{"id":763825,"date":"2026-07-15T06:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T06:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/763825\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T06:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T06:04:09","slug":"alex-ovechkin-says-his-sons-fell-in-love-with-hockey-on-their-own-we-dont-push-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/763825\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin says his sons fell in love with hockey on their own: \u2018We don\u2019t push them\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Ovechkin<\/a>\u2018s young sons, Sergei and Ilya, have fallen in love with hockey, and the Washington Capitals<\/a>\u2018 superstar says it happened naturally.<\/p>\n

Ovechkin spoke about his kids\u2019 obsession with the sport during an appearance on Match TV\u2019s \u201cAll on Match!\u201d<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

Per a video posted by X user @uggg_uggg<\/a> and a translation by Google Translate:<\/p>\n

Match TV host Dmitry Guberniev: \u201cIf they really start playing, what will Dad say to them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Ovechkin: \u201cThey love hockey. We actually just set up a shooting area at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dmitry Guberniev: \u201cIn the apartment?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Ovechkin: \u201cNo, at the house. At the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dmitry Guberniev: \u201cOh, at the house. You mean inside or outside?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Ovechkin: \u201cJust today, they went out to shoot for the first time \u2014 Grandma (Tatyana Ovechkina) could barely get them to leave so they could go to practice. That\u2019s how much they really love hockey. They know all the players; they\u2019re constantly playing hockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in Washington, out on the street\u2026 Their godfather even gave them a tabletop hockey game, and they play it all the time. So, for them, it\u2019s hockey 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dmitry Guberniev: \u201cAnd your wife doesn\u2019t mind all this? I mean, their mom?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Ovechkin: \u201cNo, she\u2019s all for it. But, then again, we don\u2019t push them. They ask on their own: \u2018When is practice?\u2019 Forcing them won\u2019t lead to anything good.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe older one, Seryozha, plays, and the younger one follows his lead. The younger one even says, \u2018I want to be like Seryozha when I grow up.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we\u2019re a hockey family. What can you say?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Ovechkin\u2019s children have grown older, they\u2019ve become fixtures at Capitals games with their mom, Nastya, frequently giving their dad fist bumps through the glass when he scores or the Capitals win.<\/p>\n

Ovechkin even admitted that his kids put pressure on him to re-sign and return to the Capitals<\/a>, frequently barraging him with questions about his hockey future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in our lives [my wife] saw the kids every day,\u201d Ovechkin said to the media after re-signing. \u201cThey asked me, \u2018Are you coming back? Are you coming back?\u2019 Then she saw me. I\u2019m kind of, every time, like thinking about that, coming back to the Caps, and she\u2019s like, \u2018Okay.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sergei and Ilya are frequent guests at Capitals practices, jumping onto the ice to work with other players or have fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other players have also shown support for the brothers during their own youth hockey games. Last September, during Capitals training camp, Aliaksei Protas and Ilya Protas watched one of Sergei\u2019s games and were caught going wild on social media after he scored a goal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The same is true, even for Dad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the kids haven\u2019t tested their mettle in the NHL (yet), they can already say they\u2019ve played against Pittsburgh Penguins star Evgeni Malkin<\/a>, who played Hallway Hockey with the pair at Ovechkin\u2019s house in April.<\/p>\n

During the offseason, the two Ovechkin children committed to training at the Red Machine Junior Academy, per Sports.ru<\/a>. The elite Russian youth hockey program began in Moscow in 2020 as a joint project between the Russian Ice Hockey Federation and SKA\u2019s academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is for the child to love hockey, rather than feel obligated to become a star,\u201d says the Red Machine Junior website<\/a>, and a Google Translation.<\/p>\n

The program was founded by Roman Rotenberg, who holds several top positions in Russian hockey, including\u00a0first vice-president of the\u00a0Russian Ice Hockey Federation, general manager of the\u00a0Russia national ice hockey team, member of the KHL\u2019s board of directors, Deputy Chairman of the KHL board, Deputy Chairman of the SKA Hockey Club board of directors, and SKA CEO and vice-president.<\/p>\n

Other Russian hockey stars, like Alexander Radulov, have sent their kids to the academy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Ovechkin\u2018s young sons, Sergei and Ilya, have fallen in love with hockey, and the Washington Capitals\u2018 superstar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-763825","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\/763825","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=763825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}