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div>Russian superstar Alexander Ovechkin has accomplished an improbable feat! The man known as the “Great 8” has now surpassed Wayne Gretzky’s all-time National Hockey League (NHL) regular-season record of 894 goals scored.

Goal number 895 was scored during a 4-1 loss in one of the final games of the Washington Capitals’ season in the US-Canadian NHL. Ovechkin was celebrated as a hero — not just by fans of his Washington Capitals, but by ice hockey fans all over North America and beyond. There was no shortage of congratulations, including from NHL top brass and the man whose record he broke, Wayne Gretzky.

“To be honest with you, when I was tying the record, I still can’t believe it,” Ovechkin said afterwards. “It was so emotional. Such a great night. But this is something crazier. I’m probably gonna need a couple of days, maybe a couple weeks, to realize what does it means to be No. 1?

However, some are irritated or even disturbed by all this cheering. For Ovechkin is a left winger — but only on the ice. More than three years after Vladimir Putin launched his war of aggression on neighboring Ukraine, Ovechkin’s Instagram profile picture remains a photo of him smiling beside the Russian president.

The NHL ‘metaphorically shrugs its shoulders’

It’s something that baffles some, like retired Canadian hockey journalist and international broadcaster Paul Romanuk.

“Just imagine for one moment if an NHL player like (Canadian superstar) Sidney Crosby’s social-media profile picture was him with his arm around Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein – can you imagine the outrage? The league would order him to take it down immediately. The pushback on social media would be off the scales,” Romanuk told DW in a recent Zoom call.

“And yet you can have this great hockey player side-by-side with a dictator waging a war on an innocent country like Ukraine — and the NHL metaphorically shrugs its shoulders.”

The profile photo is by no means a one-off, with Ovechkin taking credit for having launched the “PutinTeam” in 2017 to support the president in his 2018 reelection campaign.

Ovechkin’s public support of Putin has indeed put the NHL in a difficult position, and for the most part the league has been closed-lipped on the issue, apart from a statement released shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

NHL condemns invasion, concerned about players

“The National Hockey League condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and urges a peaceful resolution as quickly as possible. Effective immediately, we are suspending our relationships with our business partners in Russia and we are pausing our Russian language social and digital media sites,” the league said.

At the same time, it expressed concern about the “well-being of the players from Russia, who play in the NHL on behalf of their NHL Clubs, and not on behalf of Russia.

The man himself has also remained tight-lipped about the invasion. DW attempted to reach out to him through the Washington Capitals for comment but received no answer. Ovechkin has only commented on it once, a day after Putin launched the invasion, on February 24,2022.

Asked by a reporter covering the Washington Capitals if he still supported Putin despite the invasion, Ovechkin replied: “Well, he’s my president.”

He did call for peace but declined to criticize Moscow’s military action.

“Please, no more war. It doesn’t matter who’s in the war — Russia, Ukraine, different countries,” he said.

In its statement, the NHL also expressed concern for its Russian players and their families, which it said had been placed in “an extremely difficult position.”

According to a 2022 New York Times article, it was concern about his family back in Russia, that made Ovechkin decide against changing his Instagram profile pic. This has been rejected by critics who argue that there has been no evidence of Putin’s regime retaliating against the families of athletes critical of the war.

Hockey Hall of Famer an outspoken critic

Since then, Ovechkin has gone on playing and putting up points, including a lot of goals for the Capitals. But the “elephant” in the room, as Romanuk calls it, has scarcely been mentioned in the North

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/ovechkin-breaks-nhl-goal-record-but-putin-link-casts-shadow/a-72046269?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf