04 May 2009
Alex Ovechkin Leads New Wave of Russian, European Hockey Stars
East European, Russian players long a part of hockey's global appeal
Washington — Forget about the state of diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia. Much of Washington is wildly embracing Russians these days, specifically hockey superstar Alexander Ovechkin and his fellow Russian players on the Washington Capitals as they compete in the playoffs for the National Hockey League (NHL) championship, the coveted Stanley Cup.
THE “WASHINGTON RUSSIANS”
Ovechkin, born in Moscow and previously a star with Dynamo Moscow, “could be the seminal player of his generation,” according to a profile in the Washington Post newspaper. Only 23 years old, Ovechkin, nicknamed “Alexander the Great,” is already in a league of his own, winning hockey's most valuable player (MVP) award in 2008 with 65 goals and a total of 112 points (goals and assists). He is one of the few players to record 200 goals and 200 assists in his first four NHL seasons.
The numbers don't tell the whole story, however. Ovechkin's creative shot making is a staple of hockey highlight films, including one instant-legend move in February “when he passed the puck to himself off the sideboards, made a spin move on a defenseman and then deposited the puck in the net from his hip while sliding on his side,” the Washington Post reported.
Ovechkin is one of a powerful lineup of Russian athletes playing for the Capitals this season. They include 39-year-old Sergei Federov, former star with the Soviet Red Army team, who holds the record for most NHL goals by a Russian-born player; another veteran, Viktor Kozlov; 25-year-old Alexander Semin from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk; and rookie goalie sensation Simeon Varlamov.
Even more remarkable, perhaps, is that Ovechkin's two main rivals for 2009 MVP are also Russians. Evgeni Malkin of the Pittsburgh Penguins, drafted by the NHL in 2004 with Ovechkin, led the league in total points and assists this year. “Malkin is a force of nature. Size, speed, hands, vision, strength — he has it all,” said a commentator for the ESPN sports television network.
The third candidate for MVP honors is Pavel Datsyuk, 30, of the Detroit Red Wings, considered perhaps the best defensive forward in the game today, setting the season record in 2008 with 144 takeaways of the puck from his opponents. Datsyuk, born in Sverdlovsk, Russia, “is a special, special talent,” said his coach Mike Babcock to ESPN. “And his God-given ability is beyond scary, but it's his strength and conditioning that allows him to do the things he does.”
NHL AND EUROPE
Russian and other European players have been starring in NHL hockey for decades. The percentage of professional players from outside North America grew from 9.2 percent in 1984 to more than 28 percent in 2008, with the overwhelming number from Europe.
Until the end of the Cold War, players from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe usually had to defect to play hockey in the West. After 1989, Czech and Slovak players joined Russians as powerful forces in North American professional hockey.
The Hockey News, for example, rates such Czech players as winger Patrik Elias of the New Jersey Devils, center David Krejci of the Boston Bruins and goaltender Tomas Vokoun of the Florida Panthers as current and future NHL stars.
Among the many other European standouts are Ukrainian Alexei Ponikarovsky of the Toronto Maple Leafs, with a career-high 61 points in 2009, and Zdeno Chára of Slovakia. Chára, an all-star defenseman with the Boston Bruins, is the tallest player in the NHL at 2.06 meters, and possesses one of the league's hardest slap shots, clocked at more than 101 kilometers per hour.
The top 10 nations represented in the NHL in 2009, after Canada and the United States, are the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Germany, Latvia, Switzerland, Denmark and Ukraine, according to Greg Inglis, NHL communications director.
Of 974 active players in the NHL today, 244 are from Europe. A total of 32 are Russian-born and another 92 from Central Europe and the former Soviet Union.
HOCKEY AND GLOBAL COMPETITION
The number of Europeans playing in the NHL has declined in the last several years, especially for Russian-born players. One reason is a new requirement that foreign teams pay for the rights to acquire a player from the Russian professional leagues.
Without a formal transfer agreement with the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, the NHL has been reluctant to sign new players from Russia, according to news reports. The current global economic recession has also slowed progress on agreements between the NHL and European hockey federations.
The NHL drafted only nine Russian-born players in 2008, for example, compared to more than 30 each year from 2000 to 2003.
Another factor is the growing international competition in hockey from professional leagues in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. The new Russian-run Continental Hockey League, which replaced the Russian Super League in 2008, has been paying young players salaries comparable to those in the NHL and offering big bonuses to convince established Russian stars to return home.
“From my perspective, there is a competition between Russian clubs and the NHL for the best product on the ice,” hockey star Alexi Yashin told the New York Times newspaper. Yashin recently left the New York Islanders for the Lokomotiv team in remote Yaroslavl, Russia, which now has several former NHL players.
“Hockey is not just a sport, but a part of our great history, our national consciousness and a part of our pride," said Russian official Sergei Naryshkin in the New York Times. Naryshkin sees professional hockey in Russia rivaling the NHL.
The NHL, for its part, remains confident that it can compete with European hockey for players and fans, according to NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, who points to such stars as Ovechkin and Malkin.
The NHL plans to strengthen its international ties. The league has announced that it will send at least six teams to three European cities to launch the 2009–2010 season, ESPN reports. Possible sites include Berlin, Prague and Helsinki.
For more information, see the Web sites of the National Hockey League and Hockey News. The official Web site of Alex Ovechkin provides news, interviews, and video highlights.
