Word of Ovechkin’s appearance apparently spread quickly, and more fans showed up at the store as the afternoon progressed hoping to get a glimpse of him and possibly an autograph. Ovechkin, who turned 40 on Sept. 17, will begin his 21st NHL season when Washington hosts the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena on Oct. 8 (7:30 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, TNT).

The Capitals captain has been nursing a minor lower-body injury that has kept him out of practice since he left a few minutes into his first training camp practice on Thursday. He skated on his own before practice Tuesday, though, and said he expects to skate with the team Wednesday.

Before that, he stopped into Giant to lend a hand and spread the word about “Ovi’s Great Crunch.”

“It is incredible chance when you have the greatest local hockey star, the premiere (athlete) of Washington, DC, come to a grocery store like Giant,” Arons said. “It means the world. Every customer, all the kids, all the fans, all the associates had just like the most amazing time seeing Alex run around the store and do what we do every day.”

Ovechkin completed his visit by joining some kids shooting at a net outside the store’s front entrance and passing along some pointers.

“It’s great,” Ovechkin said. “I’m sure people enjoy it, people love it, and we enjoy it, too.”

This is the second time Ovechkin has teamed with Giant Foods on a limited-edition cereal. “Ovi O’s”, a honey-nut cereal, sold out within days of its release in September 2019. A portion of the proceeds from “Ovi’s Great Crunch” will benefit THE GR8 CHASE for Victory Over Cancer, a campaign supporting pediatric cancer research that Ovechkin launched in March along with the Capitals, Hockey Fights Cancer and The V Foundation for Cancer Research.

“The secret is Ovi loves cereal,” Arons said. “We did something special a few years ago with ‘Ovi O’s’, but when he broke Wayne Gretzky’s record, we said, ‘How do we do something truly special to celebrate this?’ And it was cereal. The cereal to me tastes great. It’s a bran flake, so it’s just a regular kind of crunchy, flakey cereal, but what’s fun is that you can add whatever you want to it. So, the kids got to put blueberries, chocolate chips, honey, cinnamon, all different types of things to really amp it up.”