Sometime between games 2 and 3 of a 2009 second-round playoff series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals teammates Viktor Kozlov and Sergei Fedorov had a conversation that left the former with a bad feeling.
The Capitals had taken a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, winning a pair of rousing one-goal games in Washington. Kozlov and Fedorov’s teammate, Alex Ovechkin, had already scored four goals in the series, as had Sidney Crosby, the Penguins superstar who throughout most of the hockey world was viewed as the only player on Ovechkin’s level.
“All the talk, even with players, was Ovechkin and Crosby,” Kozlov said. “Sergei said, ‘Now we must hope Malkin does not emerge.’
“It is what Sergei said next that gave me concern: ‘Maybe he is the best player?’”
Evgen…
Sometime between games 2 and 3 of a 2009 second-round playoff series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals teammates Viktor Kozlov and Sergei Fedorov had a conversation that left the former with a bad feeling.
The Capitals had taken a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, winning a pair of rousing one-goal games in Washington. Kozlov and Fedorov’s teammate, Alex Ovechkin, had already scored four goals in the series, as had Sidney Crosby, the Penguins superstar who throughout most of the hockey world was viewed as the only player on Ovechkin’s level.
“All the talk, even with players, was Ovechkin and Crosby,” Kozlov said. “Sergei said, ‘Now we must hope Malkin does not emerge.’
“It is what Sergei said next that gave me concern: ‘Maybe he is the best player?’”
Evgeni Malkin, the NHL’s top scorer during that season, produced eight points over the next five games as the Penguins rallied to eliminate the Capitals. A month and a half later, he was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for a 36-point postseason — the best by any NHL player since Wayne Gretzky in 1993 — as the Penguins celebrated a Stanley Cup championship.
“I know in United States and Canada it’s always Alex and Crosby,” Kozlov said. “But in Russia, we believed the two best players were ours, and it was Alex and Geno. And, of course, Sergei is one of Russia’s greatest players. Who better than Sergei would recognize greatness? He already knew what would happen — that Alex and Geno would set a new level for players from our country.”
On Thursday night in Pittsburgh, a longtime rivalry resumes when the Capitals meet the Penguins at PPG Paints Arena. Ovechkin became the first NHL player to score 900 goals on Wednesday night. Malkin is among the league leaders in points this season. Neither is signed beyond 2025-26.
Are we nearing the end of an amazing story? Ovechkin and Malkin, 40 and 39, respectively, could leave the NHL at the same time — a perhaps fitting farewell, since they were the No. 1 and No. 2 picks of the 2004 draft.
New York Rangers defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov is one of the many current and former Russian- and Soviet-born NHL players who know the end of an era might be at hand. They’re not ready for it.
“I will not think like this,” Gavrikov said. “I cannot. No. I refuse, because Ovi and Geno are still great. I wish to see them play for many more years. But it is their choice. They have done so much. When it is they do leave, I think every Russian player would tell them, ‘Thank you.’ They are two of our country’s greatest hockey heroes. They showed the best of Russian hockey to fans here and everyone back home for all these years.
“They are so important.”
During the 2006-07 season, Ovechkin’s second and Malkin’s first in the NHL, there were 44 players either born in Russia or the Soviet Union. Malkin won the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie, just as Ovechkin had the previous season.
More than their stature as the two top picks in 2004, Ovechkin and Malkin bore the burden of expectations to become superstars at a time when casual fans in North America could be forgiven for wondering what the big deal was about players from a country known as a hockey power.
Pavel Datsyuk, a two-way dynamo for the Detroit Red Wings, was already 28. Ilya Kovalchuk, the No. 1 overall pick in 2001, was only 23 and on his way to a third consecutive 40-goal season, but he was lost in the wilderness that was the Atlanta Thrashers.
Fedorov, 37, was nearing the end of his NHL run, as was the Dallas Stars’ Sergei Zubov. The likes of Pavel Bure and Alexander Mogilny had already scored their combined 910 NHL goals and retired.
“You must understand how important hockey is to Russians; to us, it’s our sport,” retired defenseman Sergei Gonchar said. “The NHL is the best league. It’s expected in Russia that when you play in the NHL, you represent Russian hockey.”
Gonchar recalled the 1990s, when Fedorov challenged fellow young stars Eric Lindros and Jaromir Jagr for the unofficial title of world’s best hockey player, when Bure and Mogilny each produced multiple 50-goal seasons, when he and Zubov were running power plays for teams that played in the Stanley Cup Final, and when the Red Wings’ “Russian Five” played a pivotal role in turning Detroit into the so-called Hockeytown.
If the 1990s were Russian hockey’s peak in the NHL, the hope of the Russian Federation was that Ovechkin and Malkin — two prospects from very different backgrounds — would carry the flag, so to speak, and show not only North Americans but also Russians that the country remained a pipeline for greatness.
“I don’t know if it was pressure, but Alex and Evgeni were the two best young players to come from Russia in a long time,” Gonchar said. “They had to compete with each other. They weren’t competing with our great players from the past. But we expected they would lead the way and become great players.”
