{"id":339681,"date":"2025-12-09T21:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T21:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339681\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T21:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T21:00:07","slug":"bruce-boudreau-on-how-alex-ovechkin-has-developed-winning-culture-with-capitals-hes-created-an-atmosphere-in-that-room-that-is-second-to-none","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339681\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Boudreau on how Alex Ovechkin has developed winning culture with Capitals: \u2018He\u2019s created an atmosphere in that room that is second to none\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in NHL history and one of the league\u2019s all-time greatest players. The 40-year-old legendary winger would seemingly have every reason to become aloof and withdrawn from his teammates, but he has done the complete opposite and continued to foster a winning environment with the Washington Capitals.<\/p>\n

Bruce Boudreau, who coached a much younger Ovechkin for parts of five seasons with the Capitals (2007-2012), has seen firsthand the impact The Great 8 has had on the club\u2019s culture. Boudreau recently spoke with RG\u2019s Andrew Knoll<\/a> about the Caps captain and his consistent positive influence on the team that he\u2019s now played on for 21 seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s created an atmosphere in that room that is second to none, where they all play for the team,\u201d Boudreau said<\/a>. \u201cSometimes you see superstars, that, when they do something great, that the team just says, \u2018Yeah, yeah, yeah.\u2019 But everybody on the Washington Capitals genuinely loves when good things happen to Alex, because he responds in kind and supports them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ovechkin is famous for his big celebrations after scoring goals<\/a>, and sometimes those celebrations get even bigger when he isn\u2019t even the one putting the puck in the net for the Capitals. The \u201cbig man,\u201d as his teammates affectionately call him, gets just as excited for Brandon Duhaime scoring his 33rd career goal as he does scoring the 911th of his storied career.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Ovi\u2019s] been doing it for 25 years or whatever, he\u2019s kind of seen it all,\u201d Duhaime said in September<\/a>. \u201cFor him to bring the same energy [every year] is \u2013 at least from what I\u2019ve heard in his young years to now \u2013 is pretty incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boudreau believes it\u2019s that relatability and charisma that make Ovechkin such a great leader, which also helps push the Capitals forward as a unit. In the 20 seasons he has completed in the NHL with the Caps, the team has missed the playoffs just four times.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not the type of superstar that \u2013\u2013 he knows he\u2019s good, he knows what he\u2019s got and everything \u2013\u2013 has that air [of arrogance] about him,\u201d Boudreau said. \u201cHe\u2019s so down to earth, it\u2019s crazy. He wants to play video games and all these fun things, he\u2019s just a big kid, and that\u2019s what makes him so lovable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ovechkin still clearly has some of that youthful energy left in him as he\u2019s scored 14 goals in 30 games this season, putting him on pace to flirt with a 15th 40-goal campaign. He is also just three points behind Tom Wilson for the team lead in scoring with 29 points, and only recently saw the end of a six-game point streak.<\/p>\n

In part due to some clever deployment strategy from head coach Spencer Carbery<\/a>, the Capitals are also still performing exceptionally well with Ovechkin on the ice five-on-five. During his minutes this season, the Caps have seen 53.4 percent of shot attempts, 54.9 percent of expected goals, 55.2 percent of scoring chances, and 52.8 percent of high-danger chances.<\/p>\n

The great individual and team results have Boudreau already thinking Ovechkin may sign on for another season after his current contract with the Capitals expires next summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way he\u2019s playing and, touch wood, if he doesn\u2019t get hurt, if he ends up with 35 to 40 [goals], people are going to ask him if he wants to play again next year [and if 1000 goals is possible],\u201d Boudreau said. \u201cI can see those questions being asked a lot in the second half of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ovechkin is currently 89 career goals away from reaching the 1,000-goal milestone and on pace to finish the 2025-26 season with 935 goals. He\u2019d likely have to play at least two more years at the same level of production to hit four digits in goals.<\/p>\n

Whether that happens seems to be up to Ovechkin, and his willingness to stick around in the NHL, which Boudreau seems to believe is still there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s scored some goals this year, whether it was his 900th or whichever, where you could see in the smile on his face that he\u2019s really happy, he\u2019s in a really good place,\u201d Boudreau said. \u201cI think everybody knew when he was 20 years old that he loved to play the game, and now, it\u2019s coming out that he still loves to play the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in NHL history and one of the league\u2019s all-time greatest players.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-339681","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\/339681","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=339681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}