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When Alex Ovechkin stood in front of his Washington Capitals teammates on Tuesday and told them he was leaving, that his father was in Moscow and was likely to die soon, TJ Oshie felt it because he had already experienced it.
“It was hard for me to sit there and not just go up and give him a tight hug,” Oshie said on Wednesday, the day Ovechkin announced his father Mikhail had died. “I think everyone goes through it differently. But I have an idea of the emotions he felt when he spoke to us, the emotions he would inevitably go through and what he’s going through now. It is difficult.”
Bonds with fathers are both universal and unique. Damn if hockey dads don’t have an extra shift. Almost by definition, ice hockey requires parental help. It’s not about rolling out a basketball and saying, “Go shoot.” There’s travel. There is equipment. A 6 year old can’t start alone. The hours invested quickly add up to months before turning into years.
“You need to lace up your skates,” Oshie said. “They have to put on your gear for you. There’s just so much time that those earliest memories you have are playing – your dad is there. He is always here.”
Tom Wilson grew up in Toronto, where his father helped Keven build a backyard ice rink. It wasn’t meant to pave a way into the NHL. But would Wilson be in his 10th year in the league if his father hadn’t put in the time and effort?
“I don’t want to talk about it because I get pretty emotional if I do,” Wilson said. “Everyone knows when they’re lucky enough to have a dad who’s there for them growing up, it’s a connection through hockey and family that can’t really be described.”
Alex Ovechkin announces the death of his father Mikhail
Mikhail Ovechkin used to be a fixture at the Capitals’ Arlington training complex, helping himself with coffee and even walking through the locker room in the early years. He could hardly speak English. He communicated anyway. His facial expressions would come off rest grumpy to absolute joy when he met one of his son’s teammates. His rough face could show a wide and genuine smile.
“In the beginning, neither of us spoke English,” said Swede Nicklas Backstrom, “but we could understand each other with our hands.”
As of early 2014, Ovechkin was deep in his ninth season in the NHL, his ninth season in the United States. His parents spent much of the season with him in Washington. An annual highlight for Mikhail – a highlight for all Capitals dads – was the annual dads’ trip, a street swing through several cities where the dads would come along for games and beers, not necessarily in that order.
That year I went along to write about the experience, about the bonds not only between fathers and their sons, but also between fathers and each other. Alex Ovechkin is and will remain the center of the Capitals’ solar system. In a way, with the fathers, Mikhail Ovechkin played the same role.
That year, the Caps entered the fathers’ journey on a six-game losing streak. By the end of the first period of the first game in New Jersey, they were trailing 1-0. And here came Mikhail Ovechkin, ready to change fate. He grabbed a bottle of vodka. He set out a row of glasses. And the fathers threw them back.
Failing to make a comeback, the Capitals gathered for their charter flight to Montreal. Dave Green, the bearish father of then-Caps defense attorney Mike, sought out Mikhail. Neither spoke the language of the other.
“Parents are parents. They’re like, ‘How’s Sasha?’” Alex Ovechkin later told me, referring to his own nickname. ” ‘Good. Mike?’ ‘Fine. Let’s go smoke.'”
So Dave Green and Mikhail Ovechkin burned cigarettes on the pavement. A universal language sharing a moment and an experience with her sons. Without having to say it, they had so much in common.
“I only remember playing for hours on the outdoor rink in the freezing cold,” Oshie said. “You play. Face is numb. Toes are numb. Can’t feel anything. You walk in for a hot chocolate and straight out. A lot of it was at my dad’s.”
The Dads of the Capitals come from all over the world to celebrate hockey, pride and their sons
When the Capitals finally won the Stanley Cup in 2018, Oshie wanted to share it with his father Tim, who was deep in a battle with Alzheimer’s disease at the time.
“I don’t know how many times we’ve won the Stanley Cup together, me and my dad,” Oshie said, “whether it was before I could even skate, when I was playing knee hockey in the living room, or when I got old enough to.” Blade to ride scooter and do it in the backyard. … The feeling that we really did, it was no longer a dream to share that with him, probably one of the most meaningful, connected hugs we’ve ever had.”
Ovechkin faces a world unknown to him, a world without his father in it. He’ll miss Thursday and Saturday games – and we’re betting he won’t play Tuesday either. But at some point there will be ice hockey again.
“That’s how I came to terms with my father’s death,” Oshie said. “Play hockey.”
Oshie’s father, known as “Coach” even by his son, died in May 2021, just before the end of the Capitals season. Oshie missed a game but raced back to New York to face Rangers.
“Somehow I think he didn’t want it to be his fault that I missed another game,” Oshie said. “Who knows? But I think I know him better than most and that’s how I dealt with it.”
That he completed a hat-trick with an empty goal that finished off Rangers meant the tears would shed. It would be Ovechkin’s highlight to return to the lineup with a similar performance. The bond was evident, and his teammates knew it because so many of them have lived it with their own hockey dads.
Mikhail “was his type,” Wilson said.
They all have their boys.