Russia’s NHL hero Alex Ovechkin has a rare chance to hit Putin where it hurts

In 2017, Alexander Ovechkin, inarguably the best Russian hockey player alive or dead and the country's most famous male athlete, started something called PutinTeam.

"I have never hidden my attitude towards our president, always supporting him," the Muscovite and captain of the NHL's Washington Capitals wrote, three years after Russia annexed Crimea. "I am confident that there are many of us, supporting Vladimir Putin. So let's unite and show everyone a united and strong Russia!"

Ovechkin encouraged other Russian hockey stars such as Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Bure and Ilya Kovalchuk to sign up to his social media campaign, and changed his Instagram avatar to a photo of him alongside Putin.

It's easy to imagine the smirk the Russian leader allowed himself at the sight of his new gladiatorial champion playing in front of adoring fans in DC of all places - the next year Ovechkin even hoisted the Stanley Cup for the Capitals. But it's just as easy to picture Putin's fury over Ovechkin's comments following Russia's full invasion of Ukraine last week.

"Well, he is my president," the 36-year-old Ovechkin told a press conference a few days ago. "But how I said, I am not in politics. I am an athlete and you know, how I said, I hope everything is going to be done soon. It's a hard situation right now for both side and everything. Everything, I hope, is going to end. I'm not in control of the situation.

"Please, no more war."

Mealy-mouthed as it was ("What!? Not only an alibist, a chicken shit, but also a liar!" spat Czech goaltending legend Dominik Hasek on Twitter, before calling on the NHL to suspend all Russian contracts), Ovechkin even tentatively distancing himself from Putin was a remarkable sign of something deeper. His words weren't the strongest criticism of Putin from a Russian hockey player - that honour goes to Rangers left winger Artemi Panarin, who has also thrown his support behind opposition figure Alexei Navalny - but calling the Ukraine invasion a "war" at all is now a journalistic crime in Russia.

Of course, the dissent of other Russian athletes across the spectrum, such as rising tennis star Andrey Rublev writing "NO WAR PLEASE" on the camera lens after a victory last week, is brave considering what Putin does to dissidents, even those who live abroad. (Panarin went on temporary leave last after reports emerged in Russia that he supposedly beat up a teenage girl, allegations that the team called a case of vengeful "intimidation" for his politics.)

But Ovechkin is no rising star. He is the pole star, "the Great Eight", the charming and ebullient golden boy of the Great Russian Sport, perhaps hockey's purest-ever scorer, now closing in on the previously inviolable goal record of Wayne Gretzky and doing so in the most glass-bangingly charismatic way possible.

What's more, hockey isn't just Russia's sport. It's Putin's. The Russian leader likes to lace up, and has got populist mileage out of skating in farcical games where he "scores" improbable numbers of goals against professional players (and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko) who are clearly terrified of him. He once tripped over a red carpet on the ice; most of the players pretended not to see.

Just like the other action-figure poses that once made him something of an amusing meme, Rock'Em'Sock'Em Putin sends a specific message. Hockey has always been political for Russia and North America. The rink was where the cold war could get hot. Putin's subsequent shame at the fall of the Soviet Union, too, is mirrored in what happened to Russian hockey.

In the dying days of the empire, prominent Soviet players led by Alexander Mogilny began to defect to the west, and when the USSR collapsed then so too did the once-unstoppable Red Army teams that had dominated international competition for decades. In the early 1990s an American investor from the Pittsburgh Penguins flew to Moscow to find the Red Army team playing to empty stands, their trophies in a dusty cabinet and a strip club in the basement. The investor rebranded the team as the Red Penguins and whipped up sellout crowds with pumping music, cheerleaders and American-style capitalist razzle-dazzle. Putin would have hated it. Slowly, however, organized crime muscled its way in to cream off the new profits, just as Putin himself rose to lead a kleptocratic Russia that he was determined would be macho on the world stage again. Under his watch the KHL, Russia's version of the NHL, even began to poach NHL players in return.

So hockey is sensitive for Putin, and Ovechkin is sensitive for him, too. "As Putin's favourite athlete, it's significant that Ovechkin did not come out and endorse Putin's war," says Jack Todd, hockey writer for the Montreal Gazette. "It's the first sign of any distance between Putin and one of his more enthusiastic supporters." Todd argues that Ovechkin needs to do more, because he's uniquely positioned to be heard: "Given Ovechkin's position as a hero of the Russian people, it would be hard for Putin to retaliate against him, especially now when everything is crumbling." Should Ovechkin and Panarin persuade the NHL's Russian players to sign a joint letter asking Putin to withdraw from Ukraine, he notes, it could collectively insulate them from repercussions.

For now, Ovechkin is playing the "I'm just an athlete" card, so any such joint action looks unlikely in the short term. On Monday, the NHL condemned the invasion of Ukraine and urged "a peaceful resolution as quickly as possible". The league added that it is cutting ties with its business partners in Russia, while acknowledging its players "and their families are being placed in an extremely difficult position".

A stronger stance from Ovechkin and his compatriots in the NHL could hurt Putin's support among the kind of Russians who do not read dissident media but take pride in their country's international hockey pedigree. They may even start to question the "special military operation" in Ukraine.

After all, even the captain of PutinTeam now calls it a war.