandchildren, an American wife, a 103-year-old American mother-in-law….”
Ovechkin likewise settled two decades ago near his U.S. workplace, living now in McLean, Va., just across the Potomac from D.C. He is a much-admired star in this nation of sporting celebrity.
For years, New York Ranger fans have, in their backhanded way, showered attention on Ovechkin for his outsized impact on the ice, by singling him out each period with 8:08 to play (8 is Ovechkin’s uniform number) by counting down “8-7-6 . . .” to a thoroughly uncreative chant: “Ovi sucks!”
“You know, it’s nice,” Ovechkin has said. It means “you’re still out there and still get some respect.”
Still, we appear to be knee deep in ideological drift. Ovechkin in 2018 founded a organization to promote the Russian presidential campaign of Vladimir Putin, an act which—not so long ago–would have put both men officially among America’s Bad Guys. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ovechkin, who reportedly has Putin’s personal phone number, has declined several of his team’s requests to remove a profile photo of him with Putin from his Instagram account.
Ovechkin has insisted that he is “not a politic; I’m an athlete.” Meanwhile, someone who is “a politic,” the current occupant of the White House, has also embraced Putin’s Russia, thoroughly unlike Ronald Reagan, by inaccurately shifting the responsibility for starting that war from Putin to Ukraine. (Which, it happens, is the land of Gretzky’s ancestors. Not that that has anything to do with international diplomacy or hockey’s new goal-scoring record.)
More unsettled territory: When Russian troops stormed into Ukraine, Gretzky was among distinguished personalities from the sports world who called to ban Russian teams from international events, a prohibition which has ended—at least for now—Ovechkin’s long participation on the Russian national team in world hockey championships and the Olympics.
The NHL clearly has no such ban on individuals. So these are days of migration and Ovechkin rule. Records, like alliances, can be broken.