{"id":415918,"date":"2026-01-19T01:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T01:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415918\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T01:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T01:11:08","slug":"alex-ovechkin-refuses-to-partake-in-pride-festivities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415918\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin Refuses To Partake In Pride Festivities"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great 8 is not playing the woke game.<\/p>\n

PublishedJanuary 18, 2026 6:20 PM EST\u2022UpdatedJanuary 18, 2026 5:50 PM EST<\/p>\n

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Washington Capitals<\/a> forward Alex Ovechkin<\/a> may not be the most liked player in the NHL<\/a>, but he found a way to endear himself to a lot of the game’s fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Saturday night, the Capitals and Florida Panthers faced off, with Washington holding its annual Pride Night before the game. (Cue the justified boos and eye rolls).\u00a0<\/p>\n

That means that many players decided to put rainbow tape on their sticks as a show of support. But Ovechkin, and several others, decided not to. They skated onto the ice with their sticks looking normal as most reasonable people would do.<\/p>\n

Martin Fehervary, Ryan Leonard, Aliaksei Protas, Brett Leason, and Charlie Lindgren were the other players who followed Ovechkin\u2019s example.<\/p>\n

Many NHL players have stood against this agenda for the past few years. In\u00a0January 2023<\/a>, then-Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov decided not to partake in the pride festivities, and that sparked a wave of players deciding to do the same. The message is clear: the vast majority of players don\u2019t care to support this agenda.<\/p>\n

We always have to ask why these players are forced to support it in the first place, other than to make a bunch of liberals feel happy.<\/p>\n

The Capitals would end up losing this game 5-2, but these players\u2019 combined effort to stand up to this tired nonsense was the more important win.<\/p>\n

Keep hockey woke-free!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Great 8 is not playing the woke game. PublishedJanuary 18, 2026 6:20 PM EST\u2022UpdatedJanuary 18, 2026 5:50…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-415918","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\/415918","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=415918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}