ARLINGTON, VA \u2014 Alex Ovechkin is no stranger to talking to the press, but on Saturday, he was the one asking the questions.<\/p>\n
After getting off the ice at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, Ovechkin called over the nearby reporters covering morning skate. As it turns out, he wanted our help settling an argument.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedia, media!\u201d he said. \u201cWorldwide, who is more famous \u2014 Taylor Swift or Messi?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ovechkin, who now ranks 10th in all-time NHL points<\/a> after putting up a hat trick<\/a> against the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday, argued for Lionel Messi, while Capitals Senior Digital Media Correspondent Taryn Bray defended Taylor Swift\u2019s case.<\/p>\n Both Messi and Swift are legendary figures in their field. Messi is one of the all-time greats of the world\u2019s most popular sport, with a record eight Ballon d\u2019Or award wins as soccer\u2019s best player (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2023), and is so beloved that many fans have stormed the field<\/a> for a chance to meet him. Playing internationally for Argentina, he led the country to victory at the 2022 World Cup, earning the country\u2019s first win at the tournament in 36 years.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also long been Ovechkin\u2019s favorite player. The two met in 2015<\/a>, and Ovechkin\u2019s teammates gifted him with a trip to see Messi play<\/a> in Barcelona when he reached 1,000 NHL games. Ovechkin was thrilled to see Messi complete his 16-year journey to a World Cup title in 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, everybody knows he\u2019s my favorite player,\u201d Ovechkin said then<\/a>. \u201cTo see him finally live his dream and win the World Cup, it\u2019s pretty big for him and I\u2019m really happy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Swift has become a global superstar with one of the most successful music careers in recent memory. She\u2019s won 14 Grammy Awards, including an all-time best four Album of the Year wins (2024, 2021, 2016, and 2010), and holds the record with 40 American Music Awards.<\/p>\n Swift\u2019s most recent album, \u201cThe Life of a Showgirl,\u201d earned an unprecedented 4,002,000 sales<\/a> in its opening week last month, besting the mark set by Adele\u2019s \u201c25\u201d (3,482,000) in 2015. And her 149-show Eras Tour more than doubled the revenue of the previously highest-grossing tour of all time, selling more than $2 billion in tickets<\/a> from March 2023 to December 2024.<\/p>\n Ovechkin didn\u2019t contest Swift\u2019s popularity in the United States, but argued passionately that soccer\u2019s international reach made Messi the more popular figure overall. Bray, however, pointed to the Eras Tour\u2019s worldwide success, with shows in 21 countries spanning five continents.<\/p>\n As a group of sports reporters, we were obviously biased \u2014 Ovechkin may have gotten a very different answer if he\u2019d asked a crowd of music writers. But we ultimately sided with Ovechkin, though we argued it was a far closer call than he seemed to think it was.<\/p>\n One thing\u2019s for sure, though: if Ovechkin keeps asking questions this good, he\u2019s got a future career in the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, VA \u2014 Alex Ovechkin is no stranger to talking to the press, but on Saturday, he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-307628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}