Goal Oriented

Alex's iron-willed mother tried to shield him from the rough business side of professional hockey. She and her husband helped negotiate his contracts. "I wouldn't trust my child to anyone else," she said.

When Alex was 18, the Washington Capitals, then ranked 28th out of 30 NHL teams, won the 2004-05 draft lottery -- a stroke of luck akin to a slot-machine jackpot. Out of all the teams in the NHL, the Caps would get the first draft pick. "We were all excited," McPhee recalled. "I called our chief amateur scout. I said, 'If you had to pick today, who would you take?' He said, 'It's got to be Ovechkin.' . . . We just felt like Alex's character and his physical playing really separated him from any other player we could see."

But labor disputes shut down the NHL. So Alex kept playing for Dynamo Moscow, until he walked out over a dispute about pay and what size apartment the team was supposed to provide the family in crowded Moscow. "If they fooled you, there is no forgiveness," Tatiana recalled telling Alex about the family's dealings with the club. "My credo in life is: One strike and you are out."

Alex's mother, angry at Dynamo and uncertain about when the Caps would skate again, urged her son to go to Siberia and accept a lucrative offer to play for the team in the city of Omsk.

"Omsk is like Pittsburgh," Alex said. "It's not like New York." He went to Omsk. He was living in the team training barracks, but hadn't played his first game for them yet, when word came from Washington. The lockout was over, and the Capitals were hoping their first-round draft pick would show up for training camp in the fall of 2005. The lights were out in the Omsk barracks. It was after curfew. Alex, 19, had a phone in each hand, he recalled. On one line was a conference call with his parents, McPhee and one of his agents. On the second phone, Alex had a private line connecting him to the power behind the skater: Mom. McPhee promised Tatiana that the Caps would take good care of her son; they would help him adjust to a new and very different life. When the calls began, Tatiana was inclined to have Alex stay in Omsk for one season. The Russian money was good: nearly $2 million. McPhee laid out a bonus plan under which Alex could earn more -- much more -- if he played as brilliantly as they hoped. But the basic salary McPhee offered, the only money Alex was guaranteed if he came to the United States, was less than Omsk was paying.

Suddenly, the party line went dead. Sitting in the dark, waiting for the conference call to be reconnected, Alex contemplated his future in Omsk. "I think about the money," he recalled in English. "You can take the money and not be happy. Or you can take the dream."

The dream -- playing in the NHL -- meant testing his skills and determination against the greatest players in the No. 1 hockey league in the world. Alex told his mom he wanted to live his American dream. She agreed.

The teen was so excited after he hung up that he ran around the barracks telling friends on the Omsk team: "I go to the NHL! I go to the NHL!"

"First time I go to ice," Alex said, reminiscing about his first game with the Capitals, "My heart was like, boom, boom."

Alex skated into the Caps' 2005-06 season opener wearing number 8: his mom's old basketball number. He had just turned 20. In the first minute of the game, the young Russian raced across the ice and checked an opposing player into the boards so hard that he broke the protective glass barrier above. Fans in the arena rose to give Alex an ovation while repairs temporarily halted the game.

In the second period, Alex scored and couldn't contain his joy. He jumped in the air. He pumped his stick over his head. He dropped to one knee. He scanned the arena for his parents. It wasn't just his first goal of his rookie NHL season, he later recalled; it was theirs.

Any dedicated Capitals fan knows the precise moment in Alex's first season in the NHL when he achieved rock-star status in the hockey world. It was January 16, in the third period of a lopsided matinee game between the Capitals and the Phoenix Coyotes. Alex had played only 43 games in the NHL. Passionate on the ice and ebullient off, he'd won the respect and affection of his teammates. He was already poised to break NHL rookie scoring records. Yet he'd been overshadowed all season by another supremely talented rookie -- Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who seemed to capture more public attention.