ARLINGTON, VA — On Sunday morning, Alex Ovechkin brought his two boys onto the ice to school them on a signature skill he's famous for.
The pair, Sergei and Ilya, hit the sheet at the team's Iceplex facility in MedStar for a skate once the workout had wrapped. Several veterans hung around for it too: Tom Wilson, Aliaksei Protas, Dylan Strome, Anthony Beauvillier, and Justin Sourdif. Amid drilling the usual fundamentals, the youngsters took a crack at a few scoring routines made famous by the Great Eight.
The clip (scroll down)
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Firing the heated lumber
Image by Katie Adler of RMNB
The antics got rolling once Ilya, age five, knocked home a goal and joined with Sourdif to pull off Ovi's hot-stick bit. When that celebration first debuted in March 2009, Sourdif happened to be only six years old; raised as a Capitals diehard cheering on the captain from his Surrey, British Columbia hometown, he wound up — roughly seventeen seasons down the road — teaching the now-legendary gesture to the kid of the very player he'd grown up worshipping.
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Diving onto the stomach
Image by Katie Adler of RMNB
Refusing to be upstaged, Sergei copied one of his father's more recent celebrations moments after that. He potted a goal himself, then peeled off from the cage and flung himself flat onto his stomach — echoing the flop his dad executed in the wake of his milestone 895th career puck a year ago in the spring.
Whereas the hot-stick bit was rehearsed, that dive onto the belly came about by sheer luck, though it has since been stamped across pucks, shirts, towels, and no shortage of other gear. The captain recounted afterward that the sheet was in rough shape that day and sent him sprawling, and he reckoned the whole thing wound up being a genuinely neat moment.
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By contrast, the dive from the younger boy seemed intentional, with Sergei sporting his go-to "Ovi Jr." sweater along with a pair of bright yellow laces.
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Throughout this year, the Ovechkin kids have racked up considerable time skating on the club's home surface — a fact made richer by the possibility their dad is nearing the twilight of his playing days. Back during November, the two lads joined the pregame skate at the arena downtown before a tribute that marked their father's 900th goal as well as game number 1,500.
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Sergei later suited up for a game himself at that same downtown rink, lacing up with the Mites program on January 7. When the intermission rolled around, a handful of players hung back to take it in — Ovechkin included, plus Wilson, Strome, and John Carlson.
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Should the Ovechkin youngsters already display this much polish on their celebrations, there's no telling what tricks await once they hit draft eligibility, an arrival slated for 2036 in one case and 2038 in the other.