If they developed into superstars, not merely just great players, Ovechkin and Malkin represented stories that held broad appeal in Russia. Ovechkin was the Moscow-born-and-raised prodigy from Dynamo’s famed system. Malkin was the slow-developing kid from Magnitogorsk, an industrial town far away from Russia’s traditional hockey hotspots.
“Every Russian knew about Alex from when he was very young. If you studied Russian hockey, you were aware of Geno,” Kozlov said. “In Russia, it was expected for years that Alex would become the player picked first and become a big star. I remember watching footage of Malkin — he kept growing and getting better — and back home it was thought, ‘Maybe we have two big stars coming?’
“We did.”
All-time NHL scoring (Russians)
| Player | Goals (rank) | Assists (rank) | Points (rank) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evgeni Malkin | 517 (2) | 848 (1) | 1,365 (2) |
| Alex Ovechkin | 899 (1) | 731 (2) | 1,630 (1) |
Like a majority of the 65 Russian-born players in the NHL last season, New York Islanders winger Maxim Tsyplakov has only known a world in which Ovechkin and Malkin were living legends, the players whose NHL games he woke up early to watch on TV because of the time difference. Russians donned yellow laces like Ovechkin and considered using a short stick like Malkin.
“They are how I learned about NHL,” Tsyplakov said. “You hear about it. But in home, you see Russian teams’ games. You have to find NHL. I did, to watch Ovechkin and Malkin. They were best players. They are our players. You want to be them. It was the dream.”
Ovechkin and Malkin have surpassed Fedorov’s previous high marks for goals, assists and points scored in the NHL by a Russian/Soviet-born player. Each is among a select group of players to win the Calder, Hart, Art Ross, Ted Lindsay and Conn Smythe awards, and the Stanley Cup. The only hockey achievement missing for both players is an Olympic gold medal; the Russian Federation failed to medal in 2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi, Russia, their two Winter Games as teammates.
Coincidence placed them with NHL franchises in the same conference. The Capitals and Penguins competed in four second-round series from 2009 through 2018, including three in a row. The Penguins won the first three. After their 26th playoff game against one another — a series-clinching Capitals win in Pittsburgh in May 2018 — Malkin, by then a three-time champion, shook Ovechkin’s hand, pulled him close, and whispered, “Go get yours.”
Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin share a moment in the 2018 playoffs. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
“They are giants,” former NHL forward Alexander Radulov said. “For Russians, yes. In all of hockey, they are giants.”
Radulov said Ovechkin and Malkin showed Russian players they could “be us” off the ice. Though Ovechkin was a showman from Day 1, Malkin took a couple of years before warming to expressing himself publicly. Ovechkin’s unapologetic joy and Malkin’s unbridled sarcasm have won over fans beyond the Capital Beltway and Steel City.
Whereas once Russian players in the NHL were casually stereotyped as individualistic or stoic, Ovechkin grew into the leader the Capitals needed as their captain, while Malkin’s humor became a complement to Crosby’s seriousness with the Penguins.
None of this happened overnight, but the beauty of their careers extending as they have is that Ovechkin and Malkin have literally grown up in a digital age. They were the first Russian prospects for whom fans took to the internet in search of highlights, and they’ve become the dads sharing videos of their kids’ birthday parties on social media.
“For us, Ovechkin and Malkin are at the top,” Tsyplakov said. “Russia has many great players today, but we look at them first to show the way and what is possible.”
Minnesota Wild winger Kirill Kaprizov is the rare Russian player who followed Ovechkin and Malkin and is now seen by each as an equal. In Moscow during the offseason, he’s trained with Malkin and dined with Ovechkin.
He’s been taken under their wing to the point that Kaprizov now repeats the same answer Ovechkin and Malkin regularly provide when asked about their importance to Russian hockey at home and in the NHL.
“We have so many great players,” Kaprizov said.
Gavrikov agreed, pointing to two Soviet-era players still thought of by many in Russia as the country’s best players: late winger Valeri Khlaramov and goalie Vladimir Tretiak.
Still, Gavrikov said, he hoped current Russian players in the NHL would seek out Ovechkin and Malkin before or after games against the Capitals and Penguins. He did years ago before establishing himself in the league, and in each instance, was taken aback.
“I think they know who they are, what they mean to players from this time,” Gavrikov said. “They do not show it. They ask about your life, make jokes, and if you want to talk about hockey, they will.”
This past February, while trying to distract themselves from Russia not being part of the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, Ovechkin and Malkin shared a couple of meals in South Florida, near Malkin’s residence.
Mostly they talked about their sons. Occasionally, they discussed their futures.
There is no longer tension or even rivalry between the two men. They agreed that a lot has changed over a couple of trailblazing decades, during which each man has distinguished himself as not only an all-time Russian player but a historic NHL player.
They’re aware of what was expected of them back home. They know what they’ve done. If they choose to discuss it all, it will stay between them.
It’s not for Ovechkin or Malkin to say what they think of their legacies.
“They showed us what it is like to be best,” Gavrikov said. “They have done in NHL what other Russians dream; Ovi with all the goals, Geno with all the Cups. They have done it together and against one another. We have all watched it happen.”