Alexander the Great?

Ovechkin calls her "my first coach" and "a great sportsman." Her husband, Mikhail, played professional soccer and now assists her as a Dynamo official. The father tells the son: "If team wins and you score, you are good. If you score three goals and team loses, no good. You must play hard so team wins."

Ovechkin's parents have rented an apartment in the District and are staying a month to help him get adjusted. When they go home to Moscow, they will also leave behind another son, Mikhail, 23, who will study English and keep Alex company -- or, as Alex said with a smile, "always watch me." The oldest of three brothers, Sergei, who took it upon himself when Alex was 8 to sign him up for a youth hockey team, was killed in a car crash several years ago; of him Alex will not speak except to say that he thinks of him "all the time."

One day recently after practice, the parents accompanied Alex from the Capitals' facility at Piney Orchard, near Odenton, to Annapolis to take care of one of the necessities of his relocation: He applied for a Social Security card.

"He has worked very hard, and we have helped him to work hard since the very first day he started to play hockey," Tatiana said through an interpreter. "It was always his dream, from the first day he was on skates, to play in the NHL. As a little boy, he always asked us to buy him hockey cards and such wherever we went. [Wayne] Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were among his favorites. He watched videocassettes of the best of Gretzky and Lemieux, and when he saw them playing he decided if he was going to play hockey then he was going to play hockey in the NHL."

He had accomplished as much at a young age as any Russian or Soviet player since the goaltender Vladislav Tretiak, who retired in 1984 after 15 seasons with the Central Red Army Club and now is in hockey's Hall of Fame. Tatiana said that her son's experience with Dynamo since the age of 16 and his being named to the Russian national team when he was only 17 "has given him a lot of strength and belief in himself."

His new Capitals teammates can see that, especially when playing against him in practice.

"You have to honor his skills, you give him less room to play with the puck," rookie defenseman Nolan Yonkman said. "I keep on him harder than anybody else, not give him any time, that's what I try to do. When the season begins, I want to get him the puck as much as I possibly can."

"He's a positive guy, usually in a good mood, polite, nice," said 27-year old Dainius Zubrus, who grew up in Lithuania, speaks Russian and has been helping Ovechkin get settled. "He realizes that this hockey is quite a bit different from what he played before. He asks different questions. He wants to learn."

Ovechkin is happy to play the rookie's role.

Accompanying Olie Kolzig, Jeff Halpern and Zubrus to the D.C. Armory to help serve a meal to hurricane evacuees two weeks ago, he carried a large box of pucks and T-shirts to be given away while the others went empty-handed.

"At this point, the veterans like this guy," McPhee said. "They like what he brings. They like the way he carries himself. They like the way he competes. He's not a prima donna.

"It's everything you want to see from a team perspective, or coaching perspective. It's what you're hoping for, and it looks like we've got it. We just hope he stays the same kid."