Raised in Moscow within the Soviet sports system by parents who were accomplished athletes, Alex Ovechkin was given every chance to succeed at hockey and along the way showed he didn’t need special tr

Alex Ovechkin almost stopped playing hockey. His mother, Tatyana, was a basketball player, his father, Mikhail, was a soccer player and they were traveling with their teams, leaving no one to take

Part of what makes Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s NHL goal-scoring record so compelling is that the two players are polar opposites in some ways yet stunningly similar in others.