said to Jeff Marek and Bruce Boudreau on the Hockey Lifers Podcast in November<\/a>. \u201cRight now, I\u2019m here, and I\u2019m enjoying my days here. We\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\nOvechkin also discussed with Oshie what it\u2019s like being a hockey dad.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m kind of hard on Sergei and Ilya when they\u2019re on the ice,\u201d Ovechkin said. \u201cYou have to skate, you have to work. You have to score goals. The same was with me when I was a little kid. I don\u2019t wanna practice, I just wanna have fun. Without the puck, it\u2019s boring. But that is what it is, you have to start doing that, that kind of stuff since day one.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for where he gets his physicality and his constant motor for the game, he credited his parents for instilling it in him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt comes from heart, I think,\u201d he said. \u201cMy mom was twice Olympic champion, like best basketball player. Yeah. And I learned a lot from her. And just to work hard, play hard, that\u2019s the most important thing for athletes. Because if you\u2019re not gonna work hard on the ice, you\u2019re not gonna feel good. \u201d<\/p>\n
Oshie then reminded Ovechkin of a moment in the 2014 Olympics, where his future captain laid him out with a big hit \u201cflying over top of me.\u201d Oshie asked, \u201cWhere does that love, that physicality, where does that come from?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, it\u2019s from my parents, my dad,\u201d Ovechkin responded. \u201cWe watched highlights, goals, hits, fights. And my dad said, \u2018Okay, if you wanna play in the NHL, you have to be, first of all, physically smart. And you have to get hit and then take a hit.\u2019 And if you remember my first game, I was so pumped, I was jacked, I killed the guy. Broke the boards, I think. And then it became, you have to set the tone, you have to show who you are. And I started doing it right away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whenever Ovechkin does decide to call it quits, he will go down as the NHL\u2019s all-time goals leader. He also sits third all-time in hits with 3,851.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of the Washington Capitals\u2019 nationally televised game against the Boston Bruins on Saturday, Alex Ovechkin did an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-513857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513857","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=513857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}