Ovechkin: Montreal 2009 was the best

In Russian, translation is below.



Pavel Lysenkov talks to Ovi after All Star game:

"It was a wonderful [hockey] celebration," gave his final verdict Alexander Ovechkin. "It was a good atmosphere. Only one thing though, they just gave me a very little ice time!"

Did you try to find out how much of ice time they actually gave you?
No, I felt like it was about 15 minutes. (Actually it was 16:02 - Ed.).

And how much you would like to have?
Not less than half an hour!

In one episode you threw the stick when Matt Duchene went on breakaway. Did you want to amuse people?
Well, yes. Besides I knew that in All Star games nobody ever had a penalty shot. I wanted to go down in the history.

And did you want to grab the penalty as well?
That was unnecessary. I was only planning to plaster someone on the boards, but failed.

With the score 4:0 in favor of the team Staal did you think that it was over?
That's exactly what I thought.

And why did you lose?
You've seen it all yourself.

It seemed that as soon as you've scored, you started to play more for your partners. In one of those moments you passed the puck to Staal though you were in a better position yourself.
You got it right. I wanted Staal to score. He was playing in his arena with his fans. I remember well when Ilya Kovalchuk played in the All Stars game in Atlanta, everybody tried to set him up too. But Ilya did not score and Staal scored twice.

This is your fourth All-Star event. Which one you liked the most?
Of course, Montreal 2009, no question about it. It was a great hockey atmosphere. A huge excitement around the event. There were five Russians there, Kovalev, Malkin, Kovalchuk, Markov and I. It was a fun time!

That's the real reason why Ovi liked it. The hottest chicks in N/A. :-)

Dadonov was given the assignment by Pathers to buy 30 jerseys for the whole team. What souvenirs are you taking away from Raleigh?
Greenie and I bought baseball caps, and I always did it before. And got few more jerseys.

Do you have a tradition to collect team's autographs on your jersey?
Yes, here's my jersey, signed by everyone. I'll hang it somewhere in my home museum or maybe somewhere else.

And the mitts?
Yes, look here, the entire team signed the autographs on them. Those are not for playing, those are spare gloves. I had my jersey signed by entire team after Quebec too. I sometimes give away those as souvenirs when significant events occur. And I'd say, "Here're gold mitts. Here is a golden helmet."

The Washington Capitals are getting into the most important finishing part of a season and you don't score much. You need to start to toughen up, to prepare yourself for the playoffs...
Well, let's toughen up (agreed Ovechkin).

There haven't been more controversial season in your career like this one.
Let's talk at the end of the year, if I delivered what was expected or not. If you're trying to say that this season I failed, I wouldn't agree. Washington is in the playoffs' zone, fighting for a place in the eight. The rest will be decided in the Stanley Cup run.

In a week St. Petersburg will host the KHL's All Stars event. Are you going to watch it?
It would not be possible. I am not going to wake up at night for the sake of it. I might watch highlights on the Internet.

Gary Bettman and Bill Daley were asked recently if the league will send the teams to Russia. They said that it was not decided yet. Can you lobby for this project?
I'll vote with two hands for it. For our fans, for my family, for my friends, it will be a terrific event. NHL clubs haven't been in Russia for a long time, and even more, they never opened their regular season there.

Bettman said that Siberia scares him, too far to fly.
The flight from Moscow to Omsk takes three hours. Why it does not scare anyone when we're flying from Washington to Los Angeles for six hours?



Carolina complained that SKA played against them too physical. Can you make your Washington club to play physical against the same Dynamo?
I will not promise anything. The most important thing is to go to Russia. And there we'll figure out how to play.

Alex talks after the All-star game

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